Reply to Does anyone hate how competitive the world has become?

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "Does anyone hate how competitive the world has become?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look, when the WSJ runs an article like this on an Olympic ping pong player...it's hard not to believe this is the thinking of many Asian families and sports:

Lily Zhang is the queen of American table tennis, a six-time national champ and four-time Olympian in the prime of her career. At only 28 years old, the California native can’t help but dream ahead about playing in front of a home crowd at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

Her parents are less enthused.

“We always try to convince her to stop playing,” says her mother, Linda Liu. “We just want her to have a normal job.”

The irony is that Linda Liu and Bob Zhang helped mold their daughter into a table-tennis star in the first place. Immigrants from China, they wanted to pass down their native country’s national sport to their offspring. So in a cramped Palo Alto apartment, the ping-pong table pulled double duty.

“It was also the dining table,” Lily Zhang says. “We would just put a tablecloth over it and then eat.”

But to her parents, table tennis was an opportunity to enhance her college applications. “If she played at a high level, it would help her get into a good school,” says Liu, her mother.

At age 16, she competed at the 2012 London Games. Though she lost her first match, her parents declared it a resounding victory. “They’re like, OK, you got the Olympics, you got that on your college apps and now you can focus on studies,’ ” Zhang says.

“You already went to the London Olympics,” Liu said at the time. “That is enough.”[/quote]

I can’t speak for all Asians but most of us consider [b]sports a hobby.[/b] I can understand a mother of a 28yo wanting her daughter to get a “real” job and get married.

[b]My son plays tennis at a high level.[/b] School is the priority and comes first. [/quote]

Nobody plays any sport at a high level if it is just "a hobby".  That's what differentiates the hobbyists who play for fun on the weekend from the players who compete at a high level.

You contradicted your own statement.[/quote]

My kid has been playing tennis since he was in preschool. He also did soccer, swim team, basketball and track. His main sport is tennis. He plays tennis 5-6x per week, is on the varsity tennis team and plays tournaments when he can. He is as dedicated to tennis as a person can get without being all in.

We also know the kids who go to the boarding schools or private school or online school who play tennis all day everyday. We are not that type of family.[/quote]

Got it...but that's no different than any other sport where you have "hobbyists" who play occasionally for fun, you have kids that play seriously and perhaps may be able to play the sport at say a D3 level (or not), and you have kids that play the sport at a very high level and their goal is the D1 and/or the Professional level.

That's all.  It is more than a hobby, but not the highest level.[/quote]

I never understood this bottom D1, D2, D3 college team or bust stupidity.

I’d rather go to the best school and program for my desired major and play club sports than go to one of the 1000s of no name schools and play on their team.

My coworker was just bragging about a niece from texas going to play at some college in Long Beach I never heard of. Ok. Unclear what the long game or future career is after that. But hey, she’s on a college v ball team!!! [/quote]

I don't disagree with you...but college sports has gotten a little nuts.  It's possible your co-worker's niece is going to a competitive D3 volleyball program that basically develops volleyball players into D1 transfers.

So, that "no name" Long Beach school may get 50% of the team onto good D1 volleyball program teams after their freshman or sophomore year.

I don't think any of this is a good thing...but there are some D3 colleges that now identify as farm teams for D1 programs.  I personally don't know volleyball, but it's common in baseball.
[/quote]

What’s the point of that? 
College should be about studying, new friends, new city, more networks, internships, spring break travels, career services. 
Not transferring from one bottom sports program to another. [/quote]

So new rule: everyone should do college according to you?  If you don’t get sports, removing the doubt, playing at high levels, then you just don’t get it.  [/quote]

You seem dull.

College for studying doesn’t have anything to do with other options like military or trade school or going abroad or doing fulltime sports.
[b]I said college is for studying for one’s career. 
Most of the planet agrees with exactly that.[/b]

You seem to be saying some different gabbaly gook about playing sports. And you’re responding to a thread on how some families put their kids in bottom colleges in order to do so. 
Is that really “playing at the highest level”? Are the best coaches, recruits and level of play really at #321 of the ~350 D1 colleges? 
Is your potential major and career so low a priority that you’d rather attend that no-name school to play on their sports team versus a more reputable college degree and network? [/quote]

Agree.

America diverted from this academic merit and uni is-for-studying concept two ways.  First with using diversity factors to get admitted, and with second with lucrative big 10, SEC, etc athletics programs. then got called out and did Title 9 for females.
 
Just the last two years American uni’s shot some nitro into college sports: allowing free agent portal transfers any and all years of college to other teams; and a few students went to court to demand royalty compensation to student athletes (tix and merc sales, ad rev)

So watch the nutjob parents and non scholar athletes froth at the mouth for this. This will up the ante even more for u10-18 travel sports!

Now you can fake your way into college and get paid for playing sports and getting your 2.0-2.5 major with your travel tutor!!

Then graduate and….. [/quote]
Other countries must think we’re crazy

No wonder we have so many Tier 2,3,4,5 travel team programs. They’re all run by retired college athletes trying to make a buck! 
[/quote]

Foreign countries are crazy in their own ways.

Let's take Europe.  For basketball, soccer and hockey, many European countries have established powerhouse teams that create an academy system at a very young age.

Ajax in the Netherlands and Barcelona in Spain have kids as young as 5 essentially going to soccer boarding school.  It's a ruthless environment where in theory the kids are also attending school, but actually aren't learning much.  As kids get older, some of the kids recruited at 5 keep moving up, but others fall behind and are kicked out in favor of new recruits.  By about 13-14, the teams are set.  These academies know which players will be the best, and now all these kids are trained for pro teams.  Every country has multiple pro soccer divisions...much much like minor league baseball.

The same happens with hockey in Nordic countries, baseball in France, Spain, Slovenia, etc.

The main difference is any athlete that isn't in one of these crazy sports boarding programs just plays for fun.  They know they are never going to get discovered at 14...that's too late.  There are no college sports, so there is no playing in college.

Of course, the US colleges, especially with TO, are more than happy to accept a bunch of these European players who are barely literate.  That is why many college soccer teams now have like a 22-year old average age.

I don't know which system is better, but one could argue the European system is pretty crazy too.[/quote]

Big difference.

There they scout and pick off talent at a very young age. And take them over at age 10-13 onward.

The rest of the kids and families play for fun locally and do quite well. But there’s no pay play $3000 travel soccer or bball plus tourneys 500 miles away every month. That’s not happening.

Here it’s pay to pay by families until your kid gets picked off by boarding school or some national level frenzied tournament play over the summers in high school.

Or just go to no name school and play. If you don’t have good grades, may as well play that card. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics