Reply to 9 years of travel socce for DC, I regret it

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, thanks for this post. My DS is early in the travel journey and we're debating whether this is a good decision or not. We already plan so much time around his sports' schedule that I can't imagine what it'll be like heading to SC/NC for weekends, too. At present, the kids all do well academically so I'd like to focus on that. Even if DS is good enough to play D3, what's the point in that? He'd spend so much time in practice and games that he'd miss out on the academics of college.

I think our kids would gain just as much athleticism and love of team sports playing on a lower tier team with less commitment as playing travel. I'm planning to get out while we still can and spend that extra time and money on academics and family time. [/quote]

[b]How he spends his time in college is really up to him.
[/b]
While kids activities should not be indulged beyond the families financial or real logistical or time constraints but purposely holding a kid back from their potential only closes opportunities later. I don't know if your son can play D3, D2 or D1 and it may not even matter to him but it is best to let him drive his ambition within the boundaries of what your family can reasonably accommodate. [/quote]

Nope, not really. If I'm paying for school at 100%, it's not entirely up to him to skip school for sports. [b]And in all honesty, chasing a college soccer dream has very minimal ROI.[/b] There is little to no point in this country. Sports are great but academics are better. DS will get far more out of his studies than he ever will with travel sports. And let's just say kid - any kid- is good enough to play MLS, have you seen the average salary for that? Doesn't make any sense to me. Get a degree in a field that delivers a way to have a paying career. Sports only pay their way if you are in the top .001%. So study, kids![/quote]

So here is the thing for all the posters that keep saying that they would want their kid to focus on academics more than sports in college (and the reality is that doing the one does not in any way negate doing the other). Getting INTO college, a decent college like a T1-50 ranked school, is tough these days. Really tough. Many of you may have younger kids so don't see how competitive it is these days. The kids who are gunning for top universities pretty much ALL LOOK THE SAME (which is a good thing - lots of intelligent, focused, involved kids). They all have high GPAs, take AB/IB, do countless hours of volunteer work, lead the drive/charity/organization/small business that they started. They are all stellar students trying to win a limited number of slots (again, if we are talking about top collleges) And so many do much more like on a national level.

So, again, here is the thing: before you put college level sports down saying that they do not allow a student to focus on academics realize that your child can't focus on academics in college IF they don't get accepted into  whatever-high-level school they and you want them to attend. And believe me, many kids work strive to attend the top schools. They are more than aware of the rankings. If your child is athletically talented and loves their game that can very well lead to a hook that makes them stand out. Among the thousands and thousands of applications that your kid's application is competing with.

Hey, so maybe don't look down on college athletes too much because beyond working their butts off, the reality is that many got themselves in to some pretty amazing schools; schools you'd love for your children to someday attend.[/quote]

There are hundreds of thousands of kids playing sports. The point is that trying to be a stand out in sports is incredibly difficult and, often times, not worth the effort. If you're gunning for a top university, why not try more of a niche area to stand out instead of being 1 of 10000000 soccer players in the area? Or, novel idea, try studying more? Shockingly, our good friend's kid just got into Stanford. He wasn't a soccer player so I don't know how it could've happened. I think he studied a lot and kept his focus there.  [/quote]

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