Reply to At what age do you think you can tell whether a kid has potential to be an athlete?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Good Athletes - Like D1 or even pro level athleticism? I'd say around age 7 I can tell. It is hard to describe but you know when you see it.

High School athletes? Middle school or beyond. Most schools you can work hard and make a team and even be a starter. But the high level athletes that play on TV every weekend all have something the rest of us don't have. [/quote]
You sound like my DH, who was able to project out the maximum potential achievement level of each kid on my son’s U9 soccer team, assuming they put in the time athletically and academically and weren’t derailed by life. I was highly skeptical at the time.  A decade+on, he nailed almost every kid, ranging from the one he described as D1/pro potential, the couple D3/borderline D1, the category of “will likely make varsity at a minimum”, the couple of “may make JV/wont make varsity” kids (both of whom made JV for one year), the one he predicted would excel at a different sport, and the others who he said didn’t have the coordination or other baseline athletic traits to play beyond rec.

It’s obviously easier to project out for a sport like soccer, where size is not determinative for most positions, but I still think my DH has an uncanny and unusual ability to recognize which kids are fundamentally athletic and which aren’t at a young age. I don’t think most of us have this ability, including most youth coaches. Therefore, I think it’s a bit of a pointless question.  If your kid likes sports, encourage them to keep it up for all the benefits sports offers, and time will take care of letting you know what level they can succeed at. [/quote]

Did he keep following them? LOL My kid did not make Varsity and is crushing it on a D1 team now.  HS is not indicative of anything.[/quote]
Well, yes. There are no Nostradamuses involved, so no one can predict where any elementary aged kid will actually end up.  There are far too many variables. My DH’s predictions were made on the assumption that the kids in question who weren’t DA bound would be playing at the local HS which had then, and still has, a coach who knows his stuff.  The fact that your kid’s HS coach didn’t see he had D1 potential supports my point that there are not a lot of great talent evaluators out there, so no one should be worried about this at this age.
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