Let them play whatever they want. By about sixth grade, they probably need to be playing a sport more seriously if they want to go that route.

As far as the public schools being more competitive -- no way. Especially for the smaller sports like lacrosse and basketball. The big exception might be football, but even there schools like DeMatha and Gonzaga usually have the strongest programs despite their relatively small size. Most of the best teams and players are private and Catholic. But the real competition for all the sports is now with the clubs. The level of competition at the top clubs is higher than high school varsity. DD's 8th grade club basketball team played high school varsity teams in the fall league in close games.

All sports are competitive here. There is no easy in. Even sports that are not in high schools like figure skating are competitive around here. And not all kids want to play. Take your cues from the kid. If they wanna play something, give it a go.

Anonymous wrote:Your child is five years old. Please don't worry about this now -- let him try a number of things to see what he enjoys.

Seriously. Five.

prob too late for hockey already.

Your child is five years old. Please don't worry about this now -- let him try a number of things to see what he enjoys.

Seriously. Five.

Depends if you are looking at private, catholic or public. The public schools tend to be a bit more competitive just because the pool of kids is so much larger. The catholic schools are super competitive at the varisty level, but have JV and 9th grade teams in many sports. Of course playing time at any school will always depend on talent. At our public school, for boys:

Most competitive is soccer and basketball - soccer because so many kids play and basketball because the team is so small. To give you a sense of soccer, 80-100 kids try out, 40 are on the JV and V teams, 13-15 get real playing time on varsity.

Next is baseball and lacrosse. Lax is more competitive at private schools.

Next is football, which at our school is no cut

Next is XC and track - everyone can be on the team and compete in some meets (it's about 100 kids with both B&G) but a limited number of runners compete in the invitational meets.

Not sure about swimming, but I think it's rpetty competitive.

Squash and crew are clubs and anyone can join. Hockey is a club but is selective.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but that's a start.

One thing to keep in mind is that in some of the public schools you can only be on JV for 2 years, while in the private schools you can be on for all 4.

The competitive sports vary substantially by school and location. They can change over time, too, so it's hard to predict which sports will be competitive at a given school 5-10 years from now.

That said, there are sports that have different models of participation, such as cross-country, swimming, and track. Those were my sports in HS, and everyone ran/swam, no matter how fast. Granted, some people swam in more events or participated in special meets, but those sports accommodated a good range of ability levels. Of those, swimming would start the earliest, but I've seen pretty young kids running in fun runs and stuff like that. Something to think about.

There's no need to overmanage this issue already... There are plenty open-registration (not competitive try-outs) sports of all kinds through county leagues and things like that. I'm happy to say you can radically relax and let your child have fun, explore, try things out... and s/he'll be able to play for many, many years all the way through high school.

My kid is 5 and I'm trying to expose him to various sports. I don't think he will be a star athlete so I want him to get involved in a sport that won't be so competitive later on (so that he'll actually be able to get on a team and have a chance to play). I'm basing this on my experience playing soccer where I grew up (midwest). It was very competitive in my area and even though I managed to make the team in HS, I did not see much playng time and sort of wish that my parents had gotten me involved in other sports early on (i.e. tennis, basketball, etc) that weren't so competitive in our area. My DH had the same experience but with basketball. So I'm just wondering if anyone has any thoughts or advice on this.