Anonymous wrote:In our case, the closer friendships happened after they had played together for a few years, were old enough to have cell phones and had a team group chat, and had done some out of town tournaments so there was more down time together besides just practices and games. (DS also plays on a team with kids who do not go to his school.)

Agree completely

Invite a few over or take A few that your son likes to a game in their sport, like Nats if baseball.i agree if travel team they will bond over time. And when older and they start texting. My son's team has a very nice bond and he hangs with 2 of the boys separate from team time.

My 5th grader hangs out with all of his best friends that were on Rec soccer and basketball.

They all split onto different travel teams, some different sports but still get together.

Both my kids have made some really great friends on their travel teams, but don't hang out much outside of the sport.

DS (11) plays on a travel soccer team with kids from other schools. He is definitely friendly with the kids at practices and games, and he has had a few of them to his birthday and had a couple of playdates, but generally he doesn't socialize with them outside of soccer. Maybe that will change as he gets a little older and plays with them longer. Only a few of them have been playing together for three years.

It depends. Some teams, yes. Some teams, no.

Nope. Nice when it happens. My son is an introvert and is pretty much done with people by the end of a game.

In our case, the closer friendships happened after they had played together for a few years, were old enough to have cell phones and had a team group chat, and had done some out of town tournaments so there was more down time together besides just practices and games. (DS also plays on a team with kids who do not go to his school.)

We have made a lot of both kid and parent friendships in Rec over the last year- BUT we were looking to as we recently moved to a totally new area.