Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 22:29     Subject: Re:Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
I played football and ran track from middle school on. Skateboarding and BMX Freestyle created a disproportionate number of injuries!!! I played football with kids who started playing tackle as early as 3rd grade. They were the better players in middle school/early HS but by junior/senior year their bodies were burned out. Our star middle linebacker was on multiple knee surgeries by senior year.


DS has specialized in soccer from u6 on. He ran track in 8th grade but that was it... We couldn't get him interested in other sports to any degree (other than futsal of course). I'll stop here- but he's on a good trajectory for some sort of soccer after high school.

I agree with the "let them do what they want" theory... PP brings up great questions regarding the metrics in the study. Does an early specialist bring on more injuries because they push harder, earlier?
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 19:04     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Anonymous wrote:Alex Morgan specialized late and became a soccer star. However, it would be wrong to conclude from this fact alone that if you want your daughter to become a soccer star, her best chance is to specialize late.

It is unclear whether Alex Morgan became a soccer star because she specialized late, or in spite of it. In other words, was her chance of becoming a star higher if she specialized early or late?

I'd be curious to see if there is a study that looks at early vs late specialization in soccer alone, for both risk of injuries, but also for chance of playing in college or going pro. My uninformed guess is that most male professional soccer players specialized early. Again, my uninformed guess is that current women professional soccer players are more likely to have specialized late than men. But maybe girls are now increasingly behaving more like boys and are specializing earlier.


I played soccer from age 5-22 as a female. With the exception of winter indoor track in HS it’s the only sport I played growing up in the 70s/80s in NoVA. Largely because my dad was a travel soccer coach and my older siblings played.

However, on my NoVa Club team (sane girls from 10-18) we had scholarships (and an Olympic gold medal) in many different sports. Our goal keeper got a full ride to NC State basketball, a midfielder hit a tennis scholarship to Stanford, several soccer scholarships too. Gold medal was in handball.

Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 18:55     Subject: Re:Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
DS is U14 and just started playing year round at the beginning of U13 season. He does regular club 4 times a week, private training three times a week, and normally two games a weekend. Summer he will do the same private training, but we will be introducing him to athletic performance training. He will do Super Y as well. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of driving too. He will for sure play play collegiate level soccer — probably at a mid tier D1 school — but I’m not sure about anything else. I don’t want to kill his dream either, so I look at it like spending time with him. We get snacks and just listen to tunes in the car. Just try to have quality time with your child if you commit to the NOVA soccer madness
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 16:04     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Alex Morgan specialized late and became a soccer star. However, it would be wrong to conclude from this fact alone that if you want your daughter to become a soccer star, her best chance is to specialize late.

It is unclear whether Alex Morgan became a soccer star because she specialized late, or in spite of it. In other words, was her chance of becoming a star higher if she specialized early or late?

I'd be curious to see if there is a study that looks at early vs late specialization in soccer alone, for both risk of injuries, but also for chance of playing in college or going pro. My uninformed guess is that most male professional soccer players specialized early. Again, my uninformed guess is that current women professional soccer players are more likely to have specialized late than men. But maybe girls are now increasingly behaving more like boys and are specializing earlier.
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 15:38     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The best athletes do multiple sports - there are a ton of studies on this. Most pro athletes did not start their sport at 6 years old and only do that one sport. This is well known.


Was Messi a great basketball player as a kid?


At full adult height of 5’6” and taking hormones as a kid to reach that height..doubtful.

Alex Morgan was and didn’t move to Club soccer (from rec) until the age of 14.


Paolo Wanchope was
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 15:30     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The best athletes do multiple sports - there are a ton of studies on this. Most pro athletes did not start their sport at 6 years old and only do that one sport. This is well known.


Was Messi a great basketball player as a kid?


At full adult height of 5’6” and taking hormones as a kid to reach that height..doubtful.

Alex Morgan was and didn’t move to Club soccer (from rec) until the age of 14.


That is why she plays center forward.
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 14:36     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The best athletes do multiple sports - there are a ton of studies on this. Most pro athletes did not start their sport at 6 years old and only do that one sport. This is well known.


Was Messi a great basketball player as a kid?


At full adult height of 5’6” and taking hormones as a kid to reach that height..doubtful.

Alex Morgan was and didn’t move to Club soccer (from rec) until the age of 14.
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 14:28     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Anonymous wrote:The best athletes do multiple sports - there are a ton of studies on this. Most pro athletes did not start their sport at 6 years old and only do that one sport. This is well known.


Was Messi a great basketball player as a kid?
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 14:25     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Anonymous wrote:When there are conflicts among the activities which wins out?


This has been our struggle with lacrosse and soccer for our son. He loves soccer, but enjoys playing lacrosse too. He is U12 and doing both for good teams. Both are wanting more of his time and getting more and more annoyed when missing events. We have generally gone by the soccer takes priority in the fall and lacrosse in the spring. That isn't go to work much longer though so I think he wants to focus on soccer and play on a lower level lacrosse team for fun.
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 14:25     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
I have no idea what the objectively right answer is, but my kid is U13 at this point, so I have little ability to force him to do a different sport that he does not want to do, and had little inclination to do so when he was young enough that I had more power to make him. He wants to play soccer. If he wanted to play another sport in the summer, I'd sign him up for that. It's that simple.
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 14:23     Subject: Re:Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Super Y is usually coached by the same people at the club. Practices are the same(they do the same stuff they do during the season) and against the same players. The same peking order is enforced by what team your kid is on- ie top team players will take to corners and penalty kicks. There is no room for trying different positions, little risk taking or experimenting and no relief from the pressure of the club’s coach evaluating everything you do. This is a good time to get exposed to different coaches, players, style of play, play with older kids, younger kids, different skill levels, do things the coach would yell at you for, etc


This is exactly why we are doing super Y - to get exposed to different coaches, a different club, different teammates, and a different style of play. I guess based on these boards that some clubs don't let you do super Y elsewhere, but it is no problem at ours, and so we are doing super Y with a different club than my child plays for during the year.
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 14:18     Subject: Re:Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I always liked this article:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/opinion/sports-should-be-childs-play.amp.html

Fwiw I ran track in college but didn’t start it until HS. I beat out a lot of others who ran younger and burned out by HS. I ran around in other sports until then. (Soccer / LAX)


It is a very interesting and provocative article. I wish it included some important additional information to better quantify the risks and benefits of early specialization. In terms of risk of injury, do you have the same risk if you specialize early at swimming, gymnastics, soccer, baseball, or football? is it the same for boys vs girls? It's hard to tell. One of the references includes the following conclusion:

"Injured follow up subjects were more likely to be female (p<0.02), report age of specialization <12 (p=0.03) and participate in year round training>8 mths/yr (p<0.03), and a higher proportion were more highly specialized."

I cannot access the whole article because it is behind a paywall. But the conclusions don't differentiate by sport. The authors also don't seem to control for the confounding possibility that children who specialize early might also be more likely to play hard (at whatever they play) than children who don't specialize early, and might therefore be more likely to get injured per hour of play. In other words, maybe children who specialize early are different than those who do not.

Also, say that you are not as much interested in minimizing the risk of injury, but instead you want to maximize the risk of your child getting a scholarship or becoming a professional athlete. This is probably not a prudent approach for most people.. but let's say you have a very talented and motivated child. Should they specialize early? does it depend on their gender? their sport? it's also hard to tell. In your case, you were able to specialize to track in college. However you probably couldn't have specialized late into being a baseball pitcher, or a soccer player.

As it is probably clear from this post, I had a very open lunch time break that allowed me to wonder about these issues that are probably not interesting to anyone else... I hope all your kids remain injury free and enjoy your summer.


Here is a good video series on the subject. I would suggest working through all of the video series, but this goes into early specialization. He does not go into the injury aspect, but it is mentioned. The RAE video is also very good.

Now, my questions fall under what is sport/activity? Does it have to be an organized competitive team based activity/sport, or for instance, do martial arts count? What about skateboarding, gymnastic, video games? Is it strictly the amount of organized team sport/activity time, or if the activity time in other areas is equal to participation in other competitive environments. What if the activity is to compete with themselves? I think the biggest piece to take from the video is to bring down the emphasis on performance at the younger ages and allow them play. Reduce the amount of organized training and pressure at the younger ages as much as possible and allow them to self-select. That may yield a greater likelihood of success in a particular sport.

Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 13:45     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
I wonder how many Central and South Americans kids get overuse injuries from playing year round soccer in the streets.

There are countless stories/articles of current professional male & female players that play soccer (and/or futsal) each and every day for hours upon hours. Some of them even skip schools just to play soccer.
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 12:42     Subject: Re:Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
Anonymous wrote:I always liked this article:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/opinion/sports-should-be-childs-play.amp.html

Fwiw I ran track in college but didn’t start it until HS. I beat out a lot of others who ran younger and burned out by HS. I ran around in other sports until then. (Soccer / LAX)


It is a very interesting and provocative article. I wish it included some important additional information to better quantify the risks and benefits of early specialization. In terms of risk of injury, do you have the same risk if you specialize early at swimming, gymnastics, soccer, baseball, or football? is it the same for boys vs girls? It's hard to tell. One of the references includes the following conclusion:

"Injured follow up subjects were more likely to be female (p<0.02), report age of specialization <12 (p=0.03) and participate in year round training>8 mths/yr (p<0.03), and a higher proportion were more highly specialized."

I cannot access the whole article because it is behind a paywall. But the conclusions don't differentiate by sport. The authors also don't seem to control for the confounding possibility that children who specialize early might also be more likely to play hard (at whatever they play) than children who don't specialize early, and might therefore be more likely to get injured per hour of play. In other words, maybe children who specialize early are different than those who do not.

Also, say that you are not as much interested in minimizing the risk of injury, but instead you want to maximize the risk of your child getting a scholarship or becoming a professional athlete. This is probably not a prudent approach for most people.. but let's say you have a very talented and motivated child. Should they specialize early? does it depend on their gender? their sport? it's also hard to tell. In your case, you were able to specialize to track in college. However you probably couldn't have specialized late into being a baseball pitcher, or a soccer player.

As it is probably clear from this post, I had a very open lunch time break that allowed me to wonder about these issues that are probably not interesting to anyone else... I hope all your kids remain injury free and enjoy your summer.
Anonymous
Post 04/30/2021 12:21     Subject: Year round training / playing v rotation of sport - break
When there are conflicts among the activities which wins out?