Horny teens and the LSU gymnast

I had a niece who was a very age group swimmer. She was told that if she wanted to continue swimming she needed to home school in order to have enough time to swim all the practice laps necessary to potentially develop into a collegiate swimmer.

 

We had a guy like that around girls' basketball. It was a very creepy look.

 

My twin nieces turned 17 in November and are midway through their junior years. They are two of about a dozen kids total in their large metropolitan college town high school who play two varsity sports (volleyball and softball). Actually that number is about 20, but that includes about 10 of the varsity football players whose coaches "strongly urge" them to run track. (No spring football in Michigan).

The twins played all three sports in junior high, but quit basketball in 7th grade when the demands for year round camps and travel teams started to mushroom.

Their younger sister is currently in 7th, is playing basketball and softball (along with the tremendously time consuming Irish dance) and she's having problems keeping up with the demands of travel teams.

 

A lot of that depends on where you are.

My old school, south-central Pennsylvania, is not really small -- 5A in a six-class format. But just about every athlete of importance is a multi-sporter. Of the main eight-man rotation in basketball, five of them played football.

The one guy who just finished his redshirt year at Minnesota (defensive end) was a three-sporter last year -- All-State football, All-State basketball and second place in states in the discus. I guess he was probably an anomaly, because there was never a hint of him leaving for prep school, and there was never a hint of him concentrating on a single sport.

 

I've always thought that for the majority of this stuff, well, the cream is going to rise to the top. The number of kids with the athletic ability to play D-I is small, and it's even smaller past that for the pros. Training in one sport probably helps some, whereas multi-sport helps others, but ultimately, most kids probably either have the potential or they don't. But if you're a parent, you're going to push for that 5 or 10 percent edge if you can - it's your kid, after all.

 

I met a few guys like that. One seemed to be obsessed with a local girl who was a star basketball player. I think he may have just been very awkward against girls or women of any age, especially based on some stories I was told by a woman who dated him years later.

Some of the photographers I was around at the time could be a little creepy, but I think most of it was them trying to be funny. I didn't love it then, and I certainly don't see it that way now.

 

Lore was there were guys at the suburban Boston papers who... fixated on a few female gymnasts. Some people enjoy talking shit for the hell of it, so I'm not sure how real it was. There was also the guy who was a very good writer and apparently was a hit with the divorced moms (good for him).

 

I think my senior year in high school (the same school the twins are in now), of the 12 guys on the varsity basketball team, six played football, and four of those guys did triple duty in baseball. Four or five also ran track and two golfed.

I think only two guys on the team played only basketball, and they were big gumpy white boy forwards.

 

Sounds like high school baseball, in some areas, is going the same way as softball and girls volleyball: What you do in club ball is more important than what you do for your school.

 

Maybe the thought would be that most of the people at a home game would not need hotel rooms, whereas if it is a neutral site the chance exists for a lot of people traveling?

I am sure the volleyball tournament made a calculated risk that the Colts wouldn't be playing. I wonder if it is always that weekend?

 

does the tournament go through Sunday? Maybe they could have played regardless