Youth Sports (i.e. the thing we all loved which parents have now ruined)

Dads living vicariously sign them up but there are organizations very willing to monetize that to the fullest extent. What do they care that a 12 year old is playing so much football as to give them the brain of a boxer at 13 if there are dads who are trying to make up for what they couldn’t have?

 

I guess we were lucky. My son had an outstanding LL coach (10-12), great club soccer coach (10-17) and excellent coaches in high school baseball (14-15) and soccer (14-18). The only bad coach he had was in freshman football (he was a kicker), who hardly ever kicked PATs and told him to just punt the ball out of bounds. So, they never developed a sub-varsity kicker and they were begging for him to come back out in 11th and 12th grades when the previous guy graduated.

Most of the horror stories I heard from other parents were in basketball, a sport he never played beyond elementary school. Even then some of the coaches took it as seriously as an NBA game, full-court pressing, etc.

Sometimes it was a massive PITA, driving up to Portland or Hood River for club soccer games. But as others have said, when it's over you sure miss it.

 

That's insane. Why do you need to play 30 football games or even football (or any sport, really) year round?

Also, at that age, who knows if anyone is going to be good. All you are doing is limiting their exposure to other opportunities.

We have a good friend who's kid is the same age as my athletic son. They were on several of the same teams for a while, but this is a competitive family and he got too good for those teams. This kid is a very good athlete for their age. Probably the best of any of the kids my son has played with. And you know what? He's 10. He could slow down or other kids could catch up. But what I really see is that his parents top out at 5-6 and he likely didn't win the overall gene pool lottery.

It's another situation where I say, have fun, be with your friends and grow. Because all the hardware at 10 or 11 means exactly what? Playing 30 football games, other than filling a family's free time completely, mean's what? What does it get anyone in the end?

 

As best I can tell: The travel coaches get bored of practice and actual work on fundamentals, and just want to line up and see if they can beat the other coach they've been shit talking to.

 

The only thing worse than all the concussion threats at the D-I and professional levels and more concussion threats as youth and while their brains are still developing,

 

Parents generally are delusional about their kids' chances for an athletic scholarship. If they put as much emphasis on their kids' academics there is far more opportunities and money for that

 

And then they get delusional about that too. It’s why suicides in places like Palo Alto went sky high.

 

I guess it was a matter of time.

Our team has a parent with a potential Covid case - still waiting on a test result. Apparently we're not the only team in the org with issues. So the organization has shut down every team for two weeks.

This feels like the end of the season to me. Nothing's going to change in two weeks. And I fear our better players are just going to jump ship to other orgs that aren't currently shut down. And the org is saying "if you want a refund, now is the time; as soon as we play one game, there are no refunds."

I'm good with taking steps to prevent the spread of Covid. ... but I'm going to be a little heart broken when the shoe finally drops and we bag the season. We had a really nice team pulled together ....

 

My kid quit baseball at 14, too small for HS.

One day when he was 18 or so he asked to play catch in backyard and we were throwing the ball around and he’s playfully diving for balls; basically screwing around which if he was 12 I would’ve said “quit screwing around, just catch it smoothly”. I realized that I should’ve let him screw around so much more and not made it so much about playing “the right way”. Man I wish I could do that over again. Kills me just thinking about it.

 

I have a friend who constantly posts all the "work" his kid does playing baseball. All this tee work and crap like that. And you know what? I watch these videos from time to time and think, ugh, he isn't that good. This kid spends hours and hours doing this stuff. Then I've seen him play and really love basketball but he doesn't really get to play it other than shooting around in the driveway. It's all baseball. I am not in their house, so who knows how the kid really feels, but considering he might not be that great at baseball and likes other stuff, why not let him goof around more? He's about high school aged now, too.

My son who is good at baseball still plays all sorts of made up games in the backyard. The only one I sort of cringe at is when he's trying to hit a wiffleball 900 feet because I know that isn't good for his swing, but I do bite my tongue. These kids have to have fun. Again, who cares how they ultimately preform at 10U or 12U or whatever. If they have it, they'll have it. Got to help them learn and have fun and grow or it isn't worth it.

 

My son is 9 and I’m firmly in the camp of exposing him to multiple sports and trying to teach him the enjoy the games he plays. If he doesn’t like them, it doesn’t matter how good he gets at them.

Basically, not much of it matters until they hit puberty and grow into their bodies, anyway. As long as they are enjoying the game and learn to be good teammates and coachable players, the skills will fall into place.

 

I have a special love for travel team baseball tournaments this summer.
The park where I run every morning has tournaments just about every weekend.
I've scored two really nice chairs - separate occasions - that people have forgotten and left. Both were virtually brand new and retail for $70 at Academy Sports. I figure if it's sitting there on a hill overlooking a baseball field at 5 a.m. on Monday morning, it's classified as abandoned.
Now if someone would just forget their Yeti cooler.