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

The other week, while looking for old takes on LeBron, I stumbled upon this now ancient thread. The player ended up only growing to 5'10", but he was still a four-year player at Cincinnati. So, you can probably tell with some players, even at that age, that they have the skill to make it in some sports.

All that being said, Baby Gronk's dad comes across as a huge fuckin' grifter. It's pretty clear that he's just going on tours of these places and staging photo ops with whatever famous people he can. (Like, the social media post with Dunne seemingly comes from his page; I doubt she thought anything about it besides "sure I'll take a photo with this kid.") Since he's interested in football, Baby Gronk's entire future probably rests on whether he grows past six feet tall, and whether he'll still be interested in football when everyone else is the same size as him.

 

I am a weird parent but my main question is, what does the kid want? Everything our kids have done from the time they were in like first grade they have chosen to do.

My oldest that year, who has never really been into sports overall, was like, I want to play baseball. Completely out of the blue. We were like, really? OK. He played rec baseball and basketball through middle school despite being non sporty. I never once said he had to. He also was a decent hitter and a lefty but I never pushed that stuff.

Second kid all of a sudden decided he was a runner in like fifth grade. So we signed him up for races. He is now a competitive cheerleader. That was never on my radar, and shit it is expensive.

Parents like this, I just don't know. The kid probably says he likes it but the parents have always made him and he doesn't know any better and if he resisted would probably get his butt beat.

 

What's the big deal about this kid? Todd Marinovich was more than 30 years ago. Travel teams in every sport. I don't know how this is news.

 

I found myself strangely ambivalent about this. Certainly 10, 15, 20 years ago, I would have been all eye-rolly and disgusted. And damn, I do despise travel-ball and the breakdown of community-based youth sports.

But is it really outside the realm of possibility that this might be the kid's dream, that he doesn't know any other one?

And if that's the case, who am I to say the dad is lying when he said that?

And furthermore, if the kid IS a straight-A student and a good kid like his dad says, something must be working somewhere.

 

Maybe I'm begin cynical but I can't imagine how hard it is to be a straight-A student at 10.

 

Well, sure. But since they don't issue 4.3 GPAs to 10-year-olds, I guess that straight-A will have to do.

 

Does that kid have tats? Looks like he’s got sleeves started.

 

Saw a great T-shirt at the beach the other weekend. “Cheer dad: The only thing I flip is my wallet.”

 

I am still floored by it. He is going into his second year of it and it costs more than twice as much as travel baseball, and that is just the base. It hardly covers anything you need, like equipment and definitely not travel, which is typically not next door. Our travel baseball team at least includes the uniforms and a few pieces of equipment in the package!

 

"He has been trained and programmed since he was 6 years old."

This is not going to end well.

 

The dad has social media figured out:

TikTok Star accuses Baby Gronk's dad of sexualizing her to get 'more views' during collab - "I was disturbed"

 

Pretty hard to defend it when the kid says, "I'm gonna get body massaged by baddies."

Maybe I'm not as ambivalent anymore.