Does anyone have a kid who showed a lot of athletic potential ? What happened? Lessons learned?

[Harriet Vane]

My son is/was super-athletic, and I have had students who were much more so even than my son.

My ds thoroughly enjoyed constant sports involvement growing up. No regrets there.

My students who went into college sports are divided into two camps--those who love the sport so much they relish the full-time immersion in college, and those for whom the full-time college immersion killed off the love of the sport. Once in college, the team owns the athlete and all of the athlete's life revolves around the sport, both in season and off season.

One of my students wrote a long, huge research paper about student athlete compensation. Student athletes really do get the short end of the stick. The physical risks are high. Provision for injuries tends to be short term. Life-altering effects of major injuries are drastically un- or under- compensated. The scholarship money does not cover all that is needed. If you work out the pay per hour of a scholarship, the athlete does not make much.

My ds was acquainted with three of my students who went on to play college sports, and he spoke seriously with one whose swim scores put him extremely close to the range of consideration for Olympic training. This student's dream was to be in the Olympics, and the hard, hard path to get there was very eye-opening to all of us. This student loved every minute of his university swim team experience and will likely coach swimming. Ds both admired the swimmer but also realized that the pressure and the intensity and work of being a college athlete would not be appealing to him. Ds chose purposely not to pursue that path, but to immerse in intramural sports instead. Less challenging, but much easier to focus on his major and much more enjoyment found in playing for the fun of it.

Make sure the sport is so very, very loved that handling it like a full-time job (which it totally is in college) will not kill off the love of the sport or deprive the student of other longed-for opportunities.

Recognize that scholarship money mostly does not compensate well for either the risk or the time investment for the student athlete. Make your choices for sports involvement based on love of the game, not on hopes for compensation.

[sassenach]

44 minutes ago, Baseballandhockey said:

So, I am playing devil's advocate here, to some extent.  I'm the parent who thinks we need to stay slow on this.  I just want to hear your push back on the other side so I can organize my thinking for continued conversations with DH.

Having said that, I do want to be clear that my kid wants to play.  He's getting up, on his own, to practice before school.  If I offer to sign him up for anything he's eager.  He'd love to play travel.  But family dynamics make expressing that very complicated.

A few thoughts-

First, there is (mostly) no right or wrong answer here. I will admit that I always did feel a little bad for the kids that had interest and talent but were completely kept from playing at all (and I don't mean not doing travel- I mean not even getting to do rec league because the parents didn't want the time commitment). That doesn't sound like your situation, so I'll go back to no right or wrong answer. I've seen kids thrive with both little and much involvement in their sport, especially early on.

Second, you can only do what your family can do. There are capacity limitations in every family and it's ok to acknowledge those. For example, both my younger kids loved to swim but at some point we couldn't manage baseball plus swim team, even for my non-baseball player. So we upped the ante on her other activity (dance) and dropped swim all together. We LOVED swim- all of us. We just couldn't make it work. That's life.

Lastly, and this was the secret sauce for our family, it's ok for a kid to not have a parent at every game/tournament/event. If our son had been limited by dh's and my schedule, he would have lost out on a lot of baseball. Once we let go the ideal of a parent always having to be with him, it opened up a lot of opportunities for him and freedom from guilt for us. He played at that level primarily because he loved it. He loved it even when we weren't there. As I said above, we didn't really start travel ball until later (relatively speaking). He probably hit his peak travel schedule at 14-16.

So just something to think about. There is not one right way to approach raising an athlete.

[Nart]

If you feel comfortable, you should just name the sports because you would get more specific feedback. So many youth sports are now pay to play. It costs a lot of money to play travel, pay for private coaching or extra coaching, go to tournaments and camps in order to get recruited to play in college. 

I posted before about boys and puberty, but I think it bears repeating. For an 11-year-old so much in the next two to three years is going to be based on size and puberty. Boys who go through puberty early and have all that testosterone earlier than their peers are just going to have an easier time making travel/club teams, school teams, etc.  Did your older son mature early? Is the younger one tall for his age? 

[Meriwether]

Your husband's opinion doesn't matter more than your opinion, but it matters more than all of our opinions.

 

We are a one sport family. The kids would like to play other sports, but I cannot handle a split schedule. We do TKD. We started going to tournaments because Dd18 really enjoyed them at 11. We did mostly local tournaments for the first five years - local meaning from Fargo, ND to Little Rock, Arkansas with some Chicago thrown in occasionally. We didn't ramp up until a couple of years ago. I really wished we had sooner. Dd18 missed some opportunities that the others are getting now.

 

We do TKD. My husband is a World Champion for his age and rank. Dd18 has won (multi-state) District Championships in one or more events 6 or 7 years. She has been in the Top Ten list for her age and rank half a dozen times. Dd11 is in the Top Ten and a District Champion currently.

And Dd15. He gets his own paragraph because this is the point I want to make. He has also had a lot of success in TKD. We are currently 12 hours from home because they are going to determine starting positions for the National Team tomorrow morning. It was pretty awesome he made the team as a 15 year old. We thought he had a slim chance at a starting position given his performance at try-outs. Yeah. His hip has been giving him trouble this past week. He is unlikely to get a starter position while injured. Highly unlikely. And that is okay. We can be grateful for the excellent training he is getting here. He doesn't owe us anything just because we decided to spend money on 3 tanks of gas, three hotel nights, tournament fees for this tournament, and 5 days worth of food. That is a lot of money for us, but we were paying for the experience and not the outcome.

 

If your child would enjoy it, you can afford it, and you can take disappointments in stride should they happen, high level sports can be fun and inspiring.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Meriwether

[Frances]

1 hour ago, sassenach said:

Lastly, and this was the secret sauce for our family, it's ok for a kid to not have a parent at every game/tournament/event. If our son had been limited by dh's and my schedule, he would have lost out on a lot of baseball. Once we let go the ideal of a parent always having to be with him, it opened up a lot of opportunities for him and freedom from guilt for us. He played at that level primarily because he loved it. He loved it even when we weren't there. As I said above, we didn't really start travel ball until later (relatively speaking). He probably hit his peak travel schedule at 14-16.

So just something to think about. There is not one right way to approach raising an athlete.

This was also important for our family. Even with only one kid, we still both had jobs, my husband went back for another grad degree at one point, plus we had homeschooling. My son starting getting himself to practice at a relatively young age and when he was a teen, we had no issues with him traveling to some tournaments and special events with adults we knew well. Of course we still went to plenty and drove him to far away special practices. Some families like it to be all consuming, my brother’s family did this for his daughter’s soccer and one of my husband’s cousin’s family did it for his basketball, even going so far as to fly in for every home and away D3 college game. And that’s fine. Each family is different. 

[Corraleno]

1 hour ago, Harriet Vane said:

Recognize that scholarship money mostly does not compensate well for either the risk or the time investment for the student athlete. Make your choices for sports involvement based on love of the game, not on hopes for compensation.

With the exception of football and men's basketball, where the athletes really are making a lot of money for the university, most other sports lose money (and are subsidized by football and basketball), so DS has never thought of his athletic scholarship as compensation for doing a job. He sees it as a generous tuition discount, on top of having all his expenses paid for doing what he loves and would be doing whether he was in college or not. In addition to the tuition, he gets at least $1000 worth of Nike swag (warm ups, sneakers, shirts, hoodies, pants, shorts, coats, hats, backpacks, etc.) every year, plus all of his very expensive equipment is paid for, and they not only cover the costs of all NCAA travel and competition, they even reimburse his airfare, hotel, and registration fees for national competitions that are unrelated to the university. He gets all kinds of other athlete perks, too, like free meals, protein bars, and sports drinks, access to amazing workout facilities, top trainers and medical staff, and even weekly meetings with a top sports psychologist. For him, it's an amazing deal to be able to do something he loves and have someone else pay for all of it.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Corraleno

[Harriet Vane]

5 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

With the exception of football and men's basketball, where the athletes really are making a lot of money for the university, most other sports lose money (and are subsidized by football and basketball), so DS has never thought of his athletic scholarship as compensation for doing a job. He sees it as a generous tuition discount, on top of having all his expenses paid for doing what he loves and would be doing whether he was in college or not. In addition to the tuition, he gets at least $1000 worth of Nike swag (warm ups, sneakers, shirts, hoodies, pants, shorts, coats, hats, backpacks, etc.) every year, plus all of his very expensive equipment is paid for, and they not only cover the costs of all NCAA travel and competition, they even reimburse his airfare, hotel, and registration fees for national competitions that are unrelated to the university. He gets all kinds of other athlete perks, too, like free meals, protein bars, and sports drinks, access to amazing workout facilities, top trainers and medical staff, and even weekly meetings with a top sports psychologist. For him, it's an amazing deal to be able to do something he loves and have someone else pay for all of it.

What stands out to me in your experience is how much your ds loves his chosen sport and the immersion into it. That really is the key.

The swimmer I mentioned in my post would say much the same as your ds. The student of mine who wrote the research paper I mentioned did go on to play college tennis, and absolutely thrived. He wanted to play that much and he wanted the training, even though he knew the risks and how much it would take over his whole life.

I do, however, also have former students who very much regretted college sports. There was one who was glad to stop playing while in college and was relieved to walk away after learning how intense it was, and I know a couple other former students who chose to not do college sports despite being qualified to do so.

It's very, very individual. It's best to evaluate the choice understanding with eyes wide open that it's a lifestyle, that it's all-encompassing, that there are risks. 

[TravelingChris]

3 hours ago, Baseballandhockey said:

So, just to make it confusing, this isn't the "Baseball" in my name, that's my 14 year old, and the baseball situation there is complicated.

This is "Hockey", except we decided we don't have a hockey budget, and so while he's doing a lot of sports, none of them are hockey.  

Okay-  I know about hockey because a co-worker of my husband\s has a son who plays hockey.  It is one of the more expensive sports to play.  Now I believe it would be a bit less expensive in your case, since you are in a colder environment than here.  But he is pushing or enabling his son to play hockey and that used to mean spending lots of his income on travel, ice rink time, equipment, special coaching, camps, etc.  This year, I think the boy is in high school and so was sent to a special school with hockey emphasis in the Northeast.  I know that the father has sacrificed his lifestyle for that boy's hockey.  What I don't know is if he has sacrificed his relationship with his two daughters because of his obsession with providing everything for his son's hockey-- he is divorced and they all lived with their mother, though Dad did the travel hockey thing with his son.  

With us, we had kids in sports=-mostly soccer, but the girls in dive and one in swim.  My son was asked to be on a travel team when he was 12, I think (not positive about age).  We said no-because soccer wasn't his only interest and because I couldn't do that to his younger sisters.  They were playing soccer too and we couldn't handle 2 kids in local soccer and 1 in travel.  As it was, we knew that soccer would not be my son's vocation or ticket to college. We were also a military family and moved frequently enough.  

[Ting Tang]

I don't have too much to add.

My nephew is about to turn 18, and despite all of his potential, there is always someone...better.  At this point, he is trying to find a college that will just let him play on their team.  It means giving up the type of program he originally wanted to do in physics.  He is so very smart, but there is little chance he'd ever play beyond a small private college.  Now Dad seems to be trying for the next in line to do the same.  They play baseball all year round.  I'd heard of spring.  I'd even heard of fall ball. Now it's all year, on actual teams and not just off-season training.

My daughter showed promise in another sport as a soloist, but she is very young. It is not local, which made things difficult.  Then Covid hit.  She still takes private lessons here and there an hour away (which is closer than the 2-2.5 hour one way trip I used to make), but rarely does she practice.  It does break my heart.  I signed her up for a dance class, and she enjoys it. Sometimes she says she likes the other thing better, but I figured she'd practice if that were true.   I stopped pushing her to practice and got a little bit burned out myself.  I knew she had potential, but I am sure others are now catching up and surpassing her.  Also, having four kids in our family, it gets really complicated---add on my husband's career when he is just unavailable certain times of the year.  If Covid gets better, maybe her just taking lessons here and there, will help her get back at it someday.  I don't know.  I'm sadder than she is, and I never wanted her to resent me for not giving her the opportunities. Oh I want to add in my family's case...  Homeschooling has made everything harder. I have less time during the day to do my work/chores, and then I just get too tired.  😞  We have yet to reach the "flexibility" phase, and I am not sure I can do this long-term.

I do believe for a child to be successful in most activities/sports, there is going to have to be a very involved parent.  It isn't just the child making a commitment.  A parent is making the commitment, and you do have to push and train hard to be competitive in ANYTHING these days. It is just how it is.  (I don't always like that.  It makes me feel crazy, but I have that kind of personality, too, to get stressed.) If your child has the goal, and your family has the means, then I would probably be willing to go that route.  Is your husband able to take on a lot of that responsibility?  Are there other kids in the family who you can help with their interests?  If it is feasible, it might be worth pursuing.  The worst thing that can possibly happen is your family backs off after trying.  

 

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by KrisTom

[katilac]

5 hours ago, Baseballandhockey said:

But did you also do your primary sport at a high level?  We aren't disagreeing about keeping or dropping the other stuff.  We're just disagreeing about whether to add things like a travel team and more private coaching in one sport.  

As far as college money, it's not so much a partial scholarship as it is an avenue to a need blind/full need school, that is tempting.  

Travel sports are a big commitment in both time and money, so I think people should spend a lot of time evaluating those factors. The hotel and food costs alone can be significant. In my opinion, 'having the money' means having the money above and beyond saving for college, not having the money instead of saving for college. The time commitment is no joke, either. And you're either bringing everyone (amping up the time and money commitment) or one part of the family is traveling and the other part is staying home - which absolutely works for some families, but is something to be aware of. 

Also, with two kids, it's not a question of can we afford it for this kid, but can we afford it for both kids. The second child may not have identical opportunities, but you can't assume they won't have similar opportunities just bc they aren't likely to have sports opportunities. 

If my spouse had wanted to make this kind of commitment, I would have been asking: Do we know what the overall cost is going to be? Let's figure out a minimum on paper. Okay, do we have that money, times two for the sibling? Let's look at the time commitment on paper. Is that something we can make happen now? Next year? Future? 

4 hours ago, GoodGrief3 said:

My advice is to keep college considerations out of the equation altogether.

I agree, and I would say the same for academics at such a young age. Work where the student is, work where the athlete is, make the decisions that are best for the child and the family now, not 6 or 7 years in some hypothetical future.

1 hour ago, Meriwether said:

We did mostly local tournaments for the first five years - local meaning from Fargo, ND to Little Rock, Arkansas with some Chicago thrown in occasionally. 

You and me, we do not have the same definition of local! 

[katilac]

Can you kick the can down the road a bit? I'm not a sports mom, but ime what people are saying about puberty and such is very true. 

I would also be concerned about repetitive motion type injuries, and would research that a great deal. Specializing at a young age is high risk/high reward, and I don't think a kid of 11 or 12 can really understand those risks. 

[Lecka]

My niece also had less interest in college track after talking with an older classmate.  The classmate loved track but said she spent ALL her time on track and school.

My niece has branched out into other interests she didn’t have time for in high school.  She has tried new things.  
 

But she also loved track in high school.  
 

The thing about cross country is she can still run whether she is on a team or not.  
 

And then she likes her frisbee stuff!  I don’t know much about it except it meets on Saturday mornings early, and sometimes she plays in tournaments.  It is just for fun 🙂  
 

 

 

[Drama Llama]

4 hours ago, teachermom2834 said:

Well I have nothing scientific to offer but I had three boys who loved sports and played a variety of sports with a range of skill levels and in several types of settings and what I have come to believe is if you’ve got “it”, you’ve got “it”.  You can’t buy it and you can’t neglect it enough when they are young to ruin their chances. 
 

That's kind of what my instinct tells me.  That if he's got "it" then he'll still have it if he starts specializing in 8th grade instead of 6th.

 

[Lecka]

I think so, too.

The thing about travel sports is that it is ideal for some people.  They really, really like it.

They make friends with the other team parents and really enjoy the camaraderie of it.

But I don’t think it is necessary at this age.  
 

But I also don’t think there is anything wrong with it when it is something people choose to do.  

[Drama Llama]

3 hours ago, Nart said:

If you feel comfortable, you should just name the sports because you would get more specific feedback. So many youth sports are now pay to play. It costs a lot of money to play travel, pay for private coaching or extra coaching, go to tournaments and camps in order to get recruited to play in college. 

I posted before about boys and puberty, but I think it bears repeating. For an 11-year-old so much in the next two to three years is going to be based on size and puberty. Boys who go through puberty early and have all that testosterone earlier than their peers are just going to have an easier time making travel/club teams, school teams, etc.  Did your older son mature early? Is the younger one tall for his age? 

Sure, he plays soccer and lacrosse and basketball.  Well, he plays more than that, but those are the three he likes the best.  Right now, the decisions to be made are about soccer.  

This kid is DH's mini me, at least physically. DH is 6'4".  We actually live in DH's parents' house, and there are marks on the wall for DH, his siblings and all the grandchildren's height at every birthday, and DS is consistently like 1/2 or 3/4" taller.  He's tall for his age now, and I will be surprised if he doesn't end up quite tall.  

[Drama Llama]

2 hours ago, TravelingChris said:

Okay-  I know about hockey because a co-worker of my husband\s has a son who plays hockey.  It is one of the more expensive sports to play.  Now I believe it would be a bit less expensive in your case, since you are in a colder environment than here.  But he is pushing or enabling his son to play hockey and that used to mean spending lots of his income on travel, ice rink time, equipment, special coaching, camps, etc.  This year, I think the boy is in high school and so was sent to a special school with hockey emphasis in the Northeast.  I know that the father has sacrificed his lifestyle for that boy's hockey.  What I don't know is if he has sacrificed his relationship with his two daughters because of his obsession with providing everything for his son's hockey-- he is divorced and they all lived with their mother, though Dad did the travel hockey thing with his son.  

With us, we had kids in sports=-mostly soccer, but the girls in dive and one in swim.  My son was asked to be on a travel team when he was 12, I think (not positive about age).  We said no-because soccer wasn't his only interest and because I couldn't do that to his younger sisters.  They were playing soccer too and we couldn't handle 2 kids in local soccer and 1 in travel.  As it was, we knew that soccer would not be my son's vocation or ticket to college. We were also a military family and moved frequently enough.  

I didn't do a good job explaining it.  He's not playing hockey.  I was just trying to clarify why my name is "Baseball&Hockey" when my kids don't play either Baseball or Hockey. 

[Drama Llama]

2 hours ago, KrisTom said:

Is your husband able to take on a lot of that responsibility? 

LOL.   No. 

That's the hard part.  If DH was well, and in a position to step up and travel with him, etc . . ., I'd defer to him 100% on this.  I've never played a sport in my life.  

But it will be on me, and that might be OK.  At the same thing, for this to be another thing my kid loses because of the pandemic, and his brother, and his Dad's illness, seems so unfair.  

And of course, there's also a pandemic, and we live with a 91 year old.  

[Drama Llama]

2 hours ago, katilac said:

Can you kick the can down the road a bit? I'm not a sports mom, but ime what people are saying about puberty and such is very true. 

I would also be concerned about repetitive motion type injuries, and would research that a great deal. Specializing at a young age is high risk/high reward, and I don't think a kid of 11 or 12 can really understand those risks. 

That's what I'm hoping.  That even waiting until the fall might put us in a better position.  

[Ting Tang]

7 minutes ago, Baseballandhockey said:

LOL.   No. 

That's the hard part.  If DH was well, and in a position to step up and travel with him, etc . . ., I'd defer to him 100% on this.  I've never played a sport in my life.  

But it will be on me, and that might be OK.  At the same thing, for this to be another thing my kid loses because of the pandemic, and his brother, and his Dad's illness, seems so unfair.  

And of course, there's also a pandemic, and we live with a 91 year old.  

I know how you feel. We’ve had so much happen in our lives on top of the pandemic. Sometimes it just all feels so unfair. Maybe even though your husband can’t take this on, he’ll at least be supportive. And maybe things might be different in the next several months. I sure hope so! 

Edited January 17, 2022 by KrisTom

[Harriet Vane]

39 minutes ago, Baseballandhockey said:

LOL.   No. 

That's the hard part.  If DH was well, and in a position to step up and travel with him, etc . . ., I'd defer to him 100% on this.  I've never played a sport in my life.  

But it will be on me, and that might be OK.  At the same thing, for this to be another thing my kid loses because of the pandemic, and his brother, and his Dad's illness, seems so unfair.  

And of course, there's also a pandemic, and we live with a 91 year old.  

But he's not really losing it. Not playing on a serious travel team right this minute does not mean he's not playing. I assume there are still solid other options for playing where you are. And he's only eleven. So it would seem to make sense to keep playing in a simple, do-able way that is local for now. Ramp it up in a few years if the desire is there. 

There really is plenty of time.

[Frances]

2 hours ago, Lecka said:

My niece also had less interest in college track after talking with an older classmate.  The classmate loved track but said she spent ALL her time on track and school.

My niece has branched out into other interests she didn’t have time for in high school.  She has tried new things.  
 

But she also loved track in high school.  
 

The thing about cross country is she can still run whether she is on a team or not.  
 

And then she likes her frisbee stuff!  I don’t know much about it except it meets on Saturday mornings early, and sometimes she plays in tournaments.  It is just for fun 🙂  
 

 

 

My niece who could have played D1 hockey instead chose an elite LAC for the academics and took up club ultimate frisbee in college. I think she continued to play through grad school and also did some club hockey.

[skimomma]

My dd competed at the highest level of her sport in early high school and was told by coaches and observers that she showed a lot of promise.  She loves her sport and was very much in the driver's seat since dh and I are not athletic at all.  A combination of things converged in mid-high school that took her out of the highest levels.  Her final growth spurt was a challenge and it is very common for girls in this sport.  Some bounce back and others don't.  Dd didn't.  It happened to coincide with a coaching change (out of our control) and her own choice to temporarily sacrifice some training time to pursue another interest.  She knew the latter was a risk and still chose that with our full support.  Although, if I am being honest, I don't think she would have bounced back even under the best of circumstances.  There is only so much one can do about genetics.  And as someone posted earlier, when your birthday falls within the age categories can make all the difference.  Dd's happen to be at about the worst time of year for her sport.  I am so very glad that what could have become her "identity" did not.  In early high school, we were told that she would likely be able to pursue D1 or D2 level in college.  That was not to be.  She was still 4th in the state her senior year and very much could have gone D3 but chose a school based on other considerations.  The school she goes to does have a very active club team (in addition to their high level NCAA team) so she is continuing to train and compete but without the time commitment or pressure.  She also has the time to give lessons, which she really enjoys.  I think it is the best of both worlds.

We did have to say no to some things related to her sport due to time and/or money.  She did not have the very best gear (or to be honest, even adequate gear) and she had to forgo some of the very best training and competition opportunities.  I don't know that it would have made a difference but I have zero regrets either way.  

Dd's best teammate friend did overcome her mid-high school growth spurt and is now one of the top athletes in the country.  She is truly amazing and is also in love with the sport.  Her family as able to afford the time and cash for her to pursue every opportunity.  And she did end up with a full-ride scholarship.  I bring her up because she did not specialize until high school.  She was still playing multiple sports until then and I feel it probably was to her benefit.  She was and still is grounded and has many interests outside of her sport.  She was, and still is, a great role model for dd.  They still occasionally will train together for fun.  I feel like the two girls that were told all the same things by the same people had very different but right-for-them outcomes....meaning you really never know.