Single sport athletes

Our son (now nearly 30) grew up playing baseball, football, basketball and tennis. He also did chess club, Cub Scouts/Boy Scouts, piano and other non-athletic activities. Very bright kid, as he got to 8th grade we discussed moving to a district with a better academic high school. His response was negative. We asked for his reasons and he laid it out well.
The high school in town had a lot of College in the Schools courses and AP courses – he came out of high school with a year of college credits, was a National Merit Scholar Honorable Mention and was top 5 in his class.
He wanted to continue to play multiple sports in high school. If we enrolled him in another district to up the academic reputation (Edina, Minnetonka and the like) he knew he wouldn’t play varsity football or tennis. We agreed to stay where we were and he crushed high school. His football team wasn’t great but he made wonderful friends and had a ball. He and his doubles partner were Academic All-State tennis players. His senior year they went to districts and got crushed by the Edina doubles team 6-1, 6-1. When they came off the court he said “That’s what happens when Academic All-State plays All-State.”

I’m so proud of him that it hurts, because he wasn’t great at anything other than being a great person.

Funny timing I just saw a senior basketball player at my local high school is about to break the school’s all time career scoring record. He is committed to the U of M to play football and his best sport may be track. You all probably heard of the guy he just passed on the leaderboard… Adam Thielen. From what I’m told Adam’s best sport in high school was golf.

tswoboda wrote:

Funny timing I just saw a senior basketball player at my local high school is about to break the school’s all time career scoring record. He is committed to the U of M to play football and his best sport may be track. You all probably heard of the guy he just passed on the leaderboard… Adam Thielen. From what I’m told Adam’s best sport in high school was golf.

There is always an exception especially a raw athlete, but not necessarily the norm.
I am guessing this is genetic part that was talked about before.

Ripjiggen wrote:

Except every player on the U has specialized. So that’s kind of funny.

specializing or focussing on 1 sport are 2 different things. Those kids obviously chose hockey over other sports but undoubtedly played other sports at least growing up maybe not HS.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Ripjiggen wrote:</div>
Except every player on the U has specialized. So that’s kind of funny.

specializing or focussing on 1 sport are 2 different things. Those kids obviously chose hockey over other sports but undoubtedly played other sports at least growing up maybe not HS.

How is it different?
I am willing to bet over half have been focusing on hockey since early grade school. Sure they might of played t ball what kids in sports haven’t.
Trust me I am not for this approach it’s just the way it is.
Yes it does not mean for all or it’s the only way.

Matt Niskanen ended up going to Duluth for hockey rather than all the other D1 schools that were recruiting because Sandelin was the only coach who encouraged him to keep playing high school football rather than play junior hockey before high school hockey season started. Sandelin said keep playing football with your buddies because you’ll never be able to do that again and if you want to come to UMD we’d love to have you.

Like many others on this thread, I’m not a fan of a single sport, year round athletes. You gotta let kids be kids and Bearcat has that figured out. Now, if we could get more coaches to not pressure a kid into specializing.

Ripjiggen wrote:

Their 152 is also ranked 1st but he is a 18yr old 10th grader. My son wrestled Gage’s younger

What the ….?

I had the same thoughts.
I think he needs a tutor more than more practice. JMO

Honestly it’s not so much the coaches although, their are their fair share that too. It’s the keeping up with Jones mentality. Well Johnny and his parents have him signed up playing this so we better get on board. Or tried out for this team program etc. Then it’s just a domino affect from there. Parents are probably more competitive than their actual child. Sad really.

When I used to sit in the stands, the crazy talk is pretty insane. The book I could write with the things I heard. I choose to be coaching or stand in the corner alone now and just enjoy the “game” for what it is.

I see it a lot.

Ripjiggen wrote:

Their 152 is also ranked 1st but he is a 18yr old 10th grader. My son wrestled Gage’s younger

What the ….?

The story I heard was that he was intentionally held back 2 years so he would be older for wrestling. Crazy thinking about an 8th grader driving to school.

Dude is going to be killing it as a senior buying beer for everyone legally…

Ripjiggen wrote:

There is always an exception especially a raw athlete, but not necessarily the norm.
I am guessing this is genetic part that was talked about before.

Yeah just piling on Bucky’s points about genetics and work ethic being 100x more important than specialization

Another recent example… Cole Smith scored against the Wild tonight. Was a stud 2-way player for Brainerd high school state final football team and went to state track meet as a sprinter. Monster in the gym and I can yell ya first hand he’s competitive as hell in everything including fishing

Hank and Ben are very good at baseball for their age (9). Better than 98% of the kids they play with.

It’s not because they’re natural athletes or genetic freaks, but simply because we’ve played catch and swung bats since they were 3 or 4 for something to do at home. They just have more experience than the rest of the kids their age.

They’d make for terrible hockey or basketball players in their age group right now since they’ve never really done either.

——

Sign up for summer little league at their new school started last week. I asked them both individually if they wanted to play baseball this year since they had a lot of fun last year.

Hank’s response (literally and I’m not making it up): “Meh…but I still want to do other stuff, like camping and fishing and see Grandpa”

Ben’s response: “Sure, I don’t care.”

I told them both it would be something fun and just two days a week, during the week, after school/school aged care, wouldn’t mess up weekends and the baseball fields are right next to a public fishing dock (100% true).

Hank said he will play but he wants to bring his fly rod and Ben is in too lol

——

I’ll never jam sports down their throat, let alone push for the year-round-my-kid-is-the-best-and-going-to-get-a-scholarship crap. But I feel they should at least give something a shot.

Team sports are great for kids for a ton of reasons (structure, achievements, ambition, competition, etc, etc). I played almost every sport available to me when I was in school, but the way some parents push their kids makes me absolutely want to throw up.

Deep down I kinda hope they don’t care for any (ssshhhhhh), mostly because I’m selfish and would much rather spend time with them in a boat or a tent versus driving them all over to tournaments and staying in hotels.

But if it’s something they enjoy and wanting I could never take that away from them, and I will encourage them every step of the way.

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All three of my kids played hockey and enjoyed the sport. They would play almost year round what with a summer camp and 3-on-3 games. They tried other sports when younger but seemed to gravitate towards hockey.
I told all of them that when they no longer wanted to play hockey, that was fine. However they’d have to fill in that time doing something else – and playing video games was not an option.
2 of the kids went on to be referees and I was proud of them for doing this. They also enjoyed earning money – a portion of which was theirs’s to spend how they wanted.

Ripjiggen wrote:

How is it different?
I am willing to bet over half have been focusing on hockey since early grade school. Sure they might of played t ball what kids in sports haven’t.
Trust me I am not for this approach it’s just the way it is.
Yes it does not mean for all or it’s the only way.

The whole topic has been about single sport athletes as in that is all they do. The guys on the gophers you are talking about did not just play hockey, but it was their main focus which are two different things.

I’ve had the occasion to follow our grandsons in basketball thru High School and one who went on to JR college where we chased the team all across the state for two years. We had the pleasure of meeting many of these very athletic kids and their parents over the years and I’ll bet that more than 90% of those kids said that while they played their best for the team, they played harder for the parents who wanted them to play. When that last game was played, end of basketball. Few after high school want to tie up the time in college sports.

Kids can be groomed from a young age to make the parents happy by playing sports the parents have an interest it. I wonder though, how many kids who live in a non hunting/shooting family and have a desire to get involved in shooting or hunting have parents willing to go the extra step to get the kid involved in what he/she truly likes?

I’ve always maintained that if kids are kept in the woods or on the water, [think Bearcat and b-man here], the kid are getting in trouble. And by on the water I am NOT referring to jet skis or water skiing! Get them ties to the out of doors young and first and then if the kid’s peers at school generate enough drive that the child wants to try an organized sport or two go for it. The lessons learn early in the woods and hunting and fishing are real life lessons that grow with the kid. And every bit of the things in lifa that are important when going into organized sports has already been well instilled.

I’ve been involved in HS athletics a long time as a player, coach and official, pushing 30 years. It is always a little disappointing seeing kids give up a sport just because another sport is so demanding that it leaves little time for anything else. I think about my own experience, average athlete in a smaller school so I played everything. If my parents would have spent 50 grand over the course of my schooling on individual training, etc (not that I didn’t do any of that), would I have been a substantially better basketball player? Probably a bit, but there’s no way I was going D1 or probably even D2. I get it in larger schools though, it just sucks that it has to come to that. Again, such a miniscule number of these kids are going to get a scholarship let alone a living of it. I see so many kids give up sports in 5th-6th grade because it gets so serious so young. They haven’t even grown by that age and so many of the kids that were studs at that age fizzle out by high school from burn out or because they just don’t physically grow.

slough wrote:

I see so many kids give up sports in 5th-6th grade because it gets so serious so young.

The funny/sad thing is very rarely are the best kids in 5th-8th grade the best players in HS and College. Typically the best kids in middle school are the ones who hit puberty early, and by HS everyone else has caught up and passed them.

I don’t think there is any right or wrong answer here, except for this…kids need to be encouraged to find and follow their passion. Be it organized sports, the outdoors, or just fostering friendships.
I grew up in the 80s. I was a pretty fair 3 sport athlete. But I also loved to hunt and fish, and my best friends weren’t into sports as we grew older. By the time I was a senior, I would much rather hunt and fish than participate in sports. I wasn’t pushed by my parents, and I never pushed my kids either.
My son is 22 now and already a successful mechanic after completing his 2 year degree and ASE certification. He has absolute freak athletic ability. Fast as a deer, strong and can throw a football or baseball twice as far as I ever could. He could have certainly been a great athlete, but that wasn’t his passion. By the 10th grade, he was already way more into cars and the outdoors than anything else. He dropped baseball and joined the trap team and went to Nationals twice. I’m more than proud of him.