Too Much Emphasis on High School Sports?

As the father of two boys, I constantly tell them that the world they will inherit will be quite different than what I came up in. The U.S. will be competing with people from across the globe with increasingly higher levels of education, ambition, and expertise. It will be harder to "fall" into success the way a lot of people my parents might have and indeed, the way my colleagues did as a result of the internet boom. They need to constantly work to improve themselves. As I tell them, "You don't want to peak in high school". This seems to be the opposite to the advice that many parents of kids are giving in anything, by example with a dominant if solo emphasis on sports. Let's face it, the best athlete at your high school will probably not go pro and even college will be a stretch for the dominant sports (golf or swimming might be the easier move there). That being said, many youth athletic leagues are starting earlier and earlier with more intensive focus on performance by both coaches and parents. Our local pee wee football goes 5 days a week as early as 2nd or 3rd grade. That's great for putting out good to adequate (remember the chances of going pro) football players but at what expense and how will being a proficient football player help a high schooler after he graduates? That's a tough call.

Common wisdom shows that it will take 10000 hours or 10 years to master any given trait whether it's the game of basketball, a piano, or a foreign language. Those football coaches definitely have that in mind whether they know this rule or not with such an intensive football training regiment at an early age but time is a zero sum game. Time spent learning the intricasies of football is time not spent learning a language, mastering math, or dabbling in robotics. The question is...at age 18 when you're either looking at colleges or looking at making a living, which of those skill sets will pay off more. The point isn't to discount high school sport pursuits...after all, our website is called PrepSportFantasy.com for a reason. The real goal is to have balance in our kid's pursuites...a little bit of flag football with a little bit of learning Photoshop. A little bit of practicing outside of shooting with a little bit of Chinese (where they love basketball, by the way). If a young child has 5 days of baseball or football practice, it's hard to understand how they'll have time, energy, or stamina for much else. Ultimately, we need to understand this intensive practice is for the parents...not the kids. Granted, there are a few kids would spend every waking hour playing their sport of choice and more power to them. For the other 95% of the kids in practice, this is more likely the parents living vicariously through the adults. If you're such a parent, you have to ask yourself if you're doing this because high school was the best time of your life, and if so, are you setting your kid up for 4 years of glory at the expense of the following 4 years of college, not to mention 60 years of life.

There are all kinds of positives that come from high school sports for both boys and girls but we don't want to throw the long term game of life for a quick pop of high school sports fame.

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