AAU Basketball is indeed the devil

Very often the best soccer players in our area never touch the field for their high school and still get DI scholarships. We did a story recently on a school that had 10 girls soccer players sign with colleges on signing day. I think four of them played on the high school team.

 

It is funny to hear people talk about how a kid has to specialize when you consider someone like, oh, Joe Mauer, played three sports in high school. Best QB in the nation, No. 1 draft pick in baseball, and led his team to the state basketball tournament. I can hear some idiot parent: Think how good he would have been if he had focused just on baseball. He'd have four batting titles now.

Agree about just playing ball to play ball. Even in my little hometown, whenever I've been home for the past 10 years or so, I don't know if I've ever seen a group of kids at the city park playing hoops. Growing up, we were down there every summer, playing 2 on 2 or 3 on 3. And there was a mini diamond right next to it and we'd round up a few more guys and play baseball the rest of the afternoon. Now they do a bunch of stuff under the supervision of coaches during the offseason, whether the coaches are associated with the school or just helping out. We had great sports when I was in school, and today they have a basketball team that routinely loses by 40 and a baseball team that opened the season with a 33-1 loss. Let the kids just play!

 

I walked into the weight room at the school where I teach/coach, and saw an article I wrote several years ago (from the days when I was an SE) about a guy who is now a Major League Baseball player.

The football coach had hand-written, "Three-sport athlete in high school. Full ride to Michigan. Now playing in the majors. Why specialize?"

The boys at our school are almost all 2-3 sport athletes (and over the last calendar year, held a sectional championship in every boys team sport).

The girls don't heed the advice.

The soccer & softball club coaches basically tell their kids "you better play club or you won't make the high school team" -- both teams that win 90% of their games, one of which has won two straight state titles. The volleyball coach demands that her kids play club, and they'll even hide in the locker room until she leaves before going to offseason basketball workouts, for fear of getting yelled at.

That club/travel mentality has killed our basketball program's numbers. Meanwhile, a school of 1,100 kids in the "basketball capital of the world" that has a good basketball reputation now has about 14 kids in the program and we're trying like crazy to hang onto them. I ask kids why they don't come out for hoops, and they all say, "I have soccer" or "I have softball." (in the winter? Yeah, we play softball in a pole barn and I have to play).

Have talked to other basketball coaches at suburban schools, and it's the same thing there. Sports that rely heavily on club/travel monopolize their athletes, and (wink, wink) use the club teams to do the monopolizing.

The other major issue I've discovered with AAU, other than what Zag had said, is the parents sitting in the stands comparing notes on where they're going to "send" their kids to high school, because the local school is almost never good enough.

 

Hell, when I was a kid we played two-hand touch football in the vacant lot down the street all the time. You never see that any more either.

 

I think it is a damn disgrace that kids are made to choose a sport by the time they hit the 8th grade for fear of being left behind.

I often ask our local varsity basketball coach, who is a friend of mine, why he doesn't have any kids on his team who play football or baseball and he said because the players at all of his rival high schools are playing basketball year round and that he only wants basketball players.

Meanwhile, the football team is always loaded and always in the state playoffs and while I haven't studied it that closely, I'm quite sure there are a number of athletes on the football team who at the very least could help the basketball team off the bench as rebounders/post players and would add a little toughness and athleticism.

It just seems idiotic to me that coaches of any sport wouldn't want athleitc kids.

I mean - Crimson, you are a high school basketball coach -- wouldn't you want to have on your bench a few athletic kids with some size who are tough hard-nosed kind of football players even if they lacked some skill?

 

I think part of the reason you don't see pick-up games is the fact most parents won't let kids go to a park by themselves anymore.

 

Yeah, but they have (travel) softball (in a pole barn). Or (travel) soccer (on astroturf in a hockey rink).

We encourage our players to play multiple sports. The softball & soccer teams at our school COMBINED have about 5 kids that play another team sport, and they have a look of terror on their faces when you ask them to play basketball (e.g., "if I do, I'm going to get yelled at/cut/threatened by my soccer/softball/volleyball coach").

 

Daughter PD, a 5-foot-5 11-year-old, this spring is playing both club soccer AND AAU Basketball.

I'm forking out about $1,000/year for soccer (excluding two summer camps, which will total about $300-$350) and $250 for a basketball season that runs a little less than three months.

After a win four hours from home yesterday, the club soccer team is ranked No. 1 in its state division (yeah, they rank 11-year-olds here). Her city league basketball coach (a part-time minister) is her AAU coach, and he added her to the roster more to get her the extra practice time since she's just now getting into basketball. She's now alternating between starting or being the first player off the bench (imagine Kevin McHale as an 11-year-old - and a female).

The AAU team practices three times a week for 2 hours/practice. The soccer team practices twice a week for 90 minutes/practice. There are games in both sports every weekend. At least twice already she's played one sport, changed in the car and played in another less than an hour later. People think we're crazy for trying this.

The hell of it is, golf's her best sport, but group lessons conflicted with soccer practices and basketball games this spring, so she's not even attempting that.

 

The kids being forced to specialize at an early age is killing most of the kids. Saw that with baseball and softball where I grew up.

The exception? The small schools where the same kids are together for fall, winter and spring teams. Why? Most couldn't dream of fielding much of anything any other way. Small wonder that the small schools had a lot of my favorites. While there's no pretending that it wasn't about winning and losing, more of them played because it was fun than at the larger schools, where these kids lived for their one sport. Sad ...

 

Huh? When have I argued for or against AAU basketball? And I know I haven't said "for years" that "AAU basketball is ruining American basketball." I'm certain about that.

 

Several years ago we took a look at the best high school athletes in our area's history. We had one guy who was a Heisman Trophy runner-up in college in the late 60s, who also found time in HS to score 2,000 points in basketball and become a 24-foot long-jumper in track. Another guy was an all-state football and basketball player and a state champ in tennis. Key, both in the 60s.

Fast forward to now where very few athletes play two sports. One of our top baseball players also plays basketball, but he's a 5-minute a game type in hoops. We do have one kid who just committed to a top D1 baseball program who is the football QB and basketball PG at a medium-sized school.

 

Absolutely correct. I am a 'aficianado' of a lower-level NBA team from that era and have a moderate stock of this team's NBA games on VHS. The full games, not highlight packages.

If you go to 1984 - the "glory era" in the NBA - and throw out the Lakers, Celtics and Sixers, that is the first year where you really have players who could "do it all". Go back to 1979 or 1980, hardly anybody could shoot from 22 feet, drive with their "off" hand. Can't think of many NBA players who could dunk in traffic outside of Julius Erving and David Thompson. No crossover dribbles, except for maybe a young Phil Ford. Had a lot of guys who couldn't jump - not many guys who could rack up seven or eight steals a game because of quick hands.

Nearly all of the top players today can do it all - the athleticism of basketball in 2010 is unthinkable compared with 30 years ago.

That is why defensive scores prevail, especially in the playoffs. The defense is THAT good for most NBA players.