Dr. James Andrews: Let them play

I know a lot of people who have organized their lives around travel ball since our kids were 6 or 7 years old. I always thought it was ridiculous, but kinda figured, well, to each his own. But it struck me how unfair it was to other siblings who weren't playing ball and yet were dragged along to one tournament or another throughout the spring and summer. Those kids had to be freaking miserable.

My wife and I decided a long time ago that we weren't doing that to either of our kids. They're both pretty good athletes -- my daughter swims year-round, but for a fairly low-key local team -- but it was never gonna be one of these all-consuming things for us. Just not worth it, in our estimation. Again, others disagree.

Oh, and I hear you on golf. My son has absolutely been bitten by the golf bug this summer and now he's planning to try out for his high school team. My wife rolls her eyes, but I love the fact that golf gives us time to spend together -- even if he drives the ball WAY past mine already.

 

Shuddering at the thought of 138 pitches at that age. I covered the Ripken 12-year-olds state tournament last week and the organizers had the pitching charts right next to the brackets at the snack bar. IIRC, it's six innings over two dags in Ripken ball. The tourney administrator was constantly checking with the scorer on inning counts as well.

It's been mentioned in passing, but next to giving the muscles a rest (one high school coach and a long-time friend, who posted this link on Facebook, likened it to letting farm land lay fallow), playing different sports allows kids to develop socially outside of their main sport.

 

This. You've just described most of my childhood. I still remember the year my brothers and I got a basketball hoop for Christmas. The next winter, since it was the only hoop on our block, all the neighborhood kids came over to help keep our alley cleared of snow. And we always figured out way to play football even in the smallest of yards.

 

I grew up on a team with the same kind of kid. His older brother was a first-round pick but never made it to the major. The younger kid threw a mean curve in Little League, but when we got to Pony League he was basically unable to throw or play. Nice kid. I wonder what happened to him.

 

My kid did some low-key YMCA-level basketball and AYSO when she was younger. Then, we moved to a new area just before she started 7th grade. After about 6 months, I told her to pick an activity, and listed off about a dozen: music, drama, soccer, basketball, volleyball, softball, art, etc. I told her that by the time she reached high school, being in some sort of activity would help her and make school more fun. It would be good for her to have a core group of friends. There would always be friends available to go to football games or concerts or whatever. We had no delusions of scholarships or anything like that.
She thought it over for a couple of weeks and picked volleyball. So I contacted the high school coach via email, told him my daughter was basically a beginner but hoped to try out for his program in a couple of years. What did he suggest? He connected me with a volleyball club. It turned out he also coached there. This is a huge area for volleyball and when we got into it, the scope of it was very illuminating. Just sitting around with the other parents one day, we juggled some numbers figured out this one club was taking in more than a $1 million each year. Lots of expenses, sure, but still pretty big money.
So, she had one year of club experience when she arrived at high school and she was clearly one of the better players. She made the frosh-soph team and played a regular role. So, obviously, her year of club really helped her. At a parents meeting just before the high school season started, the coach told us simply, I cannot require you to play club volleyball, but you pretty much have to play club volleyball if you are going to make the team here.
My kid stuck it out for 3 years of club and two years of high school, then called it quits, after 3 concussions and countless sprains and bruises.
The time requirements and conflicts were significant. The clincher for her came near the end of her third club season when one of her classmates died during spring football practice (undetected heart condition). She had to miss a candlelight vigil because of club volleyball practice and also miss the funeral service because of a tournament that weekend.
If she had continued on, we would have changed clubs to a less high-pressure situation and tried to make it fun again. But she had enough and I totally supported her.

 

There aren't a lot of parents like you. There needs to be more. But so many parents are so afraid their kids are going to blame them later for "missed opportunities" that they CYA their way through the parenting bond.

Bad parenting, generally speaking, is self-interested parenting. You're not so much interested in the principles you want your children to learn as you are interested in making sure you've checked certain boxes in the parenting experience.

Youth sports is nearly as bad as the child toy industry. The one where a 1-year-old gets $200 worth of toys when he'd just as soon stick a pine cone in his mouth.

 

This presumes, though, that competing with Dominicans who live well below the poverty line for spots on MLB baseball teams is a worthy goal.

We've put sports on much too high a pedestal. I think it's our nature in life to acknowledge the most physically dominant among us, but, hell, we celebrate dudes who ride BMX bikes up ramps now. It's a joke. And our country has suffered out of our fixation diversion, or our inability to link how we feel in public square to how we feel in sports.

 

The one thing that is being forgotten a bit here -- kids often LIKE being on these travel teams.

My son is 10 -- just turned 11 but still in 10U ... going into sixth grade. He very much enjoys being on his team and he would pick that in a heartbeat over staying in the league. (He did both this year, which was something of a balancing act.) We are a Double-A team (sometimes play Triple-A tournaments) and practice as such and calibrate expectations as such. Nobody does private hitting or pitching lessons, we practice three times a week and play one or two tournaments a month. He would be very very upset if we told him he couldn't play on this team anymore. Most of the kids feel the same way, I think, they are friends and they take a lot of pride in being on this team.

It's a big difference in play. When he's pitching and they hit a short flyball to right field, we actually have a right fielder who can catch it. That's kind of nice. It doesn't mean that these kids think they're going to be great or that they're going to play in college (although I do admit that having him ready for high school is one motivation here). Sometimes it just means they are ready for a higher level of baseball than the rec league is offering.

There is a lot of crazy out there. But I would say that below the "majors" designation, most of the kids really are there because they want to be there.

 

Because parents allow it, are afraid in some cases to go against the coach, and often condone it. Also, in many cases, the coach has told the parents before the season started that he's the coach and they're the support team, leaving out the fact that they should be parents first and foremost with the health and welfare of their child being No. 1.

 

LTL, I don't think anybody has a problem with kids playing whatever level of baseball (or any other sport) their skills allow them to play during a time period that is a reasonable "season" for said sport.

The problem is that kids are being "encouraged" to specialize and continue playing the same sport basically on a year-round basis at an age when they're too young to know any better -- and the people who do know better are the ones "encouraging" them.

I know you know this as a baseball parent, but the act of pitching a ball overhand is incredibly destructive to the shoulder joint. Just as the act of jumping repeatedly on a hardwood floor is destructive to the growing knees of basketball players and taking repeated blows to the head is destructive to the brains of soccer players, football players and wrestlers.

The repetitive stress injuries that come from doing the same thing over and over again with not enough rest are completely avoidable, if only parents would understand that 10-year-olds don't need to be acting like professionals. They're kids.

 

Yeah, that I get. And I agree. Every year (well, the last two, since he started doing this travel thing) I make my son get out in the winter and play another sport. Last year basketball, this year roller hockey. Gets him in better shape anyway.

I was just reacting to Alma's post about "bad parenting" that seemed to indicate that every parent is wrong if his kid is involved with a team like that. But that's probably just Alma again deciding for everyone what's good and bad.