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Dr. James Andrews: Let them play

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by HanSenSE, Jul 16, 2013.

  1. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    My point on this, and it supports your point about the craziness, is that a girl playing jv softball as a sophomore isn't going to be playing scholarship college softball anywhere.
     
  2. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    My response, incidentally, hasn't changed: What James Andrews is talking about isn't what you're writing about, although it is what I'm writing about. You're lodging, IMO, a defense making sure everybody knows there's a middle ground. Of course there's a middle ground. It'd be the ground where kids don't throw out their arms. It seems you've found it. Be happy there. I'm glad you're a watchful, loving parent.

    But Andrews isn't talk about reasonable parents such as you seem to be. He's talking about Bryce Harper's dad, and thousands of Bryce Harper dad wannabes out there. Harper is indeed a prodigious talent -- who will probably get very, very hurt playing baseball before he's 25, because his hitting style is all over the place and he views himself as a cyborg because his dad has him taking some insane number of swings each day. of civility.
     
  3. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    Probably not, no.
     
  4. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Mmm hmmmm. And then you post stuff like:

    Mix in that and your dissertation earlier in the thread on "bad parenting" and how parents just want to check a box instead of get kids into things their kids are interested in, and I see the pattern.

    You can check my earlier posts in this thread or on any other thread related to this topic and we will be in alignment. The difference is you seem to think crazy is the norm, and parents shouldn't be doing any of this. But you just aren't aware of the full scene. You think the horror stories are the norm.

    Bryce Harper isn't the norm. In fact, the Bryce Harpers of the future get scoffed at by most parents. (I know a few, including one kid who actually just moved to Vegas and we think it was because his parents want him to follow the Bryce Harper plan.)
     
  5. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    Well, there would be a reason I didn't quote your entire post, and just that sentence, wouldn't there? It'd be because I'm responding to that part of the post. You can label that unfair -- heck I might -- but it's not inconsistent.
     
  6. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    When I was a kid, there was a girl at a rival school who had tremendous talent and absolutely dominated the cross country and long-distance track events when she was 12. She'd also compete in road races nearly every week, and destroy the adults.

    By the end of high school, she was done, both by injuries and burnout. One race director said he even saw her getting into a shouting match with her parents in the parking lot because they wanted her to run some race and she didn't want to.

    By the time she was in high school, she was done.
     
  7. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Just as a counterpoint, I covered a girl who had, when she was like 5 or 6, declared she loved running so much that she would do it every day. When I was covering her, she was in the process of winning her third straight double state cross-country/long-distance track championship. She had a college scholarship. Far as I know, she is still running.
     
  8. dreunc1542

    dreunc1542 Active Member

    Yeah, as a runner from the time I was pretty young, I knew quite a few kids who loved running, and did a crazy amount of it, and were studs throughout their high school and college careers.
     
  9. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    It is very common for travel-team coaches to order their players to quit all other sports at the age of about 10-12. Soccer seems to be the most prominent offender.

    Then, when the kids get to high school at age 13-14, if they haven't been playing high-level travel-team for several years, the varsity coach usually cuts 'em before the first practice. Didn't play travel team? Hasta la vista.
     
  10. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    Speaking up for running (not necessarily dragging kids all around to a race every weekend), once you've decided running is something you want to do, it is year round. You can still play whatever other sport you want out of season, but you'd still better be running 3-5 days a week on your own. After about a week off, you start to lose fitness. Running up and down a basketball court, for example, as a winter sport between cross country and track doesn't cut it. Play basketball. Go to basketball practice every day, but after practice you'd better be logging some miles.

    *I say this from the perspective of a high school cross country coach and a guy that works with the track distance runners. I don't know shit about sprinters.
     
  11. dreunc1542

    dreunc1542 Active Member

    I don't agree with that. One can help themselves by running year round, but I don't think it's necessary. I did cross country, basketball and track in high school and didn't do any extra running on the side. I did the 800 and the 1600 and was pretty good at them. There was plenty of time at the beginning of track season to get back in shape for the important races. I also took time off in the summer before gearing up for XC season.
     
  12. Smallpotatoes

    Smallpotatoes Well-Known Member

    I don't think kids play pickup games anymore, either.
     
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