1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Dr. James Andrews: Let them play

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

  1. Bradley Guire

    Bradley Guire Well-Known Member

    HA!

    If I have a kid, I'm sending him down to the lanes and buying him a beer and a pack of smokes, so that I may one day live my PBA dreams vicariously through him.
     
  2. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    And a lot of that is because the coach wants ass-kissers. Don't join a travel team? You're a non-conformist.
     
  3. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    That depends if you want to be on the team or be a winner. Race results are a direct reflection of the effort you put in preparing for the race. I don't know any good runners that don't WANT to run year round. The best runners have to be made to take a week off every once in a while to rest their bodies. One of our local schools has a team that was won the last two state cross country championships and has a state championship and a runnerup in track. I see their kids running together 12 months out of the year, no school involvement, no coach, no parents ... just the boys.
    If you want to be successful, the first day of practice is not when you start running. You'd better be able to run that first morning or you will be behind.
     
  4. dreunc1542

    dreunc1542 Active Member

    I'll be glad to go back and tell my high school self that he didn't want to be a winner despite making states twice in a pretty track-crazy state. I'll also go back and tell my sister, who had a similar attitude as me, the same thing. I'll tell her that despite having an almost full ride by her senior year at a D-1 school, and being one of the best 800 runners in her region, that she didn't want to be successful.

    One size does not fit all, Shoeless Joe.
     
  5. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    I'm not talking about running the 800. I'm talking about distance. Sure, you can get ready for the 800 by running up and down a basketball court. 800 isn't even a warmup for a distance runner. When we officially start practice, I have told my runners they had better be capable of running 4 miles at tempo the first day. If they can't, then they are behind. If you haven't put in the miles ahead of time, you'll be heaving alongside the course while everyone else runs off without you.

    I never said you have to be racing year round, but you'd better keep up your base miles.
     
  6. dreunc1542

    dreunc1542 Active Member

    She, and I, ran longer races as well. And we were good XC racers. Hell, after college, she ran 1:30 half-marathon and qualified by time for the NYC marathon. I'm saying that not everyone who is a good runner feels it necessary to run year round.

    Now, I do know plenty of runners who did run year-round. I'm just saying that one doesn't have to to be good.
     
  7. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    My 14-year-old daughter is going to try out for her high school softball team as a freshman even though she missed this season with a knee injury (not major) and played only one summer of very limited travel ball. At the age of 10 she was on a team that played weeklong tournaments for a month at other suburban venues. I like to call it "The Summer July Disappeared." It was hardly a strain on her physically, and her coaches were great and kept a good perspective. But she didn't care for travel ball because the whole surroundings were way too intense, and she was 10 -- she didn't want to do that all the time. She may or may not make her high school team as a result of this, especially because most of the girls she's competing against have played year-round travel ball for ages. On the other hand, I could see already at the age of 10 that some of these girls were already tuning out.

    Now, on the other hand, all my 10-year-old son wants to do is play basketball. He's tried other sports, but he's just a hoops fiend. We're actually holding him out of travel opportunities for this upcoming season for various reasons, but I could see him having an interest in it. Some kids just like a single sport that much.

    I figure we're OK as parents as long as we keep our kids' short- and long-term interests at heart, don't get too wrapped up in the scholarship game, and make the adult decisions on how this affects our child(ren) and family.
     
  8. Hokie_pokie

    Hokie_pokie Well-Known Member

    This is the problem in a nutshell. Not enough parents actually think about their childrens' interests.

    And by that, I don't mean, what does my child want or like to do? As somebody else pointed out, my kid likes to eat Big Macs but I don't give him one every day.

    I mean, looking out for their short- and long-term health, both mentally and physically.

    It's up to the grownups to step up and make sometimes unpopular decisions that ultimately will benefit their children.

    Obviously this is not a "one size fits all" issue because not all kids are different, and a few of them will grow up to be Harpers and Verlanders.

    But far too many people have been suckered in by the promise of "scholarships" or athletic glory for their children that they never experienced for whatever reason. There's big money to be made by the people doing the suckering, and the kids ultimately pay the price.
     
  9. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    If you happen to have a prodigy in your house like a Bryce Harper or Mary Cain, obviously that changes things a bit. Or if it's a sport, like women's swimming, where teens dominate. Cain's family, for example, is supporting her running a pro-like schedule in the offseason, and they've sent her to Alberto Salazar instead of having her languish with the school track team. That makes sense. But they also still have her in everyday, regular public high school, and are trying to keep her in as "normal" a situation as possible. Of course, given Cain's father is a fairly well-to-do doctor in New York, her family has the resources to pull this off. But it seems like at least they're attempting to make sure their 17-year-old thrives in her sport without burning out, especially as it becomes more evident there's a huge push to make her the face of American track and field.
     
  10. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    For every Harper, there are 10,000 kids getting baseball shoved down their necks.
     
  11. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    That's how we make sure no Bryce Harpers are missed. The system heavily rewards team-sport athletic prodigies, and thus the system has tuned itself toward producing them at all costs.
     
  12. Hokie_pokie

    Hokie_pokie Well-Known Member

    I wonder what the proportion of "Bryce Harpers missed" to "potential Bryce Harpers ruined by burnout and overuse injuries" would be today?

    What good is it to be the parent of an exceptional talent if you're not going to be extremely careful in nurturing said talent?

    Too many parents today act like it's worth risking a blown-out arm so Johnny can be an All-Star at age 8. I want my kid to be healthy and reaching his physical peak when it really matters.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page