"We're losers. We got beat. There is no trophy for us."

On girls/women's basketball...

The talent disparity is so, so deep at the levels I am coaching. Perhaps this is a Midwest thing, but female youth basketball really is the sport of the affluent.

I think many affluent parents steer their boys away from high-level basketball because, let's face it, there are jumping/athletic disadvantages and most well-off kids have too many other distractions (provided by us) to be truly great. If they spend 20,000 hours shooting in a gym or traveling around in a minivan as an 8-year-old, perhaps they can become have a 1 in 1,000 shot at becoming Kyle Korver.

Girls basketball is different in that I think many youth parents and players think they can play at higher levels and that's just not going to be the case.

My sixth-grade daughter wants to play Division I and I gently remind her that watching cat videos all day won't make her into a D1 player. I tell her the high school gym three blocks away is always open on Sundays for three hours. She never goes. I tell her if she wants to get better to go dribble a basketball for an hour each day it's nice around the cul-de-sacs. She doesn't and that's fine.

In life, we are all good at what we prioritize.

We have ten kids on the team I coach. I don't have the heart to tell them right now that nine of them are not talented or driven enough to even make their school's varsity team in five years. It's a 2,000 student high school and just making a 15-player team is hard. Even our best player will be deep on the bench in five years.

There really is no end game for most of them.

For each player, about a month ago, I quietly make one suggestion for each of them to work on to immediately improve their game. Could be foot work. For one, going to her left. For another, shoot 100 shots a day from five feet out.

None of them work outside of the three hours of practice.

The girls in our metro who WILL get the varsity slots five and six years from now and, eventually the scholarships, have already been determined. Many had parents who played college ball but almost all of their girls have put in the time. They break presses, have excellent pump fakes and footwork and don't take bad shots.

Baseball is similar for boys here. My son is damn good at the sport but, in the spring, he will be one of 55 kids going out for the freshman teams. All to try and get one of the eight starting spots in two years on varsity? Long odds, even for a kid who is lefty, can hit hard pitching and is good defensively. He might make a varsity team in two years but that would be only because he's a top student with a stellar team kid rep from his years in the youth programs.

To the SJers younger than I... if you want your kids to play high school sports but don't want to drive them around endlessly when they're 8, move to the smaller districts.

 

It's also alright if playing rec league basketball is the end game itself.

I have a close family member whose two daughters played 'travel' softball their entire lives. Year-round.
They were starters.
Family spent a lot of time and money on softball. They encouraged their daughters to believe they could play college softball.

Neither girl even made varsity in high school.
When they were playing JV as juniors in high school, parents we're still talking about college softball at community college or trying to walk on at a four-year.
Even telling them they could walk-on at a D1 program.

It was sad and embarrassing.
Not because the girls weren't particularly good at softball, but because they, at the urging of their parents, had nursed the delusional expectation for almost their entire lives.

 

My best friend's son was a pretty nice player -- could pitch (RH) a little, played a pretty good 3B and outfield, and wasn't bad at the plate. He had a learning disability (dyslexia), though, and by the time he was a freshman he'd pretty much said to hell with school. The high school coach told him, I'd like to keep you, but I can't risk losing a roster spot to No-Pass-No-Play. My friend's son shrugged his shoulders and quit playing. He didn't like baseball enough to buckle down (and there were plenty of resources there to help him with his challenges). So don't overlook the grades ... they may come in handier than you'd think.

I'd love to see DaughterQuant make her school's varsity some day, but I'm afraid the numbers are working against her. There's a wave of really good players coming through, and there are only so many slots that are going to be available. To get a sense for how steep the curve is at her school ... this year she was picked for her club's "national" team, and the other middle from her club team last year was placed one level lower. That girl was named MVP of her high school's freshman team, which lost only two matches in district play ... both drubbings by DaughterQuant's team.

 

Well, yes, athletes have been heavily rewarded. I think Walz's point is, when these athletes have lost at the AAU or state level or whatever, it didn't sting like it may have once stung an athlete 30 years ago.

I think the participation trophy is bad phrasing. I wouldn't use it.

 

The point Walz thinks he is trying to make is, "these players are soft, they've been getting medals just for showing up ever since they were in third grade," but it's bullshit: he's got a top 10 program. His players weren't the ones being handed seventh-place ribbons -- they were the ones hauling off championship trophies and MVP awards. All of them, even the 11-12th players on his bench.

Now if he really wanted to bitch, he could bitch about AAU teams that play 80 games a year and switch players like sweat socks. Now THERE'S where players learn to not give a shit about winning or losing.

You ever talk to a hotshot AAU player five minutes after a game where they went 12-18 from the field, had 36 points and 16 rebounds, and their team lost 76-71? Talk about not giving a shit.

If you're playing for Hometown High where you've lived your whole life and come up from junior high, you probably really do care if you lose to Archrival Tech.

If you're playing for Joe Schmoe's AAU All-Stars and you lose to John Doe's AAU Storm, does it really break your heart? Nah. WGAF?

 

My daughter's grade 8 volleyball team reached the bronze medal match at their league championship tournament recently. They have some truly horrific girls on their team who literally can't get the ball over the net and a no-cut policy at the school so basically tryouts aren't tryouts.
The coach sat all the top players for the deciding set and let the others play. I'm on board with everybody getting to play but in this case couldn't she just try to win to win a medal. Nope. They lost and no one went home happy.

 

What do you mean follow through? Throw them in the trash?

 

Johnny is the SJ.com equivalent of clickbait.

 

I doubt many of the "tough guys" give their own kids a cold dose of reality they think others need to do.