How necessary is extreme youth prep for sports success?

The Game Room
21

I guess it depends on how one uses the term “Academy”.

Most of the MLS francise Academy teams are low/no cost, but the other MLS Next Clubs (the ones not affiliated directly with the MLS) have Club fees which can be a few thousand dollars. Same with the Girls Academy (both are USYS affiliated) leagues.

Most clubs have financial assistance to make sure kids who are superior players who couldn’t otherwise afford it can play. But in reality the expensive part is the 18 weekends you will spend traveling around the country to play the games and tournaments.

22

I forgot to answer this part…

I guess it depends on what part of the country you’re in. If you are near any medium to large city than most likely there are tens of thousands of kids that play club soccer in that immediate region. My middle-school aged daughter goes to soccer camps with the high-school team as part of a “feeder program” with probably 100 other girls, all of which play club soccer.

23

I note that there is a lot of discussion about team sports here. But what about solo sports?

I don’t imagine that Venus or Serena Williams, or John McEnroe, or Martina Navratilova got into tennis in their teens. They undoubtedly were playing as children.

Same for figure skating. I come from a figure skating family, and we knew Olympic and World competitors, and some champions. Without exception, all had started when they were five or six, some even earlier.

And golf. Tiger Woods was introduced to golf at the age of two. While his competition on the tour may not have had that head start, it’s obvious that if they are in their twenties now, they must have been playing as children.

If we can look beyond team sports, and also look at solo sports, do the answers to the OP’s question change? For example, “if you want to excel at solo sports, you absolutely must start as a child”?

24

One anecdote:

My niece started in gymnastics at age 6 or 7, when it was mostly just tumbling and having fun. But, her coaches identified her as being talented, and by age 8, she was heavily involved in gymnastics at the club level (and her circle of friends of her age group were primarily the girls in her gym club).

She was, indeed, quite talented (she won a state championship in her “level” when she was 11 or 12), but competing at that level was tremendously time-consuming, and expensive – there was the regular travel for out-of-town tournaments, going halfway across the country for multi-week training camps every summer, as well as several hours of practice every day.

I’m certain that my sister-in-law was convinced that gymnastics were going to be my niece’s ticket to a college scholarship. But, when she was 13, she suffered a hip injury, which made continuing in gymnastics difficult physically for her; but, beyond that, she just wasn’t enjoying it anymore, and nor did she appreciate her mother pushing her to not give up on the sport.

She spent a year or so in a much less competitive level of gymnastics (which was also less hard on her hip), but then gave it up entirely, and wound up competing on her school’s diving team (which had a much smaller time commitment), and joining her school’s choir.

So, at least for gymnastics as a solo sport – if your kid decides to start in it as a teenager, they are going to be at a serious disadvantage, as they will be facing peers who have already been hard-core into the sport for years.

25

Yeah, but how many high schools are in that area too? I grew up outside of Chicago, was on a moderately successful high school team, and probably had ~8-10 club players on the team. So definitely not a full roster and many of the other teams had lots lower talent levels (lots of other schools had much higher talent levels too).

26

Pretty urban area, so quite a bit of schools in the area.

My experience was pretty similar maybe the starting 11 were Club players and the rest were kids that had experience but weren’t at that level.

27

At my high school, which had very strong academics and almost everyone went to college, the sports teams would take almost anyone. They had large rosters as there were always players who had ACT tests on game days or were involved in multiple extracurriculars. They’d miss a soccer game because of Model UN or something like that.

The tennis team and golf team were notable exceptions. Given the demographics of the neighborhood, it’s not surprising that a lot of kids grew up around country clubs and tennis courts.

28

We were similar (private school, but a very strong academically), and it totally depended on the sport. Football would take just about any warm body. Basketball and baseball were selective enough to have actual tryouts. Soccer did too- because soccer was basically the province of rich white kids, Hispanic people, and immigrants from elsewhere, a private Catholic school had a LOT of soccer players in the 80s. Golf had tryouts, and I have no idea about tennis.

However, I think if you could swim/run/throw/jump at all, you could be on the swim team, water polo team or track team and work your way up to varsity through hard work. Cross-country was a different story; you had to be good, as at the time, we were one of the premier cross-country programs in Texas.

Of all that, the only ones where club-type experience was necessary were baseball and soccer. The rest just required having been decent middle school player or rec-league player. And track required absolutely nothing other than some athletic ability and the willingness to work hard.

29

SunLass plays volleyball on her high school varsity team (she’s a rising senior) and a club team. I expect different sports have different ideal times for starting learning the sport - soccer, for example, takes a long time to learn the muscle memory needed to develop the leg and foot skills to play the sport at a high level, and the ease of learning the sport at even the youngest ages means there is a lot of expectation to start very early.

For volleyball, I would tend to question whether anything done before middle school is of significant value. So much of the sport - and all of how you specialize for a position - is based largely on height, and while you can project some from looking at parents it’s not an exact science. From middle school on, though, learning basic skills, positional play, a team system, and the like are going to be more easily taught in a club context than at their school team.

SunLass’s club is large and does a lot of developmental work at all levels. The travel teams are made up of the best players at each level and they get extra practices and tournament time. She has players on her school team at both travel and region levels, so while it’s certainly a bonus to play travel ball it’s not an absolute necessity.

You mentioned clubs demanding parental extreme dedication. SunLass’s club actually tends to discourage parental overinvolvement - we sign the checks, show up, root, and that’s about it. Many clubs get the parents a little more involved, but we find that her club gives the athletes a little more self-reliance, and frankly many of those clubs have parents that are, shall we say, not the best exemplars of sportsmanship.

Two things you should concern yourself with as a parent are burnout and overcoaching. SunLass decided herself she wanted to try volleyball, and once she liked it we haven’t needed to push her at it - she’s very self-motivated. We do emphasize to her that she can take a break from the sport if she needs one, and that it’s most important for her to take care of herself. She’s played club for four years now, and burnout hasn’t been a problem - but teammates, for one reason or another, will sometimes get the point where they’re hating a sport they used to love.

Players sometimes end up overcoached when they simply aren’t suited, talent- and body-wise, for the sport they’re playing. Their coach has been able to give them all the skills but they’ve hit their top and they’re not going to get any better. This can sometimes be frustrating for parents who see their kids passed in the pecking order by kids who may not have the same level of skill, but have a higher ceiling on their talent.

One thing you might want to consider, especially early on, is allowing your kids to rotate between sports rather than overspecialize at an early age. Might not help in the long run if your goal is a college scholarship or pro career for your young’uns, but I suspect it would be better for having sane kids.

I’ll close with an anecdote. The summer before she started high school, SunLass did a volleyball camp at the local university. She got to play against an all-Pac-12 middle blocker and heard her volleyball experience - which started as a high school sophomore. Again, a huge chunk of her advantage as a player was innate talent and height, which can’t be coached - but her lack of long-term experience with the sport didn’t keep her from going a long way as a player.

30

BayerSon is 11 and just finishing 5th grade. When he was in first grade, one of the parents started a soccer group with a coach and a bunch of kids and have one lesson a week for an hour.

They weren’t in a league or anything but would sometimes play in tournaments. He was OK, not the best and not the worst.

About a year into that, the informal club got discovered by parents of a local elementary school soccer team and a half dozen of them decided that daily practice at school wasn’t enough so they joined this club. They were third grade and my son and his friends were now second grade. The team was winning games but my son would get a few minutes of playing time only when we were blowing away bad teams.

There wasn’t anything we could do; my son and his friends were just too far behind and would never catch up so we, and pretty much everyone else, bailed and let the “pros” have it.

From there, BayerKids joined a small kendo club and my son is doing much better. However, it’s kind of the same in that kids who join later have a difficult time keeping up.

Both kids are also in sailing. They started when my daughter was in sixth grade and my son was in 4th. Sailing costs more money and they won’t likely become as competitive. We send them to sailing camps several times a year, but we don’t expect them to be the best.

Of course, anyone can do sports just for fun and not worry about it, but in the sports my kids play, the average kid get involved in elementary school.

That said, one of the girls in the sailing club joined in 7th grade and by 8th grade finished third in a national race. I do wonder if it’s easier for girls to join later and still do well.

Of course, kids that are more gifted may be able to join later and do well.

My son seems to do reasonably well, which is surprising considered his parent. He must not have inherited my genes.

31

This is a good point. My daughter did rec basketball and was fairly good but not great, and also rec soccer. At the end of the school year when she was 13 I brought home a flyer for a summer rowing camp - she attended and loved it, so the next fall she joined the team. Rowing is a sport where kids generally get into it at around age 13-14 or later. Most kids on the team were in other sports like soccer but switched because the risk of injury in rowing is less (there are still injuries), and were highly competitive - one girl (former soccer player) went to a national meet and came in top 5. The boys also drifted-in from other sports like football, again to a physically less-impactful sport. The girls had an additional advantage of potential college scholarships. My daughter did well and captured a couple of championships locally, and did get college money out of it (no chance of that for her in basketball or soccer).

Anyway, just wanted to share rowing as a sport where a kid can get into it in their teens and still do really well without any extreme prep, but would need some athletic background because the workouts and practice can be grueling. Also, smaller athletes can get involved with rowing as a coxswain and compete at the highest levels.

32

When I was at the University of Wisconsin in the 1980s, we had a fairly successful crew (rowing) program, including a national championship for the women’s team in 1986.

Every fall, during registration week, the team’s coaches would stand outside of the building where you would have to go to drop off your completed class registration form, specifically scouting for tall, athletically-built freshman women. “Have you ever done rowing? Would you be interested?” A friend of mine got recruited to the team that way, and lettered for several years.

(I also knew a coxswain for the women’s team; she was recommended for the team by some friends, because she was (a) tiny, and (b) had a loud voice. :slight_smile: )

33

I highly recommend rowing (crew) as a youth sport, if you have a club and a body of water nearby. They don’t even have to be the best on the team to score some scholarship money (girls), just above average with a couple of wins on their record is usually enough. And as you point-out, kids can even walk-on at college and do really well. While physically taxing, it kept my daughter in good shape all thru high school, trained her to manage her time and prioritize so she could still get good grades, and ensured she was so exhausted all the time she had no energy for getting into trouble. :slightly_smiling_face:

Additionally, when recruiters show up to practice from top schools from around the country to watch them, and the peer-pressure from the team-mates (“what schools are you considering?”) nearly ensures they will want to go to college.

34

Reminds me of…

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/WhiteCompetentBinturong-max-1mb.gif