I’ve heard rumblings on youth sports sidelines lately. Another generation of parents is figuring out that most community sports leagues accept kids as young as 4 or 5. By the time those kids funnel into middle school with the players who’ve also been on travel teams, the quality of talent leaves no room for walk-ons.
In other words, your kid can’t wait until 6th grade to decide to play on the school soccer team. Thus parents, like me, of kids who love sports but aren’t “elite” or “select” athletes feel pressure to make their kids specialize early in a sport or at least keep them from taking a season off.
At age 9, my twin boys have played team sports half their lives, and they’re not great at it.
But they want to be. They love being a teammate. They love wearing the jersey and the helmet and cleats and the Under Armour, which does not fit 3rd-graders the same way it fits pro tackles, by the way.
Equipment like Under Armour and training methods once reserved for professionals are now readily available to children in our area, if their parents can afford it, of course. Cool Springs has about five sports training facilities that cater to kids.
I’ll confess. We took our boys to Showtime Sports Academy last spring, thinking they could learn the right way to hit a baseball, feel successful and have more fun. Now Henry has a picture-perfect swing, if he could just keep his eyes open as the ball comes his way.
I can’t believe my 9-year-olds had a batting coach. Though the guy was awesome, I hated paying money for that. As we signed up, I felt like I was taking a step toward raising a Todd Marinovich-type “roboathlete.”
My friends in elementary school didn’t worry about their high school athletic careers. But youth sports seem more serious now. Besides, fewer backyard baseball games break out when the PlayStation beckons. And in this Amber Alert age, we fearful parents won’t let our kids just roam the neighborhood looking for a pickup game anymore.
Some despotic parents see youth sports leagues not as play but as a training process akin to natural selection; let the cream rise to the top, as they say, and if we losers who play for fun can’t hack it, we should get out.
Talk about a reflected sense of self. What if your glory days were behind you at age 12?
Move over, trophy wife. Make way for the trophy kid.
First published 9/05.
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