I’ll just note again this really varies between school systems.
Because our HS requires athletics, there are no-cut policies for almost all the sports. You might be on a JV team, you might not always travel if you are varsity, you definitely might not play much in games, but usually you can do what you like at some level. And of course at some of those levels, the required commitment is not a big impediment to doing other stuff anyway.
But I understand in other systems, it is quite different, with only the experienced club kids likely to make the team at all. And I agree it can be disturbing how young some kids are when a particular sport seems to take over so much of their year. Of course if they love it, OK, but I do think sometimes parents or peer pressure or something like that is keeping people in sports just because they have some talent, and not because they actually love it.
That said, if Sports Son had a great experience growing up, and looks back fondly on their time in sports, then it might all be fine. Yes there are tradeoffs, but no one can do everything anyway. But for sure, make sure if you do something with that level of commitment, it is coming from an internal motivation, such that you are not doing it because someone else thinks you should.
And of course if your kid has been doing sports but one day comes to you and says they want to quit their sport because they want to do debate and the musical instead, don’t be the external force telling them no.
This likely depends on the school district and region, but this makes me sad for kids in this situation. As there are so many stories about children developing repetitive use injuries, experiencing burnout, and the benefit of cross-training in a variety of sports at earlier ages and then specializing later on, I really dislike the idea of needing to be on elite/travel squads early to be able to participate on a team in middle or high school. I’m not familiar enough with things on-the-ground with this, but I wonder if some of it is the salesmanship of the youth sports machine rather than the actual truth.
I think this is where the problem you saw occurred. DebateSon in less competitive sports was able to still explore options while SportsSon went with more competitive sports at an earlier age and was strongly discouraged by coaches to do so. So the problem doesn’t seem to be with participating in sports, but rather, participating in competitive leagues from an early age that exclude the possibility of exploring other potential areas of interest.
Sports can keep some kids attending school and eligible when they really don’t have much of an interest in academics. Also, by senior year (if not earlier) they are testing boundaries left and right. Athletics keeps their schedule packed and they are always too tired to get in much trouble. And the threat of being kicked off their team for illegal activity is always there as well. My boys just didn’t have much of an interest in academic activities but LOVED sports.
I personally don’t think many parents who want their kids to get into “competitive schools” ONLY encourage athletics. Those I know who pushed highly ranked colleges were selective in what sport their kid did (more tennis or cross country) AND made sure they were almost equally involved in a high level “academic” type EC (debate, robotics, etc).
I didn’t think my kid’s high level of achievement in football and rugby were going to get him into T50 schools. But my kids high level of skill in sports, music (plays 3 instruments, sang in multiple choirs placing at state, and did 9 musicals with key roles), and his 35 ACT (along with work experience and living on a hobby farm) got him into 100% of the schools he applied to.
HS sports, which I did, is much much better, in terms of freeing up time, than travel (which is definitely a very jealous romantic partner) and still can provide the benefits of participation.
Wrt scouting, it is a wonder to see a whole range of boys just get it together as a Philmont or better yet a Northern Tier crew (kayaking including portage across sections of MN/Canada). No helicopter parenting possible and the boys all step up. Or even debate which my D did not like until she tried and then later really understood when she got to AP Lang.
All my kids did HS sports but only one did travel and that was the child who got to explore the least.
This is a massive generalization. If you put your kid in a sport with the belief it will get that child into a great school, well that’s a fool’s errand. With that said, athletics can open many doors. I agree the club sport money making machines fleece many parents. But if your child really loves a sport and truly excels at it, doors can open. That assumes your kid is actively working to be recruited. Just being part of a resume isn’t going to do much.
I think any EC or activity that’s just done for a possible spike in college admissions is a waste of time!
I’m firmly in the camp of letting them choose what they like, no ulterior motives. My kids chose sports. I’m the proverbial soccer mom. If I had told my kids they needed to stop soccer and choose another EC that might position them better for college admissions, they would have fired me
College – like life generally – is about taking advantage of the opportunities that are put in front of you. If OP’s Sports Son was admitted to “less prestigious” schools than his brother, then he will still have an opportunity to work hard and excel in the school that he will attend; have meaningful relationships and experiences at that school; and, I suspect, will have very good outcomes once he graduates – even if it is from a “less prestigious” school.
Very school dependent, but I have talked with contemporaries at other high schools and in some cases the coaches at the high school are very connected to the club organizations and basically the coaches are telling kids things like if you want to start you will need to do such-and-such club. I don’t think this is a universal and I think it is far more common in certain sports, but it definitely can happen.
Yeah, it is interesting sometimes to see the contrast between the two- or three-sport kids who just do school teams plus maybe a brief summer program or two versus the one-sport/year-round/school-and-club-sport kids. For sure the latter have a better chance of ending up recruited, but the former may find it easier to have a healthy overall balance.
All the more reason why kids should do what they like, what has inherent value for them, as opposed to just building an application file.
My kids took a ton of APs, some taught by excellent teachers. They took them not so much to build a resume, but to learn the material. My kids’ ECs were because they enjoyed them; not so much for building a resume (although for one of them, it did lead to a highly selective acceptance, but the kid did it out of love, continues to do it out of love).
High school should be about maximizing learning, balanced with social life and ECs that the student loves, not about resume building. If Sports Son loved playing sports, then it was worth it. I’m sure he wouldn’t have continued playing, if he’d hated it.
If Sports Son is not happy with his acceptances, and if he likes to ski, he might consider U of Utah for business. He can become in state after his first year. He would likely be offered a large merit scholarship. The application deadline is April 1st.
It’s only a “waste of time” if they didn’t want to do the sports in the first place. If they did want to, awesome – college outcome should make no difference. If they didn’t want to, it was never a good idea regardless of the goal or motive. We made our kids dabble in sports through middle school purely for the exercise and learning to work on teams, but after that it was their call and we gave zero expectations doing so or not could be strategically helpful for them.
If your goal was college, you picked the wrong sports at least in terms of playing the odds. Soccer and basketball are super popular sports so you’re competing with a much larger pool of students and its harder to stand out. Quite a few of the kids who go onto the very top colleges in our area are recruited athletes. But the vast majority of the time its in sports like track and field or lacrosse or fencing or rowing, etc. The local teams aren’t stand out good in any of these and the schools don’t even having rowing or fencing. But there are clubs and other ways. And there is much less competition if you get good at these, even if you’ll never be near Olympic competition level. Most of these kids weren’t stand out athletes on travel teams growing up. They took it up in HS and still got recruited. I know a kid who didn’t even join a team until Junior year of HS then ended up getting recruited for throwing. It helped family members knew the sport and were able to coach him. But he went from zero to stand out in the course on one school year!
Entirely personal opinion, and I’m sure some here will disagree, but don’t rule out that it was the editor of the newspaper that helped “Debate” kid as much or more as the debate wins. I’ve been to my share of accepted student days where they brag about their accepted students and they seemed to always have a bullet for how many editors of the paper they had, and president of the class. I never heard a bullet for debate, even though there should be more debate kids that newspaper editors in the app pool. I was a debate parent for a while and I was a ranked national finalist as a student, and I never saw it be a factor in admission. Most college debate teams suck compared to high school. It’s a club at best. But there’s something about newspaper editorship that schools see as a particularly good proxy for leadership… On the other hand, the skills needed to be a great debater and editor probably led to an amazing essays and prompt responses. So it probably helped, just not likely as the reason itself for admission. My debate background is the gift that keeps on giving most of my life, so I think it’s great, it’s just not a big admissions thing by itself (though as part of a bigger picture, sure).
I also hope that Sports Son is not given any reason to think that his failure to be admitted to “more prestigious” schools – like his brother – is because of something that he did or didn’t do, or that he is a failure for not getting into the school(s) that his brother was admitted into. College admissions is a lot of impersonal business decisions made by people who are charged with doing what they see as being in the best interest of the school; and those decisions reflect nothing about the inherent worth of an applicant. I am sure that the schools which admitted Sports Son will be lucky to have him. The last thing that I hope happens is that Sports Son begins to question his own worth, or spends time thinking, “If only I had played less soccer . . .” or something like that.
I love that, HS as a time of exploration. That was/is our philosophy. When D22 started HS we had no idea how selective college admission works, so she chose classes and activities purely out of interest. Once we were in the middle of college applications and she learned what others went through to curate a resume, she often remarked how happy she was that we did not have that knowledge and she was free to enjoy her HS time (and had good college outcomes, we were lucky indeed)
I proofread my sons’ essays for them, and you are right, they were not identical essays. Debate Son’s essays showed a level of writing skill and critical thinking, and greater awareness of the world developed from years of researching and writing speeches, debate cases, and newspaper articles that Sports Son’s essays did not have. That doesn’t deprecate the effect extracurricular activities has on college admissions prospects, it amplifies it. Debate Son’s extracurriculars didn’t just give him a bunch of high school accomplishments to list on his application, they taught him skills that not only made him able to write more compelling essays, but also demonstrate his better preparedness to do the critical thinking and writing that college work requires, and that graduate work and professional work will require, thanks to his choice of extracurricular activities.
The word “bias” often has negative connotations, but it’s not always a bad thing, and if whoever was reading both applications had a bias in preferring Debate Son over Sports Son, maybe it wasn’t subconscious, maybe it was fully conscious, and maybe it was because colleges are academic institutions, and should be biased to favor academically focused extracurricular achievements over athletic achievements.
I just feel bad because I feel like I may have let my son down. When Sports Son was recruited for the travel team in elementary school, I have to admit I felt a parental pride and excitement for him that overrode my misgivings about the time commitment (not to mention the cost), and also when you have twins, you want to see them have opportunities to have experiences and interests apart from each other, as individuals, which is why I didn’t say “no, you’re staying on the same soccer team as your brother.” Maybe it was my job as a parent not to just let my 8 year old do what he wanted in the moment, but think about the longterm consequences. I’m not just talking about college admissions, I think that choice and the time commitment it required, the road it sent him down, closed the door on a lot of future opportunities to find other things he might have loved more than sports. It narrowed his worldview compared to his brother, even affected his friend group, thrust him into social groups based on what teams he was on, that haven’t led him to having the kindest or most loyal friends, lots of backstabbing. And for what? He doesn’t plan to play any sports in college, and the surgeon who operated on his knee said it will probably give him trouble and need to be replaced when he’s my age.
With all due respect, this has got to be the worst advice i’ve seen on CC so far. Do what you want in HS to enjoy it!!! As a high school student myself, I wish I did more of that. Life for 4 years should not revolve around college admissions. That’s what I did for the last 4 years, and to be totally honest I regret it.
There’s no reason to beat yourself up about it. Sports Son has undoubtedly had a lot of great and memorable experiences with his soccer teams; and hopefully he will remember and cherish those over the years.
Now is the time to be a great booster for your sons at their respective colleges, and encourage them in the different challenges that each will face! And make sure that each of them knows that you love them, and that you wouldn’t want them to be any different than who they are.
We all have regrets about our parenting. That comes with the territory. Yours is a little different from mine because my kids were NOT twins and so I got to screw things up sequentially, not simultaneously. But the “gee, maybe that wasn’t so smart” feelings are the same.
I opted to continue working in what was sometimes a high stress job with a lot of travel, before, during and after my kids were born. I never regretted that- but it did put us into some sub-optimal child care situations which I DO regret. Sometimes the people taking care of my kids were better than I was at navigating some “growing pains” situations- and sometimes they were much worse. But other than giving constant feedback and then changing the situation when it was clear it wasn’t going to get better- you get what you get especially with early childcare.
Your job as a parent is NOT over, despite what you may be feeling. My kids are long done with college, grad school, marriage, etc. and I am still a parent. They need you differently but they don’t stop needing you.
Regardless of where the chips land on the college admissions and decisions, your guys are lucky to have you in their corner- now and forever- as they navigate the next big step and the ones that come after that.
I get what you are saying.
You have twins and it’s hard to not compare them.
But the path has already been traversed and it’s time to look forward to the future. Let the kids make their own adult decisions now and I’m sure they both will possess enough logical reasoning to seek their own way.
There are worse places to be than UT Austin. It’s a great school with many opportunities. We’re visiting the campus for Spring Break and my son didn’t even get in…
Thanks for the comparative analysis using the massive sample size of two. There are plenty of kids who play sports, have similar stats to your sons, and do quite well in the college admission process.
I guess you’ve never heard of the use of twin studies in research?