The harsh reality is that high school sports teams aren’t open for beginners these days. Even sports like swimming cut now because you can’t have 10+ people swimming together in one lane. Sports like lacrosse aren’t easy to pick up even if you start in middle school. So how early do you have to get kids playing if they do show interest?
Depends on the sport and the high school. Where I live now, there are plenty of sports that are “no cut”, they also have teams just for freshmen, and also club sports. Plenty of kids don’t start until they get to HS.
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Answer is it depends on the sport, athletic ability, and drive. I know many instances of people starting a sport late (HS and later) and competing at the HS and college club level.
Didn’t you graduate UCLA in 2023? Unless you have young children (which I doubt), why start this thread?
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Adding: There is absolutely no need to play a sport in order to have success in HS, college, and beyond.
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Depends on the kids’ drive and general athleticism. For my kids, it wouldn’t have mattered how early they started. They are not athletic (nor am I). A naturally athletically gifted kid might pick up a sport they have never played before in high school and get a college scholarship. Michael Jordon famously didn’t make the varsity team in high school until he was a junior.
IMO, it depends on the sport. My brother runs a lax league, and he has kids start at age 5 but I don’t think they are that much ahead of those who start at 8 or 9, especially if those 8 or 9 year olds have been playing soccer or t-ball or swimming on the summer swim team - following rules, developing a little eye-hand coordination, running, learning to take turns and play as a team. Some sports, like baseball, just require doing a skill over an over, and if you do it at 5 or at 10 doesn’t really matter, you still have to do the practice reps. A 5 year old has more time to develop the skills, the 10 year old probably picks things up faster, but I think both can get to the same place by hs. Some sports like ice hockey are hard to catch up if you start later as your age group is always going to be levels ahead of you unless you are naturally gifted in skating.
My own kids (who were very small kids compared to their classmates) had a gym teacher who made them all run before they could play the ‘game of the day’ (basketball, volleyball or whatever All the kids at their school were pretty good runners and could take those skills to other sports. Mine did gymnastics, swimming, basketball, volleyball at the rec centers and they were equally bad at all of them. One D stuck with lacrosse even though she was much smaller than the other kids and she did play varsity as a freshman and did get a college scholarship to play. She worked hard but going into hs she was under 5’ and under 100 pounds, so some of it was just being willing to keep playing (and hoping to grow)
As others have said this will depend a great deal on the sport. It also depends upon the build of the student.
As an example, it is possible to take up crew relatively late and still make varsity in either high school or even university. However, this will depend upon the build of the student. A tall student with strong legs and arms from other activities can take up crew quite late and still be good at it. Whether they will want to stick with the schedule is another issue.
For hockey, it seems to help to pick it up very early. Both skating and stick handling are skills that take a lot of time to learn well.
I have only done a little lacrosse, and I think that the same is true for other family members. To me it always seemed like a tough one to pick up.
One daughter picked up basketball as a senior in high school and by the end of the season was actually not all that bad at it. She won a “most improved player” award at the end of the season. I have always wondered whether the award was given every year, or if they just made it up for her at the time. Again the build of the student is going to matter.
And yes, there is absolutely no need to play a sport to have success in high school, university, graduate school, life, or otherwise.
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Definitive answer #1
Definitive answer #2
No need to belabor the point particularly when this thread is simply a variation of one of OP’s earlier ones. Closing.
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