I think it really depends on where you are located. My kids go to the largest HS in our State and the sports and performing arts programs are some of the best around. Over 130 State Championships, every year they win multiple State Championships.
My oldest D was on the golf team and before that I never thought of golf as a year round sport. Nothing was really required by the coaches but in the summer months she played in tournaments around the State and in the winter months she and a group of girls worked out with a trainer on physical conditioning. They all practiced year round as well, even in winter we were at the course hitting out of heated bay’s into the snow. The nice thing about it for us was the winter workouts wasn’t just her team mates. She was working out with several girls from rival high schools and they formed a nice little bond since they also competed against each other in the tournaments as well.
She wasn’t required to do any of this by the coaches but if you didn’t then you wouldn’t make the team or the line up. Mainly because you had to shoot in the mid to low 80’s or high 70’s to make the line up. To get that good in HS requires a lot of extra work so it really was up the the person to put in the effort. We did hear from other girls that their coaches did require the extra stuff and if they didn’t play a minimum number of the summer tournaments then they were pretty much not going to make the team.
Other people we know that go to smaller schools don’t have the same experience as there are barely enough kids to fill out the rosters so those kids don’t have to put in the amount of work in the off seasons.
Both my girls also are in Orchestra and in the top tier at our school (we have several orchestras) which is always in the State finals. The demands and expectations from the performing arts department almost rivals if not exceeds some of the demands of the sports teams.
I know everyone says kids shouldn’t specialize in one sport growing up but we have found in our area if they want any chance to play for the HS teams they really need to dedicate their efforts to one.
We live in a sports crazed state in a sports crazed town. It blows me away as to how much resources (and district budgets) are expended on athletic facilities. If the school district wants to pass a bond measure for capital improvements, it better include athletic facility upgrades or it might not pass!
Our first taste of this when we moved here was when my S signed up for t-ball (5Y). I got a notice that “try-outs” would be held on a particular Saturday. At the time, I thought, how cute. Must be a little party for the parents and kids to meet each other. We get to the fields and they are registering each kid and putting a “number” on their back. 20 adult coaches are lined up along the first base line in lawn chairs and armed with clipboards! What ensued was a real tryout involving fielding, throwing, hitting and running followed by a draft that evening.
For the next 12 years our summers were pretty much consumed by summer travel ball, softball for D and baseball for S. The kids both loved their sports and were pretty good athletes, so we did this because it was something they enjoyed and it substituted for summer vacations, 1 weekend at a time. I agree with @eastcoascrazy in post #12 though that a lot of the craziness stems from the for-profit youth sports industry. There were so many families we observed that were chasing a totally unrealistic dream for a “pot of gold” that didn’t even exist. Their kids were not that talented and even if they were, for non-revenue sports like softball and baseball, they were only going to get a partial scholarship. It was interesting that our HS softball coach’s first presentation to parents was how uneconomic it was to play for the “professional” travel teams. This is a HS coach that has won over 20 district titles in a row, with a team that D was on junior year making it to the state championship in the big school division. The coach was very intense in season for the varsity team (fair amount crying and unhappy parents who thought their kid was better than they actually were), but he was also all over them academically the entire year. When I see the coach around town, the first question he asks is how D is doing in her studies before he ask how she is doing on the ball field. We had a decent experience with the HS baseball coach, but it was clear that he and his assistants were much less academically focused. As for the other sports, I have heard good things and bad things, but it is clear that a coach who does not win in men’s football or basketball will not have a long tenure.
Agree with Dcolosi that in our town kids that excel in performing arts are also taking private lessons, in private orchestras or productions, and spend a lot of time practicing. Trying to do really well at anything these days requires a lot of effort. It is true that at smaller high schools or high schools that don’t value certain aspects of life (could be music or sports), kids can more easily get on a team or get in the orchestra, without doing much extra work. There could be negative aspects to having everything come too easily as well.
@BKSquared little league baseball is a whole other level of nuts! Coach flies his kids in from other states.
My experience with the swim program was swimmers were pushed to the point of shoulder injuries etc. Then when swimmers complained they were told they were whining. In what universe is this a positive experience for kids? In our area the top club team IS the high school team, so club and HS sports are indistinguishable. The clubs made a decision a few years back to “take it to the next level”. They have become successful when measured by wins, but I think something has been lost.
The reality is that there is far more non-athletic money available for college than there is athletic money (football and basketball excluded). For a mediocre to poor academic student it makes sense to pursue athletics. But a high achieving academic student that sinks boatloads of time into athletics at the expense of time on academics is really missing the boat. Soccer is the biggest of fools gold- the money per roster spot is miniscule.
We never picked the ‘best’ club team or the camps with the most exposure. My daughter always played for the moment. She did what she wanted, played with her friends, spent her summers with her uncle and not at a sports camp. She went to 3 different high schools so was always trying to make a team or find a new club.
We moved in the middle of sophomore year and I tried to get her on the club team in the new city. She’d missed try outs and no one returned my calls. Oh well, she just joined her high school team that was already in season. One of the coaches worked for the ‘best’ club team and in May they sent me a rather snotty letter that said she could play on the lowest team and it would cost a million dollars, but this was a big exception and only because her coach had recommended her. Her response was ‘no thanks, I’m going away for the summer.’ At the end of the summer she got an invitation to play on a new club team and was much cheaper (and a second letter from the Best team saying that it would be a mistake to pick the new team just because it was cheaper - they clearly didn’t know who they were dealing with as I like cheaper). That new team was really treated like the red-headed step child by the tournaments (worst hotels, worst playing schedule) but daughter was with her friends. She did go to a camp at the University, run by the coaches /owners of the ‘best’ club team, and was unimpressed. She could have had a scholarship at that D1 school but she wasn’t interested in the school and really didn’t like the coaches.
Anyway, it all worked out. She has a D2 scholarship and yes, it is only partial but she combines it with merit and other awards and it became a full scholarship. She had offers from D1, D2, and D3 schools. Could she have gone to a top school with a ranked team (Syracuse, Maryland, Duke) and played? No, but she’s very happy where she is.
Of course a huge high school is going to take the best players, swimmers, runners on the varsity teams. The big powerhouse schools here tried to have double teams to give more kids a chance to play (2 varsity teams, 2 jv, a freshman team) for lacrosse but it didn’t work. Kids weren’t happy on the 2nd varsity team (playing schools that just weren’t as competitive). They’d rather sit on the bench on the 1st varsity and go to the state championship. Schools are just too big to have no cut policies. You can’t have 200 kids on the football team or 40 guys on the tennis team. We have top sports high schools with 3400 students, so that’s 1700 boys. If 100 of them want to play lacrosse, that’s 33 on the varsity, jv, and freshmen teams. Except that 200 want to play, or 300. No way to do that without cuts. And you could tell them to go play soccer or tennis or track, but there are 100 kids wanting to be on those teams too.
It’s really no different on the Mathlete team or the debate team or the MUN team. There are only so many spots to fill and they go to the ones who are the best.
Remember sports are used by many to fill out their high school resume for colleges. The high schools in my school district average 3000 kids. The most well known High School had 150 girls on the swim team. 2 varsity teams and 3 JV teams. That had to be a long practice for the coaches to get all those girls swim time for practice and meets.
As i was a timer during the 800m swim during a meet with the said HS, I mentioned it to the swim referee. He went and asked the coach to verify what I said was correct. It was, and the coach said he tried to make the team smaller, but the parents wouldn’t let him.
@tseliot , yes totally nuts. Every once in a while a Bryce Harper comes along, but I think even he did not get expenses paid to play for out of state teams until later in youth ball. D and S played for some pretty stout teams from 10-14, but puberty has a way of completely reshuffling the deck by college for boys and HS for girls.
There are girls hockey and lacrosse teams that only do tournaments and do not practice together. The girls live all over, fly to the tournaments (and may practice before a game), play, and fly home. I know kids who have participated on such teams. A classmate of my kids played on the lax team. She also skied on a competitive regional team, her brother was a US ranked tennis player and while he played for his hs, he mostly played on the travel circuit. Went to the same high school as Missy Franklin who did swim on the hs team when she wasn’t competing at Olympic level meets. My kids never could have done sports like that because 1) we didn’t have the money and 2) my kids weren’t allowed to miss school, and athletes who travel for sports miss a lot of school.
The majority of kids at the school are ‘regular’ athletes. They might be at the top of their sport for high school kids, but they play locally. Many play in college because that’s they type of school it is - suburban, private, fairly wealthy kids with top academics who head to the NESCAC, Ivies, Stanford and other PAC 12 schools. They’ve played sports since they were 3 and aren’t going to stop now.
Where we are, except for football the school sports are the lowest level of competition many of the kids face. Two boys from S1’s HS baseball team went D1 while nearly his whole travel team did. The girls soccer coach is a friend of ours but a number of premier players skip the HS season because it is a bit of a joke.
S1 and D both did XC at the high school, very fun and very inclusive for even the slow runners. We hosted occasional pasta dinners and pancake breakfasts. If you wanted to host, spots were available at the beginning but went quickly.
Just for the record, re post #23 - officially sanctioned Little League teams are not allowed to recruit outside of their geographically defined area. You MUST play for the team that represents the town or area where you live. While some families do figure out how to game the system, they are very strict about this. The teams referenced in the article are NOT part of the Little League network. Little League is big in our area, and we had a great experience with it, although it did dictate when we were able to take our summer vacations (never before Aug 1st!)
Our township public HS is small and we live in an area where there are a ton of private schools, which siphon off many of the elite athletes (those that have played club as in post #12), so my 2 very middle of the road athletes were able to have great HS team experiences. Both were fortunate to have played 2 different varsity sports. I am thankful they had these team experiences and something to keep them active on most afternoons after school. Other than Little League and a local low key girls lax club (no travel greater than 30 minutes), we resisted all the high-fee club and private coaching pressures. Both went on to play a club sport at their uni, which they have really enjoyed.
Totally agree with @eastcoascrazy’s take on the for-profit club issues.
I think it is a myth that most HS athletes are playing because they think they will get a big scholarship. By that point, most families have come to the realization that those are few and far between. For the younger “star” player, that may be the dream. Kids play because they like their sport, they want the team experience, and think it is fun. As well as doing something besides academics. And some play due to inertia - it is what they do and they just continue. My kids enjoyed their HS ECs and were involved because they liked what they were doing outside the classroom, not just to pad their resume or to aim for a scholarship.
the intensity of high school sports is not any more intense than high school fine arts or high school academics. All of them can be off the charts these days. Just look at the chance me threads on this website…“I’ve taken 10 AP classes have all A’s, am one point from a perfect SAT score (but will take the test again in the spring!), am the star of five drama productions, and all conference in three sports…do I have a chance for Ivy League…blah blah blah”. Its the world we live in these days.
D played one year of volleyball, one year of lacrosse and then did three years of dance as one of the roster fillers. She enjoyed it all for the camaraderie. She has now graduated college and is in law school. I think she looks back fondly on those days. S played four years of baseball and is now a D3 player. We stopped the club ball nonsense once he got to high school because he had no desire to compete for a D1 spot (not that he had a chance for one).
My kids were fortunate in that they grew up in a small school district. A student could be a 3 sport athlete simply because they needed to fill out the teams. My son ran XC and track, but his heart was in his music EC’s, so he missed practice twice a week for other commitments. My daughter’s swim team moved up the ranks from the bottom in their Section to one of the more competitive teams, with a coach who kept it fun. I was shocked to hear about larger suburban districts near us and how difficult it was to make the different teams, especially the soccer team.
My daughter was on the ‘elite’ swim club team and was miserable. She wasn’t really an elite swimmer but grew up on the team from age 7. In 10th grade, she switched to a smaller, lesser team, and absolutely blossomed.
In her younger years, her former team was fun and friendly. But, parents pleaded and begged and wrote letters to get the coaches to step up to the next level. They obliged, and it was great for some kids. But, it was truly parent driven. I found the coaches’ behavior to be abusive. And whether it was directed at my D or someone else, I thought it was an unhealthy environment. Some parents liked the culture though.
I think its in part to chasing college scholarships. And if it is not for the scholarship its to bump your chances. Its everything from sports, to music, to drama to robotics teams. Its insane. Just reading cc you see that. Published papers, research with college profs at high school, starting businesses, and what not. We have taken the fun out of it as it has become a means to an end. College is big business and it has worked its way down to the elementary school level as most people cannot afford 50k a year per child for college. By the time high school comes around they are burnt out. Its no longer fun.