Take this conversation about qualifying as a soccer player and apply it to admissions and competitive scholarships. Kids cannot compare themselves to anything local. That same edge exists in all areas on the national/international level.
My D15 was a varsity athlete in sking. She skied competivly for her club (way more intense than HS varsity here) since 4th or 5th grade. I have to say she got some very valuable life skills from her sport. Time management was a huge value added. ski races take up full days and often long weekends in winter. Training takes up all of the daylight hours on weekends in winter. She was a 4.0 student throughout because of the time management skills. She also was exposed to a wide variety of kids during race weekends. She also learned to swear (thanks to the ski coaches)… I guess she would have learned that somewhere! She doesn’t ski for college, mainly because the school she is at is too far from a real ski hill. She chose the school over the sport because she didn’t want sport to be her job in college.
^^
It’s pretty crazy. I am friendly with a VIP of the New England Revs. We talk a lot. He has explained the whole college process to me and how it works. They get the kids now at a very young age and they play 5 times a week year round. Fly all over the country to play other academy teams. Who do you think comes to watch these games? All of the D1 coaches. The D1 coaches are not wasting their time going to watch some local Columbus Day club soccer tournament with 5,000 kids. They show up at the Academy games and there they have the cream of the crop already picked out for them.
Most parents do not understand this at all. The level and depth of talent on the academy teams is crazy good.
My younger son is playing club soccer and might play ODP. He’s a very good player. As a sophomore he has been able to contribute to a very good D1 high school soccer program. At this point though I’d say he has a better chance of getting into his school for his grades than for sports, lol.
And son17 just had a friend commit to a local state U for track the other day. Lot’s of spots on a track team!!
Son just texted me to say he was accepted to Ole Miss! Did a quick Google Earth look - 1 soccer field. LOL
@mtrosemom I agree, I think time management was one of the biggest things my older son got out of sports. That and a routine of staying fit have helped in college (doesn’t play collegiate sports).
I hope no one thought I meant any individual kid was not capable of getting a lot of benefits from sports. As I said, it’s an individual experience, but I’ve just come to realize in recent years, that maybe sports don’t really provide different or better benefits than many other activities of choice. As @dfbdfb says, it’s the choice to work at something, not the activity itself, that matters.
Where I’m from, it’s traditional for kids to play as many different sports as possible year-round, all the way through high school, and that is considered (maybe not by the majority any more) much more worthy and somehow much more of an investment in their future than academics, music, tech club, volunteering, etc. Basically, the “inspirational” quotes and stories passed around imply that only sports can teach you to play as a team, suck up the pain for the greater good, learn to accept instruction or criticism, etc., etc. As I’ve watched my own kids grow, I think they learned some of this from team sports (and the enforced activity is a great thing for them @VickiSoCal!), but mostly they really gained their maturity and personal growth from other activities.
I do hope S continues to look for opportunities to play and ref soccer as he gets older, as well as opportunities to practice and perform on his instrument. (I think he’s “safe” from recruiting, @dfbdfb – I’m not that sure many colleges are in desperate need of a marginally gifted but hardworking white male trumpet player majoring in engineering. :-j Although he’s very much an individual, he certainly has chosen some of the most common pursuits.)
@IABooks I thought your post sparked a good conversation. I have one sports-minded kid and another that has nothing to do with them, so I see both sides of the coin at home.
@STEM2017 how did you kid get accepted so fast? I though he was a total slacker with no apps in :))
CONGRATS!!!
No action here at all. Just sitting and waiting. Might be a long few months,ha.
@IABooks i liked your post. I think kids reap the most benefits if they can find some sort of sport they can enjoy AND participate in a club that they can work on other aspects of their personal development.
My older son17 talks more about Model UN and DECA around the house than he ever talked about sports.
I had to google what a marimba was 
Turns out my daughter played on in the middle school band and I thought it was a xylophone, lol.
Good resolution on the cat issue for the kid in my class-she switched rooms with a girl that wanted to live with the kitten who was on her floor, so everyone is happy.
We’re not musical or athletic. And by “we” I mean “them” (I had two athletic letters in HS and I’m still by far the most active of anyone in the family). My perspective on my time spent on the tennis, soccer, and track teams is that if you were a suck up or a coach’s pet or the absolute best on the team, you got to play a lot. If you had an obstreperous personality and refused to do stuff simply because everyone else was doing it, you sat on the bench a lot. My husband ran xc in high school and ruined his knees because of a coach that pushed him too hard when he was injured, so his memory of sports isn’t that good either.
The girls played soccer when they were little, didn’t love it, gave it up in middle school. Did dance for many years, stopped when the girls around them started talking about the quietest way to throw up to maintain their weight. Also played tennis (didn’t love it, but I still play), and older D did equestrian for one hideous, expensive year. She still loves horses and wants to ride, but that particular coach was a straight up smoking in the barn abusing the kids nightmare.
But she had a winning record, so everything else was secondary-and that’s the message I personally learned from team sports, and it’s shared by my family, so…yeah, team sports are not big in this house.
@RightCoaster The “give us your name and address and pay the fee” apps are starting to pay off.
The essay apps are going to be a while.
I was a recruited athlete out of high school to some smaller private schools. But honestly by the time all that was happening I was just DONE–and this is back in the day before year round club sports. I LOVED my sport but I was ready to have a different life. Also…some of these schools were sooo small and in very small towns and just seemed almost depressing.
I did play in a rec league in collegel and really enjoyed the workout and making friends. I always crave a good workout and am more active than I would say about 90% of my friends. It taught me how to really push myself and work up a good sweat…I WISH I could still do all that I used to do.
Sadly, the sport was rough on my body. I cannot jump and run and I need a knee replacement even though I am only in my mid 40’s and am at a healthy weight, etc. I DO seriously wonder about these kids who play a sport year round and wonder how their bodies are going to be when they hit middle age!
D was actually pretty decent at the same sport but stopped playing in jr. high. The push to do club sports in the off season and the crazy competitive level of play (“you have to play $5,000 a season club ball if you want to play in high school”) and the fact that she just didn’t care to be around the girls who played the sport----all led to her declaring she was done. I honestly could have been one of those moms and I’m super glad she saved me from it!
@RightCoaster ODP and Academy can pull in different players, just be careful to realize that ODP by itself is unlikely to get your kid recruited most of the time, unless they offer something really special. We did the ODP gig and it was actually quite beneficial.
If nothing else we have the most amazingly durable travel duffle bag you have ever seen. SD14 still uses it to go back and forth to college
@IABooks to me the key is that kids are involved, engaged, and passionate about something. It could be sports, it could be music, it could be theater, DECA, robotics, whatever. Be involved. Be on a team. Contribute to something that is more than yourself. Do sports help with teenage hormones and sleep? Yes, arguably more so than the other items listed. But all have benefits and not all have the same drama and stress level sports do so there are pro’s and cons to each patch. Find the fit, don’t fit the find. I’m all for having kids try stuff when little to see what sticks but we see some of the craziest parents on the sports circuit…living vicariously.
Truth be told…we see it in the college application process as well.
Progress! We are making progress!!
Dh and I just dropped D17 off with D15 for her first college visit. :D/ She is going to stay overnight with her sister and attend an open house tomorrow, eat at the cafeteria, visit the Honors College, go to an art show, etc. This is HUGE for her. She wasn’t feeling well this week, so I wasn’t even sure last night that it would happen. Until recently she couldn’t walk long enough for a college tour (and refused to bring a wheelchair), so this is a big deal. It’s a really urban campus, and I’m not sure it’s the right place for her, but I am beyond excited and hoping that maybe this will help her begin to imagine her future somewhere. [-O<
Anyone going to Carnegie Mellon Turning tartan weekend this weekend (Sun-Mon)? DS is signed up for it - of course he has a bunch of homework and apps to work on but I am hoping it will give him a good sense of the place and classes. Wonder if anyone has had experience with it - good or bad?
So no soccer or much athletics here for DS except karate & golf, plays violin.
@CA1543 --no, not attending. Monday is not a holiday here so just a regular weekend. Besides, he has essays to write!
Would love to hear your thoughts though about the student body and the dining situation. We visited during the summer when the only people on campus were prospective students. I was curious how the lack of centralized dining hall operated? Do students still interact or just grab food-to-go while working on PS/labs? Do students seem engaged while walking around campus?
Thanks!
Dd just got an email from one of the colleges she applied to last night. They marked her application as complete, including her test scores she just ordered yesterday. I checked CB and those scores are not yet fulfilled. That tells me they accepted the scores on her transcript.
I would love it if ds decided to pay club lax in college. He played his whole life and loved it but because of some terrible coaches, some favoritism to snotty players and other activities offering him more enjoyment, he stopped loving it and started to hate making time for it. He finally stopped playing last spring. I miss it! It was so much fun to watch and ds learned so much from playing all those years. I would love to see him regain a positive look at lax again in a different environment and find his love for the game again. I’m just thankful he had so many other wonderful activities to remain involved in after he stopped playing lax.
@lemetz Prayers that your Dd feels well tonight and tomorrow and enjoys this experience. I hope that her health continues to stabilize and improve and that she can be excited about her future!
I was very glad when S17 announced his retirement from his 7-year soccer career after 4th grade (started peewee soccer) =)) Already at 4th grade, it involved twice a week practices and weekend games. Other kids had tryouts with AA to BB teams (traveling teams for all levels.) To join the traveling U12 team was over $1800 7-years ago. Some middle schoolers had summer training in Brazil and were creating portfolios. No way.
With S19, Houston, we had a problem. He sat on the sidelines and cried all Peewee soccer season unwilling to run around and kick a ball while his brother in Kindergarten team was having a great time, scoring the most goals - 3 goals, two to his goal, and one to his opponent’s goal. Still his team won. :))
He stumbled into a Destination Imagination team thanks to Mom looking for after school social “Activities” for him.
I could not figure out what DI was about but at the end of the year I thought Oh, I get it! This is something kids can learn problem solving and sportsmanship, work as a team, and everyone gets a medal! So he happily did DI for couple years as his “sports.” Later, Odyssey of the Mind (same thing as DI, 7th grade) while I coached the team for a couple years.
I also coached his robotics team and then he did scouting. Scouting is the only thing S19 continues. S17 quit scouting early after 7 years. (7 years seems a theme for S17. He will have to quit his violin lessons of 7 years if he goes OOS.)
Yes, there are many alternatives with similar “sports” benefits.