We see a lot of high achieving kids around here with athletics because so many of the parents can afford club and private lessons. One of my closest friend’s daughter is a senior too and she has been doing travel soccer since she was 7. As she progressed, her talent outgrew our local travel teams so they put her on a team in Syracuse. They drove her to Syracuse and back several days a week after school to participate. But her passion was truly soccer- she loved it so much that she was willing to forego a more “prestigious” school in order to play D1 soccer. Her parents did not push her that way at all; I mean, they had high expectations because she is also super smart, but they allowed her to choose her own path- they merely facilitated it.
Huge congratulations! S23’s friend loves it there!
I feel this. D26 struggled to tell GT no. Well all of them considering the time they spend on these applications.
But that was the hardest . I asked about buyer’s remorse - she said no. But just that she spent so much mental energy since it was her #2. When they put that much effort into things it’s hard. Too bad they can only pick 1.
I hope the surgery went well. So hard to see your child in pain! My D26 missed a couple weeks of school earlier this year and legitimately get’s pulled out of class with a bright red slip to see the Dean of students every couple weeks to discuss her chronic absences . She gets so frustrated 
very large public school but seriously just put a damn note in her file regarding the surgery
Omg congrats !
So happy it is working out for your mom. I can only imagine the stress to get her to a better care situation so I’m sure that brings you relief.
Sometimes I wonder about public schools and absences. If your D is admitted to Auburn and USC clearly she is a strong dedicated student . Cut her some slack!
Did she get her D1 scholarship?
D26’s bestie was the same- and actually started in upstate NY but moved here in 5th grade. She did ALL the things while also being ranked 4 in the class.
But with new NIL funding / roster limits continued to make top 2 for schools but never chosen - short goal keeper and they took bigger kid.
After all that she quit soccer, this year cross country and crew and is committed to West Point. So maybe soccer discipline helped her find her people in another way?
It really is nuts and the kids get so stressed out. The worst part is she is a great student, doing well in every class, never misses school, so this really feels extra frustrating. I did case management in a school for chronically absent kids so I totally get it, but admin really needs to look at who they are chasing and why and not have a one size fits all approach.
We got a notice for C26 last year but they also said to us “we have to do this per state rules but we know it isn’t really an issue”.
D1 scholarships in soccer were never as numerous or lucrative as parents believe. The NCAA limited schools to the equivalent of 14 full scholarships in Women’s soccer. With rosters typically of 28 or so, that usually meant very few full scholarships at most schools. To my knowledge, typically they would give out a few full scholarships to star recruits and the rest would be partial scholarships, often less than 1/2. The rules actually just changed, I believe this year, so that schools can give out up to 28 full scholarships if they want to and have the funds to do so. Thus, this is the first time where at least theoretically full scholarships could be available to a whole roster, or even all the starters.
Re: students & sports -
Back when my kids were like 7 and 9 yr old and doing year-round USA Swimming, even at that age, some of the sports parents were just down right crazy. Those parents were convinced that their kid would get a full ride or full tuition scholarship to a D1 college for swimming and that was the sole reason why they had their kid in year-round swimming. 
The intensity of those parents was out of this world. One kid was so stressed out all the time at meets that she plucked all of her eyebrow hairs out just from the intense pressure. Another kid started pulling their hair out and would have crying break downs before or after a race.
My kids stopped for multiple reasons: (1) it eventually became too time intensive (daily practices 6 days/wk & once you approach high school, they required early am & pm practices); (2) cost (burned through $$ between monthly team fees, monthly swim meet fees, travel costs for attending the away meets, cost of all the gear); (3) D26’s favorite coach moved out of the area & got replaced with a butthead coach who told D26 that she was ‘too slow’, which sucked all of the joy out of swimming for my kid (that coach was rude; she left the team about a year later).
I have so many thoughts on your post. On the sports front, we too were frustrated with how youth sports have effectively pushed out kids who either start many sports late or don’t have space for older kids who just want to do a sport more casually than the intense levels club and even high school sports often require now. I could write for hours on my issues with youth sports today on multiple levels, but suffice to say your post resonated with me.
On the expensive and hard to get into private school part, my kid is in one of those. My experience is that there are a range of folks there. Some of them are the prestige hound parents who are there for that reason and expect their kid to get into and go to a prestige college because, prestige. I suspect that is the group who do the crazy things you allude to. But, most are there for the high quality education that they felt they weren’t going to get at their local alternative. Some are actually like us, and their kid is only there because the kid learned about the school and insisted it was where they wanted to go despite their parents reservations about the kid attending such a high school. To my daughter’s credit she has thrived there with wonderful friends and an excellent education. We have never pushed for her to go to a prestige school and it did not factor at all in what we hoped she would get out of attending. There are also some who came to the school because of negative school experiences (sometime social) in a larger school environment.
That would have been totally acceptable!
She did and was given a roster spot. She actually had roster spot offers (no money because D3) from several other “more prestigious” colleges, but she really wanted to play D1 soccer. She is going for medical school so she felt the education she could get was good enough for her to also follow her dream.
And that is the other side of it. She isn’t going to be a pro soccer player so her last chance to play at the competitive level that she loves is for a D1 team. To her it was worth it to forego the “better” schools. And her parents allowed her to make that decision.
This is really awful.
Unrelated, but it reminded me of something from my childhood – in kindergarten, my school had a phonics book that was just lists of words that students progressed through reading, starting with short vowel sounds and getting progressively more complex.
Our parents were instructed to time us for a minute to see how far in the list we got, reading out loud. Well, I was a precocious reader and did well, and my parents wrote down how far I’d gotten and sent it in.
My teacher didn’t believe them, I guess. So she made me sit at the front of the class and read the list while she timed me, so I could prove that my parents were telling the truth, I guess? (They were immigrants and spoke broken English, so perhaps she thought there was no chance I could read well in English?)
Anyhow. I ended up doing better in class than I had at home, and she didn’t have much to say after that. But I still remember feeling nervous and embarrassed like I had done something wrong, even though I didn’t fully understand what was happening at age 5. But point is, I’m now 52, and I still remember the incident clearly. And it was just a bad teacher – not one of my parents.
The kid you described is going to remember this thing with the honor roll for a long, long time. (And doubtful that’s the only egregious thing the parents have done.)
Ugh.
I started coaching the Tadpoles when I was 14 and continued coaching thru HS, College and thru Veterinary School (so 24).
I swam as a ‘preferred walk on’ at my instate flagship (Illinois) - which meant no scholarship or books etc but they wouldn’t kick me out of practice if I showed up 
I can distinctly remember numerous parents of our J.O. qualifier level (now called “States” I believe) as well as HS age with sectional performance state qualifying times etc try to tell -me- about how swimming scholarships worked and how their kid would be almost guaranteed one if they progressed at “x” level. These are ‘qualifier’ times which mean they met the minimum threshold times to participate in the next level of competition.
I was actually lectured, in a rather heated manner, by a couple of dads at one JO championship meet I was coaching, where my kid brother had just won his age group 50M free and I was congratulating him. Just as they were really revving up on me, I asked them if they wanted me to introduce them to the guy who had been intently watching the 50m Free final directly across the deck from me - Kevin DeForest, the Assistant Coach at Illinois, who was my coach there just a couple of years earlier, so they could tell him how swimming scholarships really worked. The sorta lost their head of steam real quick.
This 1 time, 1 of the intense swim parents introduced their 10 yr old to the team’s head coach as “the next Olympic swimmer.”
Meanwhile, I just had my kids in swimming because it was something fun to do and it’s hot here with 5-6 months of summer. 
I just wanted my kids to have fun and there were times where it felt like half of the parents were mega-turbo-charged.
One parent’s kid is now a senior in high school. Their family, over the years, became so focused on swimming that the sport took priority over actual education. Their current high school senior will need to repeat senior year because of poor grades & was home schooled for 9th and part of 10th grade (but the parent didn’t go through the steps of submitting home school grades like you’re supposed to if you want your home school kid to be NCAA eligible), but the parent is convinced that the kid is going to swim at a D1 college.
I also have enough thoughts on youth and high school sports to write a book. I have been on both sides of the issue- a parent and a coach- with one kid who was a starter and one that rode the bench.
I get that there are people that believe that all sports should be as competitive as possible and if you aren’t good enough you don’t make the team, no matter the situation. And I believe that too for certain levels. Certainly, if a parent is paying thousands of dollars for travel/club sport, they expect their kid to play so I get that an athlete with less ability or fewer physical attributes may not make the team. Same goes for college- you have to be really good to get a roster spot.
However, youth (rec) and high school sports are a completely different animal, in my opinion. Youth goes without saying (although the politics involved in our area’s rec football/cheer group was crazy), but I firmly believe that if you put in the time, you deserve to be on the high school team ESPECIALLY if you played as an underclassman. And it’s not just because D26 was in the situation- I felt the same way when S23 was a starter on the high school volleyball team as a junior. There was a senior libero (S23’s position) that did not play often because of S23. However, if the team was blowing out the opponent, the coach put in the senior for the third set. S23 didn’t get the stats that he could have because he was consistently pulled for the third set, but it didn’t bother him at all because he wanted to see the senior get to play. D26’s team was a complete departure from S23’s experience. Her coach’s goal was not only to win, but to absolutely crush the competition. The starters were played the entire game and only two or three other players were ever subbed in. D26 spent the whole season on the bench and only played during the breast cancer awareness game (because my mother passed away from breast cancer) and Senior Night. And you know what? She had double digit service points, showing that she was indeed good at volleyball. As for the team, the coach’s actions fostered an attitude of such extreme competition amongst the girls that they fought openly on and off the court, and wound up losing the district championship badly.
Public high school sports are usually sponsored monetarily by the school, and the primary goal of school is to teach. Therefore, high school sports provide an opportunity for student to learn teamwork, discipline, comraderie, and how to handle success AND adversity. You can’t get that if the only goal is to win.
I’m sending feel better vibes to both your D26 and S24. Hoping your D26 is in less pain quickly and that your S24 gets better soon and no one else in your family catches the flu.
On the attendance front, there must be some new edict from the MA Dept of Ed about absences, because our school has a new policy in place this year as well about too many absences resulting in loss of credits. I haven’t heard about how strictly they are enforcing it yet, but we’ll learn in a couple of months when we have to travel for cheer. I do think it’s dumb that they sent out the notice knowing that it’s a medical issue, but maybe that’s part of what’s required by the state? Seems dumb, but…
So happy to hear how well your mom is doing! That’s great news!
We also know families who have deliberately made the trade off of more affordable home means they’ll send their kids to private school (I don’t know if this is specifically a Bay Area thing but I imagine it’s seen in a number of high cost of living areas where good schools = expensive real estate )
Btw previous comments were not meant to paint everyone with the same brush - I know some of these high achieving kids are doing it because they want to and that’s fine - it’s the subset of parents who push who anger me. What’s wrong with letting your child.. just be a teen? Part of this at our school is the no homework over breaks/no assignments over summer policy- so kids really do get proper breaks.