Myth #5 personal trainers

Myth #5

 Personal trainers are a necessity to be excellent in youth sports.

 Play pickup games. Play tag with your friends. Do hop-skip- and jump, hop scotch, or red rover. They are just kids.

Think of your top five athletes. Are any of them  12 years old? By putting that label on children at such a young age we certainly have a tendency to believe they are special.

 I’m being told there is such a thing as a 10 year old athlete. My definition of an athlete is a person that starts for a varsity high school team in their chosen sport(s). No 10-12 year old does that.

 I was once told that my son, at the age of 10, was a good athlete, by multiple people. I didn’t know they were serious. I thought they just wanted me to tell them how great their kid was.

Are we now saying you have to have financial resources to play youth sports? Is that not entitlement? How do poor children get to play at the higher levels?

 Have we gotten to the point that specialization has robbed the children of the basic fundamentals of running stopping, throwing, kicking, and catching? They now have to be taught by specialists?

 I am all for C.A.T. in rehabbing injuries. But let’s be clear. Until you show me a study where an overweight 10 year old was given a personal trainer for 8 years and made into a DI athlete with no baggage, I have a hard time believing.

 We have gotten messages from a couple of national trainers and they say it gives an athlete a mental edge and a physical edge, but that applies only for the very top 1% of the athletes in the country.

 Go outside or play for fun pickup games. Coping, sharing, playing, socializing, and fun will give you the tools you need to be successful on and off the playing fields.

In the last 30 years there is no question that athletes are bigger stronger and faster than ever before. But in the history of mankind this time continuum is about a mili second of a nano second of a micro second. So the increase is from technology not genetics. If this is true, then there must be a cost.

I am all for off season conditioning and having children get down time and active ret from youth sports. But I am seeing a disturbing trend where children go from playing one sport in the afternoon a to cross fit training and sometimes doing two sports in one day, multiple times during a weekend.

At Frozen Shorts we specialize in balance. It is very important that adults realize that children have a natural pace of development. Trying to speed it up  through a personal trainer or by playing one sport year round to get to the mythical 10,000 hour level of excellence comes at a cost.

 We are seeing on children some of the same injuries we see in adults. We are also seeing some of the emotional stress with playing DI and professional sports in young children.

If only 1% of all the kids playing sports make it to the D1 level why on earth are we coaching and training these little children like D1 and professional athletes?

Let’s embrace the fact that they are children, not take advantage of it.

Myth #4 Shocases lead to D1 Scolarships

Myth#4

Showcases are there as a big step towards your scholarship goal;

 Here is my definition of a showcase. An elite, truly elite, program sends out specific individual invitations for you to attend. The event is only for children above the age of 15. The coaches just let the kids play, minimal instruction. The parents of these children playing pay a nominal fee. The showcase is not there for the main purpose of funding a team, program, or organization.

I understand that college coaches sometimes get paid a fee to attend these showcases. They also get an advantage watching a lot of kids in a short time. They can only attend these showcases at certain times of the year according to the NCAA. Because of the plethora of these money making showcases, there is a  watered down aspect starts to arise at these showcases. Many may not have the talent you think there is.

 Lastly, in some cases, kids go to these showcases, tired, not at their peak and try to impress the college scouts with their “stuff” and they can get injured. 80% of a college coach’s job is recruiting. If you have talent we will find you. Its our job and we like our job, a lot. We want to find you when another coach cant.

Let me relate to you the last showcase I went to for my 15 year old son. We traveled six hours by car to Virginia. He played four games against the same level of competition that he normally played against in his ‘elite” travel league.

 After the first game when everyone was headed back to the hotel I told my wife I was going to hang around for awhile. I watched every team I could get to, a total of about 600 kids. I saw two children that I considered to be D1 material. So, in essence, the other 598 families were paying for these two kids to be seen.

I then went and found the person running the tournament. I told him I was a college hockey coach and would like to meet some of the other college coaches there scouting. He immediately asked me to sign in. There were six other coaches on the list and I did not recognize any D1 schools.

He played in four games against four teams with about the same scores as there was in his normal league. We paid $600.00 to go to Virginia and sit and watch soccer for the weekend. I understand that some people refer to this as their social lives and have and maintain friendships after the children stop playing. But the point of this article is this was supposed to be a showcase for college coaches and perspective student athletes for college bound children.

 It was not. It was the last showcase we went to. As a side to this story it was also the last season my son played travel soccer, and he still played and started for his high school team his senior year.

He chose not to play soccer in college when he was handed a 7 page work out list for the summer before college started. I agreed with his decision

He no longer plays soccer of any kind.

Youth Sports Myth#3

Your team and the kids who play on that team have a much better chance of getting a Division 1 scholarship by playing “elite” travel sports.

You play other “elite” teams and you play more games than playing recreation level, which is for sure. But I have seen little talent differences in a vast majority of these “elite” teams and the town teams, or even the level of top talent on a so called recreational team. Some kids with talent prefer to play with less travel and less pressure. That does not in itself mean they are not as good as some kids playing on an elite team. It also doesn’t mean that for most kids playing on any “elite” the mythical D1 full ride scholarship offer is waiting for them. If you are good enough, college coaches will find you

 Now there are some truly elite teams. Simple math tells you that there are way more ‘elite” teams, with way more kids playing on them, than there are scholarships.

I was told, on one “elite” academy that 17 players went on to play Division 1 athletics. So I asked a friend who does this sort of thing for me, to verify this. Out of the 17, only TWO were playing on a D1 team, and only one was playing regularly.

The National team in your sport,  invite only travel teams, and a few, very few, of the very top programs who recruit children from all over the country to play on their team, are the truly elite teams, and they do send many more players to D1 schools with athletic scholarships, that is true. But there are very few of those teams, and even they don’t have the market corned on scholarships. Academic excellent plays a key component to those offers and missing school days to go travel and come home tired from a long weekend do not help you get good grades for the most part.

 I believe to be called a truly elite team; they should be sending most if not all of their players to a Division 1 program. I have watched over 200 of the so called “elite” teams play and to say that it is much better than a recreational team is true in most cases, but hardly fits my definition of elite.

 Let’s be clear here. Most teams are only elite because someone put a title on it. In fact, most elite teams consist of a group of kids whose parents agreed to pay an outrageous fee for participation on this team. The members of this team were picked from a pool of participants that excluded anyone who could not afford to pay the fee and or did not want to give up everything else they were doing in that time frame to play on this team. How is that elite?

The league in which you play has the same criteria as you do. In this criteria there is no way you can expect true elite completion. If it were all the scores in most games would be extremely close!

 Most recreation level youth sports are not as good as “elite” level because of desire. I have watched many of them, well over a 100 of the ‘recreational” teams play, and I can say that just like elite, there are a couple of kids who stand out, a couple that aren’t very good and the rest are about the same talent level. You could certainly make a case that you could switch some kids from either team and not see much of a difference in either teams play.

 Being around children we all know that they change their minds all the time, daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute in what they want to do. In the elite travel case, pushing a child to play on a team they don’t want to inhibits their fun and thus the quality of their participation. I have seen on many teams, before, during, and after games, a disgust, lack of enthusiasm, and disinterest from many children being pushed to play at this so called “elite” level.

 Also, since children don’t fully develop physically until they are in their early to mid twenties, and mentally even a bit later. However, and research is starting to come out , that being a great teammate far outweighs the advantage or perceived advantage of playing with a group of kids whose parents “paid to play.”

I have talked to many kids who passed up playing for their high school and I will tell you that most, publicly, say they wouldn’t change what they did. But behind the scenes, and in  growing numbers, kids are either being asked to play, and say no, are going back to their high school teams, and quietly to, some family and close friends, are saying they regret their decision to play elite sports.

You see, there are only so many spots on college teams and they are getting filled by a global pool of talent. This talent comes from all sorts of places and teams. While it is true that some college coaches only recruit form the pedigree tree, many are looking for multi sport athletes, that are really great teammates and high quality character people first and foremost, and “elite” does not have a strangle hold on either of those two characteristics. 

In most cases, you are paying a lot of money for your child to play on that so called elite team for YOUR child to get better, not the child next to yours. That is an environment ripe for dissent.

Our city has what is called the ALL-Greater Rochester team for each high school athletic season, boys and girls. It is true that most of the kids play on a club team. I try and figure out how many are actually getting “full rides” to college to play a sport each season this list comes out. You can too!

Oh, and as a plug for multi sport athletes, see how many of these children play more than one sport!

Here is an experiment you can try. Ask an AP teacher how many kids in his or her class got an academic scholarship to college and compare the total amount they got to an “elite” travel teams athletic scholarship total.

GUEST BLOG: Kathleen Spring Second Grade Teacher on Learning

Teachers know that the best learning occurs when everyone is actively engaged in rigorous content that is accessible to all of them.  Good teachers know how to make that happen.  A teacher does not only teach math to the best math students.  There are also times when a student learns better from another student.  Kids have ways of talking to other kids that make it more understandable and the material less intimidating. 

In a classroom, there are all different types of learners with strengths and weaknesses.  Educators have a clear knowledge of their students and how to use a student’s strengths to develop their weaknesses.  For example, a student might be strong in math but not in interpersonal skills.  Therefore, a teacher could pair that student with a group of highly interpersonal but weaker math students and have them work through problems together.  Anyone who has ever had to teach something knows that you learn it even better when you have to teach it.  All in the group benefit. 

True educators find out what the strengths are in each student and make sure that those strengths are brought to light and utilized to benefit everyone.  Jonny might need help from Susie in spelling, but then he teaches her how to record her story on the computer the next day. 

It seems to me the same would hold true on an athletic team.  Coaches are teachers of a sport and the skills that go along with that sport.  Coaches know the strengths and weaknesses of their players.  Yet in my experience many coaches spend more time with the players with more skills then less skills.  I have seen this divide teams on many occasions when both my children played “elite” sports. 

Then people are surprised when they see teams and players in a dysfunctional setting.  We try to avoid this everyday in the classroom. 

Kathleen Spring

Second grade special education teacher, 15 years classroom experience

Myth #2 Playing one sport year round helps you get a scholaraship

Myth #2 A child should play one sport year round to get the athletic scholarship.

One sport year round is needed to make your child a better athlete, really? Let’s take a look at the reasons this is happening. There are many many children playing one sport year round. It certainly is a paradigm that has taken hold and grown over the last thirty years.  More and more youth sports organizations, including USA Soccer, adhere to this policy of having children commit to this level of participation. They actually ask for the family to submit a calendar of their “outside” activities and make sure that the parents know that their child, if he or she does not want to fall behind, needs to make this commitment to a year round “training” program. It is also inferred by some of these coaches that failure to make this level of commitment will cause the child to be benched. Interestingly though, it is never the star player that receives this sort of demand. Excuses are commonly made for this player.

“Mandatory” camps are held during the “off” season. While not being exactly mandatory, it is made clear you better attend if you want to keep your spot. Families are told that the team must stay together and play together if they want to win.  It becomes a partnership with the parents and the children, a “lifestyle” I am told.

I would much rather be home, with a home cooked meal. My family eats together 6 times a week and I am confident it is a major reason we are such a close knit family. Plus it would save a lot of money.

 Let's insert an interesting fact hare. ALMOST all these teams and organizations speak this mantra and yet many of them don’t win as much as they would lead you to believe with the importance they put on winning. Oh sure if you play enough games, go to enough tournaments you will eventually win or get “close,” thus providing the impetus to play fewer kids and to go out and recruit better players.

Few parents realize when this is happening that their child may be losing playing time to the new kid. AND this new kid, the new “chosen one” comes in and is given  ‘cart blanch” and special treatment by the coach on many occasions, thus undermining the team concept and the mantra that we must stick together and play together.

Sometimes I hear that the parents allow this because the children really “love” the sport and the parents are letting their children “take this as far as they can.” ( I LOVE ice cream. But I can’t eat it every day, it’s not healthy for me.) Other times I hear that the “pros” do it this way so should I. The   athletic scholarship mantra is repeated where this child got a scholarship playing one sport year round. My kid is as good or close so why not, more is better. BUT IS IT?

Let’s look at the science, psychology and data.

First there are two to eight times more injuries for those who play one sport year round. Health, according to Dr. James Andrews considered being the TOP Orthopeadic sports surgeon in the country says the most important thing for an athlete’s success at each level, is their health. Next, children change their mind all the time. So having them do something, anything year round, is against their nature and will begin to wear on them and they won’t continue to grow and benefit. It’s called the law of diminishing returns. That may initially want to play the sport year round. They may even enjoy it. But soon, it will wear on them. They are kids, and kids want to do different things. They will continue on to please their parents and avoid the stigma of quitting, but then injurious start to pop up and their bodies and minds tell them that they need rest and soon you have a child not having any fun.

Lastly the drive for athletic scholarships or a pro career is not dependent on one sport year round according to professional teams. The Minnesota twins look for multi sport athletes. Their top prospect, Byron Buxton, and the #1 prospect in ALL of minor league baseball was a basketball star in high school also. Three out of the four quarterbacks in this 2013 AFC and NFC championship game were drafted by MLB teams. And Peyton Manning, the one quarterback who wasn’t drafted, played shortstop in high school through his senior year and continued to play baseball in the summer. Ryan Callahan, captain of the New York Rangers played soccer growing up and advocates time away from hockey in an interview with me at frozenshorts.com. Brian Gionta, captain of the Montreal Canadiens takes three months off from skating after every season. See his interview also, at frozenshorts.com.

 Absence does make the heart grow fonder. Abby Wambach, considered to be the top female soccer player in the world, was a high school basketball star.

Besides, doing something year round for 20 hours a week is considered a job.

5 Myths about playing “ELITE” travel youth sports:Part1

5 Myths about playing “ELITE” travel youth sports:

1.     Because you pay a lot of money your child’s athletic ability has a quantitative value. Oh boy! I have heard over and over people brag about how much money they have spent on their child’s youth sports experience. I have heard parents brag/complain about how whipped they are from the brutal schedule their child has in youth sports. Parents bragging about their child’s Orthopeadic surgeon of personal trainer. I have heard parents say “they got cut” from a team “My son signed his first contract to play junior hockey.   (Even though they paid $10,000 to play on that team.  I have seen children go play on an elite academy team with their families paying thousands of dollars and bragging about it only to hear that they regretted the decision.

 There is no correlation to the money you spend on your child’s athletic “elite” travel team and their ability to play at a higher level. You can’t buy talent. If this was true, how do poor kids reach their athletic peak? Think of this example. Your child has a cold. You take her to the pediatrician and they give a prescription for some medicine. You are done. You are not sent to a specialist and pay more money do you? You go to a specialist to get special results. What if this is not a special situation? Then wouldn’t you get frustrated?

Over and over again we hear the disappointment in the end game of this monetary path. The money spent far outweighs the money the families receive in scholarship. There is a tangible hangover to this paradigm. We see it every day.

 On our website frozenshorts.com we have a form to fill out that will tell you what it cost per hour for your child to play elite travel sports for a weekend.

The New Blowout Mentality

The New Blowout Mentality

Over the course of the last five years where I have attended over 500 high school, and youth sports games and practices and a disturbing trend has emerged. Teams, coaches, parents, and players, have gone far away from sportsmanship and fair competition to clobbering an opponent.

 In a bizarre way it seemed, in most of these games, that there is little if any pleasure derived from these victories or defeats. There seems to mostly angst for the victorious team.

On many occasions I have stood near the exit where players, coaches and referees leave the playing field or court. I have heard some of the most incredible comments emanating from the participants in the days contest.

“They sucked what a waste of time.”  “We could have beaten them by more if we wanted.” “”The officials lost control of the game.” “The other coach didn’t have his team under control.” “They sucked, that is why they were so dirty.”

 When I asked a coach why he didn’t substitute early his response was chilling “What did the other team came back and made it close?

What? Wait a minute. Isn’t the whole point of playing a game with an opponent, the competition? Isn’t having fun and learning about positive pressure a direct result of this fair and even competition? Shouldn’t we as coaches strive to keep the games closer when blowouts occur?

Nothing good happens on either side of the ball when blowouts occur. Injuries can come about as the team that is losing tries to enact revenge for being beaten up. Kids sitting on the bench needlessly lose interest and eventually, for 70% of hem, quit playing sports.

Isn’t there some kind of we are all in this together, and this is only a game   missing in this paradigm that would bring reason and logic to the debate? How about some compassion and class?

 If you use Science, Psychology, and data, you will find that not only does neither team benefit from this keep winning, but in actuality, both teams lose. The winning team learns bad habits that are reinforced by scores.

 The losing team feels pounded needlessly and looks to enact some sort of retribution, during the game, or in the future. They may be on the other side with another team so they feel it is quite all right to run up the score.  Hey, it was done to me so I can do it to someone else.

Only a few times in all the games I went to and covered was there any indication of compassion towards the opponent. Hey, I am all for playing hard and trying to win in a team concept. But time after time, I saw starters padding their stats. Coaches,’ standing on the sidelines, purposely running up the score for their own ego and status, all the while allowing children on their team to sit and watch instead of getting to play.

 They were coaching their butts off with the game completely won, like it was the Super Bowl or the seventh game of the NBA playoffs. Parents complaining that their child didn’t get enough playing time or that the other team was so bad that they didn’t deserve to be on the field or court with their kids.

I watched the losing coaches refuse to put in their substitutes because they did not want to see their scores in the newspaper or on television the next day so lopsided. Maybe, their thought process was, if they kept their starters in longer they would keep the score closer at the expense of the team concept.

 Coaches yelling at the officials up 20 points with two minutes to go in the game because they saw a DI coach or Professional coach do the same. (NOTE: There is no connection between high school and youth sports with DI and the pros)

I mean really, what was accomplished during that game? Is this the example we want to set for our kids? Is the behavior we want modeled?

I watched parents complain to one another that, even with a big lead, their kid should not have been taken out. Other parents complained that their child only got a couple meaningless minutes at the end of the game and was embarrassed.

Why not sub early and often, keep it close, make it more fun and competitive?

It’s not about the coaches or the parents. It’s about the kids having fun, learning life lessons, and competing, fairly, and with sportsmanship.