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.