I’m not censoring or canceling. Just telling it straight. You can plot a few things out but trying to plan further than 2 years out with athletics is a waste of energy to the degree that you are doing. It’s fine to ask if it is possible to play two D1 sports at once but the implication that for your 4th grader that this is a real possibility is hilarious. Ask it again in HS IF your son is a top soccer player, plus all state in track, baseball or any other sport. Ok, let me ask you this, how much has snowboarding helped or hindered his soccer development?
The more I think about it... I think you do have to plan early. Because there are so many sports. And to play at a competitive level in anything... you usually you have to decide by what... age 12/13/14/15... which means... if you are gonna make a comp team you can't be starting to learn it age 11. TOO LATE You have to start much sooner. The problem is... everyone says to just let the kid decide what he wants to do... BUT... there are many many sports and other hobbies as well. To actually go through them all and expose your kid to them would take an inordinate amount of time. My kid is 10. What if tennis is his sport? Well guess what... it's already too late. If he starts now then he will be behind. I know this because I have investigated that landscape. There are kids at 10 who are doing lots of training, have been playing for years already, are playing in high level tournaments. So did I just fail my kid because he missed his sport? See... its not such a clear and easy thing to know. (don't worry, in reality my kid did take some tennis lessons a couple years ago, the coach said he's really good... but that's besides the point... the point is... there are many sports still that he has not tried) So you basically have say from ages 6-9 to expose your kid to about who knows...10 or 20 different activities. Which is not feasible or many parents. So then... you have to analyze the kid and the sport in order to make the best decision as to which to try and which to not try. I would love for my kid to try short track speed skating. I think he'd enjoy and be good at it. But guess what... it doesn't exist here. Closest place is a 2 hour drive away. So no I don't believe in this whole "just let the kid decide" because kids don't know jack crap about anything. And they are fickle and change their minds all the time. They don't even know certain sports (or other hobbies) exist. So I am the one decides since I am his counselor and guider at this stage of his life. I know what exists out there and I know my son, his genetics, his talents, his mentality... so I therefore am best suited to decide and curate the things that will bring the most joy and that he can succeed in the most. When he first tried soccer he didn't want to do it. Later he loved it and became very good at it. Same story with baseball, and just about every other hobby. So yeah kids don't know anything. The adults know more. Although it is true that some adults will not make good decisions for their kid. They will force the kid into something that the kid isn't well suited for. I have met a former pro soccer player from Israel who said in order to go far in soccer you have to start super young. If you start at say age 9 then he said its too late. @The Stig
In terms of the mechanics and physicality of snowboarding, it has had no effect. Or you could say slight positive effect if you say it has exercised his legs. In terms of the time involved, I would say it has had a slight negative effect because he has had to miss some soccer due to snowboarding. At this point I have resigned myself to the fact that his mother is not into soccer. She is into snowboarding and baseball. It has been a battle between us, but I can only do so much. I have tried to educate her, bring her into the fold, get her involved. But she just isn't into it. Maybe in a few more years. Yet for baseball... I fully support it. I play catch with my kid. I watch all his games. So he has one parent supporting soccer. But he has 2 parents supporting baseball. Ultimately he will decide which he wants to do. But then there is the aforementioned dilemma: Play only comp soccer? Or Play HS baseball and rec/HS soccer. The mom is selfish and thinks only about herself. She won't even practice soccer with my kid. I said all you have to do is stand there and let him dribble around you. Next time I find a partner I will do better vetting and make sure we're on the same page, as I like to have more kids.
You know you wasted 7 pages discussing whether your son should go snowboarding vs basketball when he was FIVE YEARS OLD. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/any-skills-from-snowboarding-transfer-over.2108017/
Or, and hear me out on this, you support what the kid loves to do. You have no idea at 5,6,8,10 years old what they’ll be good or great at. Especially with boys you can’t predict athleticism unless you, yourself, were a professional athlete. My guess is you have not played a sport at the collegiate level. Those genetics are the first indicator. I’ve see parents wrongly have their kids focus on being a keeper at a prepubescent age. Problem is when the kid got older the goal grew but the kid didn’t. Keep this in mind and it has served me well, “if your kid is great people will tell you. If YOU think your kid is great you’ll tell everyone.”
Well Stig, based on your measure my kid is great then. I have heard it all. "I can see your kid going pro" "He's a beast" "Oh my gawd, did you see that kid" "If he's doing this now, can you imagine what he'll be like at 16" "I know talent when I see it, that kid is special" "That kid's a natural" As far as me. I could have played in college had I had the proper guidance. I grew up in a small town where no one knew much about soccer, including my dad. How do I know I could have played in college? Because I have played in recent years against college soccer players and have even beat them. So that tells me that yes, with the proper guidance and training I could have made it when younger. I just didn't even know what kind of training I should have been doing as a teenager. It was a time and place where kids just played soccer one season, the fall. And that was it, in high school. No one played club soccer where I lived and I didn't even know it existed. Despite that we did decent against bigger schools and I was the captain. I see college soccer and know some players and coaches. The kids are strong and fast. But certainly nothing my kid can't grow into. He is a lot like my brother and I and we were both athletic and competitive. In fact I would say he is more talented than I was at that age, AND he is getting far more and better training at a younger age than I ever did.
I'm going to question a bit. First I would argue plan is the wrong word, I think prepare is better. This is what I think the Stig and others are saying. Prepare him for the next two years. Practice with him, encourage, support, etc. Then prepare for the next two and so on. Each level requires different preparation both physically and mentally. I will say you can't plan for it. I say that because you are planning in the wrong places. The soccer will take care of itself. Here are some things to plan for or prepare for: Are you able to relocate of he is asked to play for the Earthquakes academy? Is his mother ok with that? Do you do the 2 hour drive every day if not? If you can't move are you OK with him living 2 hours from you? Do you know where to enrol him in an asynchronous online school so that you have time to drive him to practice and it doesnt interfere with school? Is not attending high school with kids his age in the plans? What is the plan if ends up missing 3 to 4 weeks of school a year if he is attending a regular high school? Sacramento might be out of SJ's homegrown territory, do you have a plan if the Portland Timbers or Real Salt Lake ask him to join their academy? How are you going to convince his mother he should go off to live in a dorm at 15? Those are some of the things you have to plan for. If they come you'll need a plan. Now for your preparation if things go as you would like them planned: Are you prepared to have the baseball vs soccer decision with your son by about 12yo? Are you prepared to have no contact with his coaches by age 15? Are you prepared for the possibility that he's not the best player? If things don't go as planned, are you prepared: to have him commit a bunch of time and be a decent high school player and maybe not be good enough for a D1 college? Are you prepared for him to hang it up by 12th grade because he's put a boatload of time into this and the rewards aren't what he hoped for or wanted? Are you prepared if he doesn't make an MLS Next team let alone a MLS Academy?
It was a colossal waste of hang wringing at his age. Not only was the “snowboarding incident” a temporary thing you wanted to deny your son a fun, leisure activity because a single Saturday of snowboarding, in your mind, would set him back in soccer. A little quote from you then: “But his mom doesn't seem much into anything other than snowboarding. He can't do basketball either in the winter because the games are on Sat and that's when his mom wants to board because she has work off.” Clearly you are divorced and you were raising a fit of how she was going to spend time with her son, who was in kindergarten. It never occurred to you and nor did you care that the only reason to snowboard is for the simple pleasure of snowboarding. In your mind anything that puts your son an hour behind on his 10,000 hours by 14 years old (yes, you’ve said that)is a waste. When people talk about the dangers of living vicariously through their children they are talking about you. @kinznk is absolutely correct about “preparing” vs planning. But you prepare your kids by offering them the most exposure to the most possible number of things. You make them take the hard math classes, not because they WILL become an engineer but because if they don’t take them ANY science degree later on is no longer a choice they get to make. If they want a Bachelor of Arts that is fine but you prepared them to also pursue a bachelor of science if THEY chose to pursue one. There is nuance between planning and preparing and everything people have told you is simply lost on you because you believe, without any sense of the outside, that your kid IS the .001%. You can skim through the old pages and this forum is littered with dads like you who talk like you do about their elementary school age prodigy and are never to be heard from later on when the rubber hits the road. I hope come high school you’re still posting and your kid is doing great but I highly suspect that we will have about one to two more years of your posts left.
Let Let is know when someone other than a parent or someone you aren’t paying for training or coaching says those things.
So I'm going to post here, not to convince you (or anyone else) of any point, but just so you can see how other parents are trying to muddle through this whole thing. (Long) I think most of us can agree that as parents we just want our kids to be happy (whatever that means) and to give them the tools to lead a fulfilling life. There's always a fine line between what we believe is parenting and the somewhat unformed desires of our children. All of that is complicated by the fact that there is no objectively correct formula raising your child -- if there was, I would postulate that it would have been bottled and every parent would be doing pretty much the same thing. About making your kid do something: we do it all the time. Do your homework. Pick up your laundry, etc. They're kids and they often need direction, or at least suggestions. But what about more? My daughter, who's 12, has been playing the violin since she's been 4. She's not a prodigy, but she enjoys it and she's really good -- I would say 99 percentile. This year she made the "varsity" high school age orchestra that is mainly for 16-18 year olds. Despite not being the most precise musician, or fluent sight reader, her stage presence, dynamics, feeling, and improvisational skills let her breeze through the auditions. My family, being steeped in the acoustic world, can easily see her trajectory as comfortably going to Julliard or Berklee or perhaps some other music program on scholarship. However, she DOESN'T want to join the orchestra because of.... SOCCER, which she's good at, but as of now, not great. She started soccer 2 years ago, because like you we wanted her (a little like you) to be active, but we never anticipated that she'd be good or that she'd like it that much. Her strengths are aggression to the ball, tactical and spatial awarenness, massive work rate, toughness and durabilty, and superbe speed. She mainly plays fullback because her speed and physicality allows her to track back long balls and her 1v1 skills let her take and turn the ball. Her technical skills are very good for our region, but not superbe: can juggle 100+, can do fakes and cuts, elasticos, la croquetas, step overs, maradonas, and ronaldo chops during games. She continues to focus on technique because she understands that at some point, especially being undersized, her athleticism won't be enough to overcome another player's athleticism, strength, or size. So to dovetail with SOME of your ideas about parenting and the decision making — yes, she’s going to join the orchestra — as kind of a “vocational skill” idea. Perhaps she’ll come to love it, but that’s a little dubious because it’s NOT soccer. So we’re not forcing her but there’s a little of that “I’m willing to put up for it because you’re my parents” feeling. For soccer, it was also complicated. Locally, there’s an ECRL team of questionable ethics and quality that she could have joined — she’s played against their older ECRL players in middle school soccer — but we passed that up. She tried out for a club an hour and a half away, on a lark, didn’t make their ECNL but made their really strong ECRL team. Ultimately, though, we turned them down because they were big, strong, fast, direct — not bad soccer but really not suited for her style or abilities. She’ll try out with them next year — maybe they won’t take her — but our thoughts were she still needed to really work on creative play, risk taking, and technical skills: something that the ECRL team doesn’t really foster. So this year she’s going to stay with her small current club, which has a great coach and really helped her technical development, and play at the state level rostered at different age groups. So no, we’re not really fantasizing or speculating too much about the future, but really just stumbling through these things and life, and just trying to make decisions as they come up. Is that the wisest and most optimal? Probably not but we're enjoying the luxury of being able to make these decisions and seeing her grow up doing things that she enjoys or loves. Best of luck to you and your son!
I keep saying I won't waste my breath further, but here is one more. Is your child a great student? By that I mean straight A's with little effort? My child was premed in college and eventually changed but still another challenging STEM program. She had virtually no time for anything. During the season you are spending 30 hours with your team, travel, study sessions, hanging out in the locker room. If you include 12-15 hours of class time and the probably near 70 hours of sleep a college athlete needs/gets, you have just a few hours a day at best for eating, getting to class, doing homework, etc. You need an offseason to reset. Also, hopefully you are wealthy, because that left no time for a job. My child turned down the track team Soph/Jr/Sr years because she needed off time. Also, there is a spring season for soccer, though it is just friendlies, there is still a time commitment that cannot be waived unless you want to jeopardize your team standing. Just stop and let your kid be a kid. If they are going to play in college they will, regardless of whether or not you push. If you truly have your child's best interests at heart, stop pursuing sports like crazy and get them a tutor, the return on investment is far greater. They can always play sports at a rec level for activity.
100 percent, all of it. Your point re the need for "downtime" -- time to heal up and truly focus on school -- was a big one for my son this past year, his freshman year. The players continued to work out and play after the season, but he absolutely needed the semester-plus where he -- for the most part -- didn't have a regimented practice and workout schedule dictated by the coaching staff. I spent some time a decade or so ago around a DI football program that had an engineering student on the roster (only one that I knew of, anyway), and I was amazed that guy could do both big-time football and a major that can be relentless in its demands.
lol You are just making up an awful lot of fake news. You don't know me yet you are making stuff up. I've already said he's not in the top 1% yet you just said that I think my kid is in the top .001% Just stop making up stuff. "In your mind anything that puts your son an hour behind on his 10,000 hours by 14 years old (yes, you’ve said that)is a waste." Can you quote me where I said it was a "waste"? I don't think I ever said that. But yes, you do have to have a sense of how you're going to get in your 10k hours if you want to get to the highest levels. Nothing wrong with that. "never to be heard from later on when the rubber hits the road." I'm a person of facts. The stats are there. A very small percentage of players make it pro. I don't think I ever said my kid will make it pro. He has a small chance, just like a lot of top kids. Been hearing from users like you since day 1 about "just wait till the rubber hits the road"... I'm still waiting. Since he was in rec and showed talent everyone was like "just wait till he's in comp" and then he went to comp and honestly I thought he'd be on the 2nd team but they put him on the 1st team and he was the top scorer. Every year, now going into his 4th year of comp and looking in good form. Yet you say soon he will somehow fall out of form? What's your evidence for this? It's a very negative way to view things. Perhaps this is why most kids do fall out of form, due to the pessimism that surrounds them. I'm take a positive approach with my son. Encouraging him. Helping to guide him and keep him steadily improving at comfortable pace while having lots of fun. I don't care what he becomes in life as long as he's happy and productive. You're just a negative person. Its pretty much the norm on the internet. He's playing a lot of baseball now too and there's a chance he will end up a baseball player and that's fine. He can play whatever he wants. He's a very solid baseball player just as he is in soccer. He could play either in college if he is able to commit to his development and stay healthy.
Bro look, you are kind of weird. You just said "if your kid is great people will tell you." And I let you know that people told me. Then you come back with "Let is know when someone other than a parent or someone you aren’t paying for training or coaching says those things." Very strange mode of thinking. You seem like the gaslighter type to be honest. You say things then are refuted then you go back and twist your words around. Very manipulative rhetorical style. Who exactly are you saying should be saying these things about my kid? An agent from Real Madrid? Be specific. An agent would not even be watching my kid at his age. How about the opponent's coach? Yes the other team's coach... called my kid "a natural". And that wasn't to me. I overheard him saying it to another coach. I was standing right there and listening, but he didn't know I was the parent. Is that good enough for you?
Thanks, good questions. The answer is yes I personally am prepared for those things. But I don't know how the kid would respond to these situations. And also not sure about the mom. As I've said before she is not into soccer, so I have resigned myself to the fact that this is a major headwind and could very well limit his development. Also as I have said he is growing in the sport of baseball. His mom is into baseball, and I support whatever he does, so he has both parents supporting his baseball, but only one parent supporting soccer. So just based on that, if he's equally talented in both sports, there's a chance that baseball wins out. In which case he could play at his high school, and then perhaps he just does HS soccer which I think he would have fun with. In baseball its the norm to play for your HS team as a path to college. Unlike in soccer where you play club, not HS, if you want to get to college or beyond. There's a kid who played baseball at our HS and now plays at Stanford and will get drafted soon. I think he has a lot of potential in soccer, but there is only so much a parent can do if he's also getting push back from the other parent. I have to be realistic. Probably he won't fulfill his potential due to this. But he could still go far in baseball. All I can do is help him to keep developing. Most American parents view soccer like they do the rest of American big sports. Its a seasonal thing. They grew up with a sport for each season. So most parents think its just good enough to do the local rec soccer league for 3-4 months and call it a day. That is how my kid's mom thinks because that's how things always were. Football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the Spring. And that works for those sports. Many top pros in those sports were multi-sport athletes and that works well because those are all hand-eye coordination sports. So if you do one, it supports the next one. Aaron Judge was from central CA and was a stud in all 3 sports, now he's an all-star in MLB. But soccer is very different. You have to look at the model of how soccer is developed in Europe and South America. They don't do soccer just in the fall and then do baksetball, then volleyball, then baseball, then back to soccer. They do soccer every day, all year round. This is partly why our US national team has always been behind. Our players have a harder time at the early ages getting the high numbers of touches than other countries do based on how our system is set up. It is changing and evolving, but there are still many many adults here who have the old school view of sports.
She sounds very talented in soccer and violin. In theory there should be enough time for both. Though to get to the highest levels of those takes a lot of time. You picked two of the most technical hobbies lol. I think soccer is like the violin of sports. In how much technique and time investment you need to really master it.
My kid is a good student. The teacher likes him a lot. He's gets mostly As. He just did the national assessment and did well. Near the top. Though frankly at his age I'm not very concerned about grades. I'll worry more about that when he's nearing high school. Because HS gpa matters when you apply to college but they don't care about anything before that. But for my kid, he is not one of those really serious academic types. He's kind of a party animal. It is what it is. I think you should embrace your kids personality. If he gets a B here and there I'm not going to sweat it. I saw a study that said less than 5% are admitted to Harvard, but for recruited athletes it was 83% admitted. Even if you get straight As these days you still have a good chance of getting rejected by a lot of top schools. Even schools like UCLA reject a lot of validictorians, and take in kids with lesser GPAs. My kid will have a better shot getting into a top school if he is recruited for atheletics. There is just no way he'll be able to compete purely on academics. Yes he's a good student and can probably get a solid HS gpa (high 3s let's say, like 3.8) but that alone is not enough for a top school. You need something else to help you stand out. Since my kid is athletic it would only make sense for that to be his "extracurricular".
I think baseball is more technical than baseball, and there are many diverse skills that aren't really related. Hitting doesn't require the need to run and throwing not much. You need to run after you hit and run to catch a ball. On top of that you need soft hands which don't relate too much to the other skills. In all those you have to be precise. In soccer running is involved at some level in all the skills needed. Athleticism with a touch of skill will take you much further in soccer than baseball. Baseball is a grind of a sport. It doesn't match well with soccer at the higher levels because it is a power sport for the entire body. The more strength you put on your upper body, past a certain point, can be a detriment because you have to lug it around for 90 minutes.
You gotta wonder what would happen if we as a society spent put as much time and money (and expectations) into kids' academics as we do into their sports.
If you don’t know the difference between someone l, who you are paying as a coach or trainer telling you your kid is great, versus a coach or pro who has no incentive to make you happy I don’t know what to say. It depends on if people who both know what IT looks like and have no incentive to tell you and you can trust them great. But don’t completely trust anyone who you are paying. Impartial assessments are key. At the end of the day, you are still the one in here telling everyone that your kid is special and should easily play in college and/or play pro. You’re not hoping for this, you are planning for this.
Some parents do put a lot into academics. I think there's every type of parent out there. To me, its best to see what the kid gravitates to. Or if he/she has any special talent then invest in that.
I have a good idea of where my kid stands. He plays against all the other top kids in the city. In the top division. He's does just fine. About 40 games a year with his club. And another 30 or so with indoor and other leagues and tournaments. Its pretty easy to see where a kid stands by watching him play a bunch. The club decides which team to place him on, not me. Each year they decide and I have no influence on it. They can place him on the A, B, C, or D team. This should give you some indication.
It’s a good start but it is not a predictor of future results. That is all any of us are saying. We are not your enemy but are sincerely calling out troubling signs. The following poster years ago sounded just like you and then he just disappeared. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/c...1-competitive-or-does-it-even-matter.1324238/ Your story is as old as time.
First, I've never said some of the things this poster said. For ex, they said "He is the best U10 player the club has, and frankly looks like a man among boys on the pitch." And I've never said anything like that about my kid. 2nd, who knows what happened to the poster. Perhaps his kid playing pro right now. It seems that you make a lot of assumptions. 3rd, I see no problem with the post. They were seeking outside perspectives. So what if they bragged a bit. Who am I to know if they were accurate in describing their kid or of they were overstating it? We can assume someone is inflating their kid or we can assume they are telling the truth. I tend to take people at their word. I don't have a reason to assume that a parent is inflating their kid's abilities. If you tell me your kid is the next Messi, I will say congrats! If I see the kid with my own eyes then I can make a judgement. Otherwise I have to take them at their word, with a grain of salt though.