You’re not seeing how the story ended. I presume that his kid either ended up quitting or things didn’t work out for him the way his dad had hoped. I wouldn’t suspect you’d have a problem with his because you’re both cut from the same cloth. We are just offering you cautionary tales. Don’t get too ahead of yourself.
He seems like a good parent who is passionate about the game. I don't see any problem. There's no reason to assume the negative, that it didn't work out, anymore than to assume a positive outcome. Maybe he got tired of negativity on this forum and stopped coming. hmmm
You're probably right. What some people are telling you is that you can be a good parent who is passionate about the game and absolutely burn your kid out because you're an involved parent who is passionate about the game. I don't think anybody is questioning your motives. I'm sure you're a great Dad and your kid is lucky to have you in his corner.
Nobody is questioning your parenting only your overzealousness regarding looking so far ahead of developmental milestones. He's your only kid and this level of obsession is pretty common among parents who have one child. When you have multiple kids the first one is kinda like the first pancake. You tend to improve on the mistakes you made with the first one to go on and make different mistakes with the second child. We are actually trying to be supportive and actually encourage you by letting you know when you are worrying about things waaaay ahead of the appropriate time to do so. You have received respectful and reasonable answers and advice to some frequently unreasonable questions at your son's current age and developmental timeline. You are trying to rush something that can't be rushed. The types of questions you are asking would be similar to something like: "I'm thinking of taking my 10 year old to a go-kart track over the summer so that he is prepared for his driving test at 16. Are there any go-kart tracks that offer classes?" Wondering about your son playing two D1 sports when your kid is still in elementary school isn't "preparing" or "getting ahead of it" as much as it is hubris and obsession.
Hate to break it to you, but if you think that being an athlete will get your child into a better school, unless they are a football player, men's BB, or women's BB, it does not matter. I tell you this as someone who had both a boy and a girl recruited at a number of schools, including most of the power 5 conference schools. It does not matter if it is not the revenue sports. Stop relying on sports to get your kid to college, grades (and test scores) are the only thing that matter. Sports may open a door or two for conversation, but they don't matter in the grand scheme.
An example of a seemingly simple rule change can have a butterfly effect for rising collegiate soccer players and how schools recruit and coach moving forward. NCAA is eliminating re-entry per half for men's soccer starting this year. Assuming this rule sticks it means that programs who recruit big athletes who they can just roll out for 10 minute shifts like a hockey line will now actually have prioritize soccer players who can play consistently for longer stretches of time. https://www.ncaa.org/news/2024/2/1/...ules-changes-proposed-for-di-mens-soccer.aspx Soccer in the US is built on shifting sand, which is why I preach the two year out planning. Things change quickly and they tend to have a cascade impact.
This! All of it! With Ivy league schools the admissions bump for athletes takes effect when all other things are equal. There are no athletic scholarships at Ivy schools so you need to be a both a D1 quality soccer player as well as have grades within the admissions average. If the average is a 4.0 then a 3.9 GPA could get you in if the coach goes to bat for you with admissions. But if you have a 3.7 and just below on ACT or SAT you're not getting in, not even if you're a NT player. They do not care. You need the grades and it will be one of the first things most elite academic school coaches will ask of your player. If they ask for your transcript for a pre-read that is the first real hurdle to clear to even continue the conversation. If your player's GPA is not close enough they move on then and there. The benefit of getting good grades are far more beneficial than the soccer aspect. Fine, you didn't get into a Ivy but your grades are good enough for some big merit scholarships at other schools where that merit money can be much higher than athletic money and is also guaranteed as long as you maintain the required GPA. Aim high, miss high and you can get very good packages elsewhere.
I'm not that obsessed. You people are just making these kinds of names up based on very limited information. Look, an average approach will get you avg results. If that's what your kid wants then fine. You're prerogative. My kid is not an avg kid and he needs more than an avg approach. He is a high performance kid. They exist. If I said he was really good at the violin or math or chess or painting or video games, you people would have no problem with it. Yet when someone says their kid is good at soccer you people act like there is a problem with the parent and they are "overzealous". You don't get to the top by just taking a weak approach to development. If my kid wanted to be in the Boston Symphony, you have to put in your 10,000 hours, its very competitive. He would be playing lots of violin probably starting at a very young age and everyone would just be like "that's awesome, you go kid". Some kids are naturally more athletic and if you don't develop them you're only doing them a disservice. There are lots of clubs and lots of 10 yr olds playing club soccer. My kid is just one of them. He's not doing the most training out of all these kids. So you should be pointing at other parents not me. And you CAN have fun while learning soccer at a more high performance environment. Good analogy, but it would be more like: "I'm thinking of taking my 10 year old to a go-kart track over the summer because he wants to be a pro race car driver. Are there any go-kart tracks that offer classes?" And that would be par for the course.
You are wrong that grades are the only thing that matter. 100% wrong. I talk to many parents who's kids are applying or are in college. There are also plenty of articles discussing this. Just look it up. I'm actually shocked that you think this.
Required reading for this forum's users: A 2019 study conducted by economists from Duke, University of Georgia, and University of Oklahoma found that at Harvard, “[a] typical applicant with only a 1% chance of admission would see his admission likelihood increase to 98% if he were a recruited athlete. Being a recruited athlete essentially guarantees admission even for the least-qualified applicants.” A similar pattern is evident at other top schools as well. A whopping 18% of Princeton’s student body is student athletes, similar to Stanford’s 12%. At many schools, coaches are allotted a set number of spaces for athletic recruits—of the roughly 1,700 available spots in a given Brown University incoming class, 225 are reserved for athletes. It is no wonder, then, that the population growth of student athletes on college campuses has outpaced the overall increase in student bodies. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of college athletes increased by 45%, compared to a 33% increase in overall undergraduates on college campuses in the same timeframe. https://www.forbes.com/sites/christ...-of-ivy-league-admissions-than-legacy-status/
@bluechicago ----->>>> Amidst continuing discourse on the equity of college admissions processes, it is critical not to conflate a students’ worthiness for admission simply with grades and test scores. Though important, these factors are hardly the only metric by which students demonstrate their contributions to campus communities.
10,000 hours is one thing, 10,000 hours by the age of 14 is obsession. It would take 5 years doing a 40 hour work week without vacation to achieve 10,000 hours. Or, obviously 10 years at 20 hours a week, year round. With a loaded up youth practice schedule one could hit 10,000 sometime into their college career and you’ve stated a goal of by the time your son is 14. “Ideally he'd get 10k hours of soccer in by the time he's say 14.” Dec 26, 2019 https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/any-skills-from-snowboarding-transfer-over.2108017/#post-38391055
Yes but you still need the grades. Being a good soccer player with 3.5 GPA and a 1200 on the SAT is not going to get you admitted. Being a recruited athlete WITH good grades will get you in but you need both.
But that’s not the implication in the post. Your post is nonchalantly asking for a 4th grader if it’s reasonable to play two D1 sports. That’s a helluva egotistical thing to ask when your kid is elementary school and basically accomplished nothing of note yet. The question is inappropriate at this age. I’m sorry you don’t like the answer. People were kind and respectful when they simply said it is too soon to ask when the truth is, regardless of what you tell us, the ODDS are extremely against him to make one D1 squad not to mention two in different sports. If he was 15 and on a MLS academy and All State in another sport, I’d give a different answer, but he’s 9, playing soccer in a local league on a A team just like 100,000 other kids his age across the country.
I will defend New Dada a bit on the grades. My sons recruiting was fairly quick because he committed early so there is not a huge sample size to speak about. Pretty much each school said if you can get a 3.0 we can get you in. These were all good D1 soccer schools. There was a highly ranked state school he wouldn't have gotten in to with a 3.0. A smaller private school said he could get in with a 3.0 but if he could get a 3.5 it would better because they could use school money to pay for school. Another non descript out of state university said the same thing, get a 3.0 and we can get you in. He played with a guy that got into an IVY with a 3.8, he told him that without soccer he's not getting.
I think I said a 3.8 for an Ivy is minimum. You cannot get into an Ivy or an academic D3 without hitting the minimum of their admissions. P4 schools, many of which are great schools, sure, but that’s not what his article is referring to. The problem is if your grades are lower you HAVE to be better than the other players. If you are the same as and their grades are better you won’t get in. Admissions will listen to a coach just so far. At the end of the day, a recruited athlete absolutely gets an admissions bump but for an Ivy League school it won’t work miracles. Now, @NewDadaCoach’s point for schools like Stanford, UNC, Duke etc, he’s 100% right.
Stig, you and all the other users here, will just have to accept that there are elite athletes out there, and some of those kids' parents might just be on this forum. A lot can happen between now and college, so it should not be taken too seriously, but there is no harm in asking and discussing the possibilities of the future. There's nothing about my kid that tells me he can't play D1. Unless that becomes evident then I'll assume he can play D1. Most of the kids in our club could play in college (at some level, including Jr college) if they put in the grind (which many will not). With a lot of kids you can tell pretty much right away if they would be able to get to that level or not. A lot of kids just aren't athletic. (And that's ok, there are plenty of options in life). I know my kid. How do adults not know their kid? Maybe I just have a good sense of how kids grow. It's pretty easy to tell sometimes. You can look at various attributes. You can see their environment, their personality, their parents and how competitive or athletic the parents were. Etc Actually I'm surprised that most of you people on here think it is just this unknowable thing and its all up to how the winds blow. There was an interview with Alex Morgan's parent and he said you could just tell she had something special, since she was born. Some kids have that something special. That doesn't mean anyone can know for sure how things will pan out. Because anything can happen in life. And also there are many more options these days, and many distractions.
And you just have to accept that some of the parents of those elite players are giving you advice right now. What everyone is telling you is that at 9 years old you cannot possibly know. Especially with boys.
My kid is 10 and in 5th grade. And its not all black and white. Its not like you either know nothing or know everything about your kids path. You have some idea and can make some reasonable predictions. I've always been good at predicting things though, so maybe I'm just weird in that way. I can tell the future about certain things, not in a supernatural way, but by having an understanding of the past and of the various variables and dynamics of the present, and also seeing trends.
Nobody is making predictions about your kid. People, including me, are telling you when it’s appropriate to worry about certain things. You’re not wrong about the things your wrong about when. Worrying about stuff now won’t make it happen any sooner. Your kid could go pro, D1 or be an early bloomer and flame out. All things are in the range of outcomes. We are trying to help you get him where you’d like him to go but you’d rather ask questions and argue the good faith answers that you receive. It’s possible that some of us here have a little more first hand experience with this than you do.
Let me be direct here. Several of the posters have told you that they are parents of "high performance" kids who went on to become high performance college athletes. Some of the same parents were likely high performance kids themselves, possibly in different areas. If your kid is high-performing at 10 years old that is cause for celebration but it doesn't make these people's experiences less relevant—if anything it might be a greater reason for caution. I can't speak for the other posters here, but my reaction would be much the same, other than finding it a little weird that a parent is starting an extended conversation about how good of a violinist their kid is on a soccer forum. Also, those areas might be a little different from sports. Even excluding true prodigies, really high performing kids in math often demonstrate metrics at 12 (e.g., test scores) that would already get them into serious college programs, probably with scholarship. Similarly, high performing violinists at 12 already, well, perform. You would know and wouldn't have to ask. With sports, the kid has a long way to develop physically before you even begin to compare him to college and pro athletes. If you came to a forum and said, my kid is top 5% among the top level of 6th grade math students, should I prevent him from studying too much language arts or joining soccer after school because it might get in the way of his future double major in mathematical physics and pre-med? I would say make sure he develops the work ethic and the discipline so all these options are open to him, but try to let him explore. If he's good at one of those things he might be good at lot of different things, but he might well find his major miserable unless he picks one that he enjoys for its own sake. If he loved it then I wouldn't stop him, but I would try hard not to put the weight of my expectations on him, especially if I found myself telling people that I'd once wanted to be a professional violinist myself but never had the chance.
In 5th grade my son made the state ODP team. There is an archive of lists of who was on the team. So I broke it down based on the highest level I found that they played at. There were 38 players on the list. Here is the breakdown- 12 - unknown 8 - high school 1 - 5th division Spain - semi pro 2 - junior college 1 - NAIA 2 - D3 1 - D2 squad member 4 - D1 squad member 2 - D1 4 - USL Championship 1 - MLS Notes - a couple of players with Hispanic names may have not been found, their names were common surnames which made it difficult. More than likely they did not play in college. Unknown players may have played high school. If i saw them mentioned in an article or roster of a high school i listed them as high school. For this age group they have been in college for 2 or 3 seasons. I broke it down to squad members are ones who have seen game action. I added one player not listed with this age group but played up a year at ODP, he is the MLS player. This is a top 15 state by population. A bit better than 1/8 of the 39 players have collected pay checks. Perhaps a couple more will once college is finished.
I'm not that far off from WHEN to worry. He could conceivably be playing in MLS Next as soon as next year. If he plays a year up. Which I don't want him to because I want him to enjoy playing with his friends as long as possible because some day that will be over and I don't want to rush his childhood. Been hearing the same thing from this forum for 5 years straight. That its always too soon and I'm overzealous. Yet he here he is still kicking butt, not just in soccer, but now in 2 sports: soccer and baseball.
My kid is quite good at sports. He is quite good at school. And he has a fun personality. He's a pretty good candidate for Stanford. Would not be at all surprised if he ends up there. I appreciate the posters feedback. I enjoy conversation.
That is quite insightful. Thanks for sharing. I think my kid has the talent to play at the highest level, but I don't know if he will have the discipline. That is a big question mark. Maybe he maxes out at the college level or USL. Also to get to the MLS or a top European league there are other factors at play like connections and nepotism. Could be that he also ends up choosing baseball over soccer in a few years. And maybe a similar outcome there, college or minor leagues. Major league is a whole other ball game.