In a recent weekly scenario question we asked the Responsible Sports Community: “Your son makes the Varsity baseball team his freshman year. The coach tells him he should give up football and wrestling to focus on baseball year-round. How do you handle this?”
We had a lot of great responses from parents, coaches and other youth sport supporters. Two parents wrote in and added:
- “I think a lot of it depends on my sons feelings. If he loves the other 2 sports, I would absolutely not pull him. If he really wanted to focus on baseball, I would let him try it out.”
- “I would tell the coach he is too young to focus on one sport and he will continue to play the other sports until he realizes the one he wants to focus on!”
In a recent
Fundamentals issue, our monthly eNewsletter, we tackled this subject, specializing in one sport too early and got the opinion of our partner, youth sport expert, Positive Coaching Alliance. Here is an excerpt of this issue talking about specialization at an early age:
“As it turns out, Positive Coaching Alliance typically advises that youth players not specialize too soon. (This might sound contrary to what many parents were thinking, worried about “over-scheduling” of their kids or a general concern about too many activities.) And there are a number of reasons for PCA’s advice.”
Continue reading >>This week’s question is:
“Your daughter’s friends are all playing on a travel team whose coach has a bad reputation for demeaning kids, despite winning many tournaments. How would you handle the situation?”
Go to
ResponsibleSports.com today to give you input on this question, and while there, you can
sign up for Fundamentals, our monthly eNewlsetter.
The Liberty Mutual Responsible SportsTM program supports volunteer youth sports coaches and parents who help our children succeed both on and off the field. We offer many youth sports resources including $2,500 community grants, instructional videos, weekly tips, peer and expert advice, and coursework for those interested in improving the youth sports experience for all involved.
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