Forums >Off the Beaten Path>Is it the end of the multi-sport athlete?
One day at a time
It's pretty typical in our area for kids to specialize very young. But then they get to high school and are disappointed to discover that they are not the best and end up on the bench. That's especially true of the soccer players. There are so darned many of them! That's great news for the track and cross country coach, though, because a significant number of the soccer kids decide to run instead.
"There is politics at every level in every sport." We haven't found that to be true in track and XC. Every kid who wants to run, gets to, and his or her times determine placement on the varsity or JV roster.
Many college XC & track coaches prefer recruits with a multi-sport background.
Kids will typically do better in a sport if they start it early and get the chance to develop skills, but this certainly doesn't require them to play it year round. Hand-eye co-ordination, movement skills, field vision, endurance, strength, speed, explosiveness, etc can be developed in multiple sports.
Kids that play the same sport year round are far more likely to get injured, and burn out.
The process is the goal.
Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call Destiny.
That's the beauty of a sport that doesn't require a coach to determine who's the best.
Though something happned on my son's XC team this year that I was a bit miffed by. The top 7 was pretty well defined. After the regional meet, the coach wasn't too happy with the effort of the 7th place runner and told him he wasnt' running the next weekend in the sectional meet. He replaced him with the 8th runner on the team. Despite only a few seconds separate the two runners, I thought that was kind of crappy for a few reasons: 1) the original 7th pace runner was a senior and the only senior on the team. 2) It really didn't matter how our 7th place runner did becasue we had zero chance of advancing out of the sectional meet. I thought he should have let the Senior run in his last race and perhaps redeem himself to the coach.
imagine that...the same goes for us as grown-ups.
In order to see the truth, sometimes you have to loose an eye.
http://www.runningahead.com/groups/Utri/