I Am The Greatest! Don't Discourage the Dream

If a kid at age 10 says, "I want to be the next Landon Donovan/Mia Hamm" you don't disabuse him/her of that dream, but you guide him in the direction that will allow him to come to awareness as they get older of whether such an outcome is possible. Along the way, the kid may find inner resources they didn't know they had.

Or they may find that the dedication necessary to get even CLOSE to that level is not for them, and they just want to knock it around with their friends and have fun.

Or they may find out that, no, I am not going to be the next Landon Donvovan but, darn it, I LIKE playing at the highest level possible with the best teammates I can find. But in making THAT decision, a kid puts himself in a position to be rejected, because, even in programs where the coaches treat kids respectfully, there are those who are picked and play a lot, those who are picked and don't play as much, and those who are not picked at all. He then has to have the inner resources to deal with meritocratic professional approach.

But in the end, it is the kid who has to come to awareness of what is right for him. You can't do it for them.

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I'll go further. Rec as is commonly structured is the cause for the legendary dropout/burnout issue with U.S. soccer, not the solution. Rec replaces the powerful, pure, and intense joy of true achievement with the pablum of fun for everyone. Fun for everyone is like eating Starburst -- tasty at first, but very quickly cloying.

The, it is easier to pass along the joy of true achievement to top athletes than to mediocre athletes. That is the challenge of rec soccer -- how to keep the second- and third-tier athletes without capitulating into the fun for everyone trap. Sounds like your friend has figured out the formula. Good stuff.

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By PAUL DOYLE, Courant Staff Writer The child is encouraged by the coach to specialize because the coach wants to win. The child is encouraged by the parent to specialize because the parent is thinking two words: college scholarship. But what does the child want or, better yet, as adults, how should we be guiding the kids?

I'm a little sensitive to this, perhaps because my daughter has chosen to play just soccer. But note, I said she made that decision and there was no influence from her parents. In fact we were quite disappointed that she would not continue to play basketball and softball, since she was fairly good at both at an early age. However, I think she recognized that to continue to be good at all three would require more work from her than she was prepared to give. Now the question is, is it bad to expect kids to work hard at a sport? I'd be the first to say that youth sports should be fun for the participants and shouldn't become like a job for them, but I don't think there is anything wrong being fully committed to one sport as long as this is what the child wants and the child continues to be involved with other activities. For my daughter, her team commitment is 4 days a week 10 months of the year which includes quite a bit of traveling, but she also has time to ride her bike, go swimming in the summer, skating or sliding in the winter, or just hang out. For some reason, people that write these kinds of articles think kids must be involved with other formal sports program, as they were when they were growing up. It's a different world today and I personally see more problems when kids are expected to do it all.

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The sports specialization articles are exercises in nostalgia. Many people have a driving need to believe that what they experienced as schoolchildren was ideal, and should not be changed.

Me, I like today better than my youth, when the same big guys were the football, basketball, and baseball stars. Whan all the skill development in the world wouldn't help the 80% of the kids who weren't among the biggest 20% of boys in the school. (Slight exaggeration ... there were a handful of slots available for average-sized kids as cornerbacks, middle infielders, maybe point guard.)

But hey, after reading the article, I have been educated. Skill development and the pursuit of excellence are bad things. Just showing up and succeeding by being big, that's good. Glad I learned such an important lesson for life.