I went roughly a decade without seeing my wife on weekends. She was at the soccer/baseball field while I hit the hoops gym (air conditioned btw, pay attention) or vice versa. Any more than two kids and you're out numbered. Best of luck! And then before you know it you will miss it dearly. To be completely serious, I'm glad we were married 5 years before we had kids. It was important time before we took on the tough and wonderful task of having kids.
Results 21 to 30 of 111
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05-13-2014, 11:00 PM #21
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05-14-2014, 01:03 AM #22
I hesitate to render an opinion given that I don't have children myself and will never face this dilemma, so I'll just share this observation.
I know a family with 4 kids, 3 in sports, 1 on a traveling team, who spends so much on the sports that their budget is razor thin, even with all the time they put into fundraisers. One of the kids got injured last year and they accepted Christmas gifts from church to supplement the kids gifts because they couldn't afford the usual stuff.
What kind of lesson is that for kids, no matter how much they enjoy the game?
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05-14-2014, 07:55 AM #23
I have two girls, 8 and 5. They play Y sports, mainly because I just want them to have fun playing and learn the game. If they get into anything in particular, or start to get serious about a sport of two, we'll change to more of a competitive league, but for now, the Y is perfect. My girls get to play baseball, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and they have both done swimming, dance, and gymnastics through the Y as well. They're not serious about any of it...just having fun at this point, and I'm cool with that. I've even done a little bit of coaching through the Y, and have enjoyed that as well.
I'll tell you now that my 8-year-old is nothing resembling an athlete, but she appreciates sports. She's now my buddy to take a X and Reds games, and is really starting to get into it. My 5-year-old is stocky and tough. If one of them is an athlete, it will be her, but it's tough to tell how interested she's going to be at this point. When she is engaged, she's good at her sports. That engagement doesn't yet come all that often, though.
But especially for my two girls, the Y is perfect for now, and they're able to try out a lot of different activities through that.
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05-14-2014, 10:03 AM #24
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05-14-2014, 12:02 PM #25
My son has played AAU since the 5th grade and we have spent a fair amount of money on it over the years and traveled mostly in tri-state area. Both sides are right here. His goal was to play in college and he truly loves hoops. Probably could have played another varsity sport in HS but he made the decision on his own to concentrate on hoops. If you want to get looked at, then AAU tournaments and some showcase stuff is the best way. I also see some pretty shady stuff in the AAU circuit, there are good programs and sleezy programs and you see kids jump from one program to next in an effort to promote themselves. I know my son has a lot of good memories and this season will be the last for him in AAU. He met a lot of great kids, had some good coaches and saw some cities and he got better as a player due to talent lavel he faced, so it's not all bad. He may or not play in college; if he does it would most likely be D-3 or NAIA. He has also thought of walking on somewhere. We are still trying to figure all that out. The odds are most kids won't even play in college, so each family has to sit down and evaluate the pros and cons. I can tell you that for him, his AAU experience has been better than his HS experience and he seems to enjoy it more than HS team but that is largely a coaching/program issue that I won't get into here.
Zip'em Up!
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05-14-2014, 12:44 PM #26
- Join Date
- Mar 2011
- Posts
- 1,922
This is an interesting point that I hadn't realized until right now. I am 29. My high school team won a state championship. My club team won 2 State Cups. Today, I talk weekly with guys from my club team. I rarely talk to guys I went to high school with. I don't know the reason. It may be because almost everyone on my club team played in college while fewer high school teammates did, so we had more smiliar college experiences. Whatever the reason, I'm more grateful to my club team for that.
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05-14-2014, 12:52 PM #27
- Join Date
- Jan 2008
- Posts
- 8,465
AAU Basketball and Select Baseball has been and will slowly eliminate youth parish sports. I'm sure a new select football elague is somewhere on the horizon where someone will go for the money grab of knowing adults will pay for anything they think may land little Johnny a scholarship.
The Archdiocese Charter on Youth Athletics is driving away people in droves as well. They're not willing to jump through the hoops when there's basically an unregulated (but corrupt) alternative.
It just all feels very dirty to me, even though I have kids that do some of it. I've heard parents of third graders say "well, that's the path to playing at Elder" as their reason for their kids not playing at their schools and paying for select teams. As if athletic talent at 8 years old translate to a stud at 16.
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05-14-2014, 01:18 PM #28
The only sport I really know anything about (or at least used to know anything about) in terms of how you go about becoming an elite player is baseball. There were four guys on my high school team who were drafted, one of them the #1 overall pick. None of them played anything other that Little League/Babe Ruth until 14, and three of them (including the guy drafted #1 overall) stayed with Little League/Babe Ruth through 16. I assume that path doesn't really work anymore (unfortunately), so I am interested to see how that system works now. My oldest boy is 6, so he's still playing at the Y, but the move to a "real" league is coming pretty soon. I'm hopeful (though not optimistic) that it will be like the leagues I played in as a kid, where it was not too crazy, but competitive enough that I played with and against a ton of kids who became pros/played in college.
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05-14-2014, 01:33 PM #29
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05-14-2014, 02:06 PM #30
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