Not having seriously played sports in my own youth, one thing I hadn't realized at all with my 11th grader's baseball is how, at an age where he doesn't really want to hang around with his parents, and probably finds us embarrassing, that his baseball games are a shared experience in which he doesn't at all resent my presence, the way a typical teenager might resent his parents at, say, the mall or a movie or a community fair or some such. With the travel teams, and to a lesser extent the high school team (whose games are at less convenient times for working parents), It's more or less expected that at least one parent will usually be there for each player, and the players don't find it embarrassing even when the parents cheer for the team. We're there near the players but they're in the dugout, separate from us, and we all experience the same ups and downs of the game. I'm usually my son's team's scorekeeper; it's an added bonus when his teammates ask me what the score is, or when a pitcher asks his pitch count, hoping to convince the coach he can go another inning; they know who I am but not in a way my son finds cringeworthy.
I suppose we're lucky in that none of the other parents on any of his teams have been the overbearing sports-parent type. We're on the periphery of the super-serious-baseball world, and will occasionally in tournaments play teams that seem closer to the super-serious baseball world, but even then it's been rare to run into problematic parents or coaches.
Yeah, the time-with-kids thing is a big part of my "This guy is a space alien" reaction. The Pip will be 12 in November, so he's into the zone where his parents are "cringe" (and me saying "cringe" in that way would make him flinch...). What knowledge I have regarding his life at school is mostly derived from spending a lot of time driving him to and from baseball things. I already really value that as bonding time, and I'm sure it's going to get even more precious. I had a similar thing going when SteelyKid was doing taekwondo seriously and we were driving to practices 2-3 nights a week, and I really miss that now that it's gone.
Regarding the parental behavior, it's probably worth noting that his travel team is not in the top division of the league they play in, which probably makes a difference. The few hard-to-take coaches we've run into were from a team that will likely be promoted this year, or teams from other leagues that were a bit more hard-core. But even those have been relatively minor, and quickly quashed. (Say, the guy who got in the first-base umpire's face arguing that a kid running to first on a dropped third strike had obstructed the throw from the catcher until the home plate umpire came out and pretty clearly (though not audibly) said "We are done listening to you talk, now. Pipe down, or go sit in your car.") I wasn't at the tournament game where a coach was tossed and escorted to the parking lot by league officials, but Kate was working the snack bar; that stands out as far and away the worst incident we've seen.
We might be in a local minimum here, but if it's a sweet spot, great.
The most salient criticism of youth sports brought up by Gladwell and others is the immense cost. Combine this fact with the admissions bump sports can give kids during college applications and the wtf of youth sports and college is clear even if we Americans consistently look past it. The issue is not limited to the traditionally elite sports like golf, tennis, and crew either. Soccer is about the cheapest youth sport imaginable, but even there the money and time needed to access the more competitive leagues and better coaching are significant (e.g. Simmons's experience with his daughter). Giving any sort of admission consideration for sports is damn dubious and it should be pointed out more frequently. If kids want to play sports they should play sports. But let's stop the practice of the coaches getting to send lists of applicants to the admissions office for further consideration.
Yeah, they mention the expense, but I thought that as a couple of rich guys, they skipped past that way too lightly. I think "kids from poor families" is probably a much more significant source of untapped talent than "kids with November birthdays," but they don't talk about that nearly enough.
Man, am I ambivalent about the sports-and-college-admissions thing. Bottom line, I almost definitely don't get into Williams (and many of the other places I got into) if I don't have a nice little high school track & field career. But the warping effect is real, though perhaps worse so at places where the recruited athletes are sometimes not at all academically qualified. But frankly the worst part of the warping effect (not at Williams, at least not when we were there) is once athletes are on campus. Our DII football team got an auditorium that is reserved for their meetings with leather seats embossed with the university mascot on them. Each seat cost $400 just for the embossing -- for the whole room that little aesthetic touch cost significantly more than an assistant professor's salary in almost every field. And I know the Athletic Department/Booster argument: These are different pools of money, and sure, kind of. Except when, like every single DII athletic program, ours does not make money so general funds are used to cover the gap. Then suddenly the different pots of money argument disappears and "sports are the front porch of the university" arguments emerge.
A lot of the time, I think that the "revenue sports" at the high DI level are basically the analogue of the Ivy League schools in the more general admissions discussion: a tiny fraction of the actual people involved, that nonetheless completely dominates and distorts the conversation. They maybe ought to be bracketed off as a separate thing entirely.
But, as you note, the money issue extends outside those sports and those institutions, as folks elsewhere are trying to keep up, even when it's not remotely plausible. (I'm not surprised to hear that it's particularly crazy when football in Texas is involved...)
But the tiny fraction has disproportionate impact. That said, people always think I'm crazy when I point out that 2000-student Williams not only has more varsity athletes, but a LOT more varsity athletes than Alabama does. I believe it's a shade more than twice as many sports, and while Alabama's football team is bigger than Williams, the track team is larger at Williams, and we have many, many sports that are nowhere to be found in the SEC, some with pretty big rosters. I think at the revenue sports level, some of the biggest warping factors are probably football at Vandy, Duke, and Rice, made worse by the fact that they do not actually generate revenue at those places ...
If The Pip continues playing at that level, you may look back and find this was the apex moment of the whole experience, before you developed a much greater understanding of why Gladwell - whether he actually ever met a human parent or not - makes that case. Granted that in baseball, it's likely not going to include hearing a parent command their kid on the field to go physically and specifically harm your own (nor will you have the sick satisfaction of watching your kid turn to that parent, stop and lock eyes and then proceed to rack up the goals that win the game ... nor catch yourself thinking gee wonder if there's a way to harness that reaction? and realize just how wrong it all is when the subject is children) but after hearing from other parents with elite baseball kids: it's coming. Enjoy these days where your child plays strictly for love of the game, and supporting him is beautifully straightforward (albeit expensive and time sucking).
The problem with the advantage athletics confer regarding college would not exist if it was only the advantage you mention in the footnote. A symptom of the bigger problem is the disproportionate advantage conferred for both admissions and financial aid as compared to any other potential demonstration of that same commitment and achievement in a different pursuit. The classical notion that improvement of the body is a virtue closely coupled with improvement of the mind might have been the starting point, but that's not the reality of how it works today.
Not having seriously played sports in my own youth, one thing I hadn't realized at all with my 11th grader's baseball is how, at an age where he doesn't really want to hang around with his parents, and probably finds us embarrassing, that his baseball games are a shared experience in which he doesn't at all resent my presence, the way a typical teenager might resent his parents at, say, the mall or a movie or a community fair or some such. With the travel teams, and to a lesser extent the high school team (whose games are at less convenient times for working parents), It's more or less expected that at least one parent will usually be there for each player, and the players don't find it embarrassing even when the parents cheer for the team. We're there near the players but they're in the dugout, separate from us, and we all experience the same ups and downs of the game. I'm usually my son's team's scorekeeper; it's an added bonus when his teammates ask me what the score is, or when a pitcher asks his pitch count, hoping to convince the coach he can go another inning; they know who I am but not in a way my son finds cringeworthy.
I suppose we're lucky in that none of the other parents on any of his teams have been the overbearing sports-parent type. We're on the periphery of the super-serious-baseball world, and will occasionally in tournaments play teams that seem closer to the super-serious baseball world, but even then it's been rare to run into problematic parents or coaches.
Yeah, the time-with-kids thing is a big part of my "This guy is a space alien" reaction. The Pip will be 12 in November, so he's into the zone where his parents are "cringe" (and me saying "cringe" in that way would make him flinch...). What knowledge I have regarding his life at school is mostly derived from spending a lot of time driving him to and from baseball things. I already really value that as bonding time, and I'm sure it's going to get even more precious. I had a similar thing going when SteelyKid was doing taekwondo seriously and we were driving to practices 2-3 nights a week, and I really miss that now that it's gone.
Regarding the parental behavior, it's probably worth noting that his travel team is not in the top division of the league they play in, which probably makes a difference. The few hard-to-take coaches we've run into were from a team that will likely be promoted this year, or teams from other leagues that were a bit more hard-core. But even those have been relatively minor, and quickly quashed. (Say, the guy who got in the first-base umpire's face arguing that a kid running to first on a dropped third strike had obstructed the throw from the catcher until the home plate umpire came out and pretty clearly (though not audibly) said "We are done listening to you talk, now. Pipe down, or go sit in your car.") I wasn't at the tournament game where a coach was tossed and escorted to the parking lot by league officials, but Kate was working the snack bar; that stands out as far and away the worst incident we've seen.
We might be in a local minimum here, but if it's a sweet spot, great.
The most salient criticism of youth sports brought up by Gladwell and others is the immense cost. Combine this fact with the admissions bump sports can give kids during college applications and the wtf of youth sports and college is clear even if we Americans consistently look past it. The issue is not limited to the traditionally elite sports like golf, tennis, and crew either. Soccer is about the cheapest youth sport imaginable, but even there the money and time needed to access the more competitive leagues and better coaching are significant (e.g. Simmons's experience with his daughter). Giving any sort of admission consideration for sports is damn dubious and it should be pointed out more frequently. If kids want to play sports they should play sports. But let's stop the practice of the coaches getting to send lists of applicants to the admissions office for further consideration.
Yeah, they mention the expense, but I thought that as a couple of rich guys, they skipped past that way too lightly. I think "kids from poor families" is probably a much more significant source of untapped talent than "kids with November birthdays," but they don't talk about that nearly enough.
Man, am I ambivalent about the sports-and-college-admissions thing. Bottom line, I almost definitely don't get into Williams (and many of the other places I got into) if I don't have a nice little high school track & field career. But the warping effect is real, though perhaps worse so at places where the recruited athletes are sometimes not at all academically qualified. But frankly the worst part of the warping effect (not at Williams, at least not when we were there) is once athletes are on campus. Our DII football team got an auditorium that is reserved for their meetings with leather seats embossed with the university mascot on them. Each seat cost $400 just for the embossing -- for the whole room that little aesthetic touch cost significantly more than an assistant professor's salary in almost every field. And I know the Athletic Department/Booster argument: These are different pools of money, and sure, kind of. Except when, like every single DII athletic program, ours does not make money so general funds are used to cover the gap. Then suddenly the different pots of money argument disappears and "sports are the front porch of the university" arguments emerge.
A lot of the time, I think that the "revenue sports" at the high DI level are basically the analogue of the Ivy League schools in the more general admissions discussion: a tiny fraction of the actual people involved, that nonetheless completely dominates and distorts the conversation. They maybe ought to be bracketed off as a separate thing entirely.
But, as you note, the money issue extends outside those sports and those institutions, as folks elsewhere are trying to keep up, even when it's not remotely plausible. (I'm not surprised to hear that it's particularly crazy when football in Texas is involved...)
But the tiny fraction has disproportionate impact. That said, people always think I'm crazy when I point out that 2000-student Williams not only has more varsity athletes, but a LOT more varsity athletes than Alabama does. I believe it's a shade more than twice as many sports, and while Alabama's football team is bigger than Williams, the track team is larger at Williams, and we have many, many sports that are nowhere to be found in the SEC, some with pretty big rosters. I think at the revenue sports level, some of the biggest warping factors are probably football at Vandy, Duke, and Rice, made worse by the fact that they do not actually generate revenue at those places ...
If The Pip continues playing at that level, you may look back and find this was the apex moment of the whole experience, before you developed a much greater understanding of why Gladwell - whether he actually ever met a human parent or not - makes that case. Granted that in baseball, it's likely not going to include hearing a parent command their kid on the field to go physically and specifically harm your own (nor will you have the sick satisfaction of watching your kid turn to that parent, stop and lock eyes and then proceed to rack up the goals that win the game ... nor catch yourself thinking gee wonder if there's a way to harness that reaction? and realize just how wrong it all is when the subject is children) but after hearing from other parents with elite baseball kids: it's coming. Enjoy these days where your child plays strictly for love of the game, and supporting him is beautifully straightforward (albeit expensive and time sucking).
The problem with the advantage athletics confer regarding college would not exist if it was only the advantage you mention in the footnote. A symptom of the bigger problem is the disproportionate advantage conferred for both admissions and financial aid as compared to any other potential demonstration of that same commitment and achievement in a different pursuit. The classical notion that improvement of the body is a virtue closely coupled with improvement of the mind might have been the starting point, but that's not the reality of how it works today.