@Joegator96 like you I’ve seen it at both school levels and you are right about it making sense to eventually concentrate on one sport if they are truly talented and potentially a collegian and big leaguer. I’ve had the pleasure (and sometimes the angst) of coaching those kids. Also had a few along the way that were really good at one sport but loved playing all they could, while they could. Two come to mind…Ryan Pearson was a 4 sport athlete and good at them all. Football took him to college at So Miss where he started for 3 years and actually played against the Gators and had a good game at WR. Another was Kirby Smart. I know that name drives everybody around here crazy, but Kirby played 4 sports as well. Football obviously took him to college and into a great career, but he was very fast and one hell of a competitor and there were days in the Spring he play baseball in the evening after running in a track meet in the afternoon. He and Ryan were throwbacks and really helped the other sports with their participation.
I also coached at the Class A level for a few years and as you mentioned most of the sports depended on about all the kids playing multiple sports so we’d not just have enough to be competitive but also just to be able to play! It was like that when I was in HS. We needed all hands on deck each season. My son played at the same HS I did and had the same experiences. He was a better football player but was a little smallish when he graduated and wanted to keep playing ball. No football offers but he got an offer to walk on at a Junior College in baseball and got to extend his athletics for a couple more years. I’ll always have a place in my heart for the multi-sport athletes.
@NVGator makes a great point at how specialization can start early and get out of hand to the detriment of many kids, particularly if it adversely affects them physically and mentally. One of the saddest cases was a kid I had in my HS cohort that had been playing organized baseball and traveling since he was 6 years old. He grew into a pretty decent player, a catcher, and played for his dad during the summer and fall while playing school ball in late winter and spring. When he hit 11th grade he just decided on his own and to his dad’s great dismay, no more. I had to see him in the office on another issue but segued into baseball and asked him what gives. He told me frankly that the travel ball was fun, way more games and tournaments than practice, traveling and staying in hotels, eating at restaurants and going to amusement parks and movies while on the road. When he got to high school, it was just the reverse…practice way more than games, not nearly as much fun and more like a job. He was fine physically, but not so much spiritually. But maybe it was the best thing for him in the long run? I feel like more kids have been forced to become the rule than the exception these days, a lot of it born from parents all too eager to live vicariously through their kids, hoping they can experience what they never got to through the children.
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