John Smoltz was recently inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. As is the custom at a hall of fame ceremony, the honoree is given the chance, providing he is alive and well, to say a few words about whatever comes to mind with regard to the glorious event.
John Smoltz took a few cuts at the plate (bad analogy given he was a pitcher) during his acceptance speech to ask parents to let kids play multiple sports if they want to. I say Bravo!
For some reason, at the highest level I am sure there is a trail of money, coaches and parents have become of a mind that kids need to focus on one sport way too often. This is ludicrous.
Why do I believe this is ludicrous? Easy: Kids need to take advantage of their chances to experience whatever game they want to play. I have a friend that went to high school in the 1970s. He was not a great athlete…but he was a very good one. He was very competitive. If you were playing checkers he would hope you would cut your finger on the board. This guy also played and lettered in the following sports in high school:
Football, Basketball, Baseball, and Track and Field. He was very good at every single one of them.
He did not have a basketball coach that was penciling in his future starting lineup when they was in the fifth grade. The coaches understood the concept that not all kids grow at the same stage and the kid that was gangly and awkward in the 7th grade may grow into his feet and have promise at the sport he wants to play when he is seventeen. Not anymore.
Coaches are to blame to a certain degree. Know this…coaching high school sports is demanding. You put a great deal of your livelihood on your belief that a sixteen year-old will hang on to a football that is thrown from a seventeen year-old. That by definition yields you, as a coach, a little crazy yourself. But…you love the game. You want to share the game. Sometimes the game gets the best of you.
I know a high school baseball coach that once talked a promising multi-sport athlete out of playing other sports because the coach told him he thought he had the potential to be a draft pick of New York Mets. Hogwash. The coach just wanted to use the kid as a pawn in some power play. The kid was a bargaining chip to show off to other potential players that felt they too had to make some tough decisions only to figure on one sport exclusively and then getting burned out on said sport because they did not turn out to be as good at it as the nut-ball coach advertised.
Where did that leave the coach? Still coaching and feeding his line of bull to another gullible kid.
Where did that leave the kid? Regretting his choice. Hating his coach. And missing out on many great memories he could have made playing other sports too.
It happens all too often.
That is one great thing I like about a very successful high school football coach from my area. He encourages his players to play other sports. He wants them to be active. He wants them to experience teamwork in more than one forum.
He knows what I know. We know what those trying to hustle kids into playing one sports know too, even though the hustlers try to deny it.
If a player has the God-given ability and the desire to do so, he will play at the next level. The rest of the boys filling out the rosters and serving as scrimmage vests on these “travel teams” are the ones being snookered. There… we did all this without me ranting about the Dads that push their kid to be the athlete they wanted to be. Pass the Rolaids. I’m gonna be sick.
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson