Travel Ball insanity and Parents training their Kids to be Pros......

We’ve had several current and past pros in various sports come from our high school. They will come back to do talks for dads and kids from time to time. Best one I ever heard was a World Series winning major league pitcher who explained that sports should be about fun b/c of how slight the odds are that their kid will make it to the pros let alone make it to be a div 1 athlete.
 
My oldest son played elite travel hockey for 8 years. Paid coaching staff, travel every weekend to Boston, Montreal, Buffalo, etc. Probably cost me upwards of $25k a year and a lot of gray hair. Beyond the scholarship to a private school, was it worth it? Maybe not, but I can see the results in his work ethic and capacity for pain. At 30, he is already a successful exec at the largest bank in the world. Getting up at 4:30am to go skate in a cold rink when you are seven years old will certainly have an impact on your life and it doesn't necessarily have to result in playing in the NHL.
 
That’s a really good point. I’ve seen those benefits as well with my daughters. And in this day and age of the lazy gen z, work ethic is a tremendous advantage. The aforementioned pitcher I believe was speaking more to the dad’s in the audience who were trying to mend their once shattered dreams through their kids.
 
DallasGlenn2005 said:
We’ve had several current and past pros in various sports come from our high school. They will come back to do talks for dads and kids from time to time. Best one I ever heard was a World Series winning major league pitcher who explained that sports should be about fun b/c of how slight the odds are that their kid will make it to the pros let alone make it to be a div 1 athlete.
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Oddly enough, my high school had a retired NFL starter come in and talk to us about how big of a deal our state championship rings were, namely because due to his path through high school, NCAA, and when he got traded to different pro teams just lining up that way...he'd never actually won a championship at any level...but he still had a pretty successful career and got to spend his life doing something he loved. And, apparently, that's a really common story.

None of us had the heart to tell him that more than half of the team were receiving our second.

But, again, those of us that were serious really were in it just because we enjoyed it. Winning was a side effect of working so hard (and some degree of luck), and working so hard was a side effect of loving what we were doing.

I'm trying to think if anyone actually took a D1 scholarship (there were a few offers)....but I don't think so. The only people who continued to compete in NCAA were people who went to service academies (1 to Air Force, 2 to Navy that I remember)....one went on to compete at a D3 school partially because she was already planning on going there, but they didn't give her a scholarship and IDK how long she kept with it....we lost touch after I graduated. No one on my team went further than that, but some of the people I used to compete against made it to the Olympics (three of them were from one family).

I had D1 offers, but I chose a better school (in terms of Academics) instead...and quit after I aged out of Junior Olympics. I stand by the choice, but part of me will always wonder how my life would have gone differently if I'd taken one of them. That side of it probably would have gone farther, but I probably wouldn't have even met my wife and I probably wouldn't have met any of my close friends. I guess I'll never know what it would have been like.
 
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