Expose on youth sports by Columbus, OH newspaper

warmskin · Post by **warmskin** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 1:11 pm

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/sp ... index.html

Youth sports leagues have grown into a $5 billion industry with virtually no regulation. Kids suffer injuries at an alarming rate, and some organizers are abusing both children and league funds.

In the five-day series "Little leagues, big costs," The Dispatch explores where youth sports have taken wrong turns in recent years.

old goalie85 · Post by **old goalie85** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 1:51 pm

Makes me not want to look in the mirror. I had my 02 playing AAA hockey this summer. [HOW STUPID] It's all about the $, not the kids.

warmskin · Post by **warmskin** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 2:55 pm

we all get caught up in the heat of the battle. This expose is a good reality check for all of us.

greybeard58 · Post by **greybeard58** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 12:22 pm

A very good series of articles, everyone should read them all.

warmskin · Post by **warmskin** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 12:33 pm

Greybear58, I have read some of the articles. Any highlights you thought were the most interesting in the series?

greybeard58 · Post by **greybeard58** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 1:10 pm

I think it is better to read the whole series as they are all interesting.

JSR · Post by **JSR** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 1:30 pm

greybeard58 wrote:I think it is better to read the whole series as they are all interesting.

I agree they are interesting however after reading the first article I do disagree with some things. Specifically that the people they highlight in the article are "typical" or "normal". Obviously people like this exist, and perhaps this is typical on the East Coast. However I do not know ANYONE personally that fits the description of the people in those articles. My family is probably as dedicated to sports as any I know in our area and we have dinner at the dinner table 6 nights a week, the 7th is usually due to me or my wife and not the kids. We take one or two trips to MN or IL for spring AAA Hockey tournaments but other than that we don't travel further than 40 miles for any games in soccer, hockey, golf or swim (the sports my three kids play during different points of the year). Practices are reasonable and everything is within reasonable distance. I don;t know any 10 year old kids who play anything year round. I find my experience is that of pretty much everyone I know. So I don't get where they believe those folks are "typical" or the "norm", I believe those folks are still the exception and not the rule. That said it does touch on subjects that need highlighting and definitely opens your eyes to somethings.

warmskin · Post by **warmskin** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 1:38 pm

Sports travel is huge all over the US. Granted it depends at what level and what sport your children play. If you look at any major youth sports tourmanent you will see teams from all over a region and sometimes the country. I know in the mid-atlantic area teams travel excessively up and down the coast. Teams from MN travel to Chicago and Canada. It is difficult to establish what the norm is but certainly elite level teams do travel a lot. I frequently travel for business and I am amazed at all the youth teams I see at airports during non-weekend and non-holiday travel periods. My son played on a youth hockey team and the coaches thought nothing of pulling them out of school for a weekend tournament out of state. I was a little outraged since school will get 99.99% of hockey players farther in life than hockey will.

JSR · Post by **JSR** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 2:38 pm

warmskin wrote:Sports travel is huge all over the US. Granted it depends at what level and what sport your children play. If you look at any major youth sports tourmanent you will see teams from all over a region and sometimes the country. I know in the mid-atlantic area teams travel excessively up and down the coast. Teams from MN travel to Chicago and Canada. It is difficult to establish what the norm is but certainly elite level teams do travel a lot. I frequently travel for business and I am amazed at all the youth teams I see at airports during non-weekend and non-holiday travel periods. My son played on a youth hockey team and the coaches thought nothing of pulling them out of school for a weekend tournament out of state. I was a little outraged since school will get 99.99% of hockey players farther in life than hockey will.

Depends on how you and your family view sports. I actually believe the lessons learned in sports are every bit as important as school. I don't play sports for a living but I credit them for much of my success today in business, every bit as much as school. My father-in-law is a very well respected Superintendent of a public school system (his schools are excellent) and he always preaches the "Three A's", they are Academics, Athletics, and Arts and he believes all three are equally important to becoming a knowledgeable, well rounded individual with none being placed above or below the other. Sort of like the three leg stool, take one leg away and the stool cannot stand on it's own even with the two other legs. I think it's when one of the three is placed above the others things become unbalanced. If a your kid is an excellent student in school that does not take school work for granted and does not miss many if any days I see no problem in missing a Friday to got o a hockey tournament, lots can be learned on those trips as well. it's about balance

old goalie85 · Post by **old goalie85** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 3:10 pm

I like that, the three legged stool. I'll have to remember that one.

warmskin · Post by **warmskin** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 8:49 pm

This is no doubt a complex issue beyond this blog. If you talk to educators it is the boys who are falling behind now academically for a variety of reasons. You can rationalize anything but blowing off school for sports is not a good precedent. For the first time ever last year more girl’s obtained PhD’s in the US than boys. US Colleges now enroll about 60% woman. There is a national science and technology program backed by a number of fortune 100 companies to keep young teenage children interested in math in science at those ages where they start to loose interest. I respect anybodies devotion to academics but like many things in this Internet era things are changing fast including academics.
I am a proponent of athletics for a variety of reasons but it should not be a priority over academics. The US Military fails a majority of young recruits because they are either obese or too out of shape so certainly our society needs more athletic programs for all kids.

JSR · Post by **JSR** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 9:01 am

warmskin wrote:This is no doubt a complex issue beyond this blog. If you talk to educators it is the boys who are falling behind now academically for a variety of reasons. You can rationalize anything but blowing off school for sports is not a good precedent. For the first time ever last year more girl’s obtained PhD’s in the US than boys. US Colleges now enroll about 60% woman. There is a national science and technology program backed by a number of fortune 100 companies to keep young teenage children interested in math in science at those ages where they start to loose interest. I respect anybodies devotion to academics but like many things in this Internet era things are changing fast including academics.
I am a proponent of athletics for a variety of reasons but it should not be a priority over academics. The US Military fails a majority of young recruits because they are either obese or too out of shape so certainly our society needs more athletic programs for all kids.

Apparently you did not read what I wrote so I won't bother to do it again. Sufficed to say academics are not more important OR less important than academics, nor are athletics more or less important than academics, provided balance is being kept in order they are equal legs of the stool and the best educators in the country agree with me on this. It's not rocket science to figure out that the majority of the best students in a high school are also usually athletes.....

warmskin · Post by **warmskin** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 2:26 pm

Is that why Caltech and MIT have such good athletic teams? If you are going to state something that you feel is factual you might add a sitation of what you are referring to. To be literal the early rocket scientists that created NASA were not athletes by any stroke of the imagination.

JSR · Post by **JSR** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 2:46 pm

warmskin wrote:Is that why Caltech and MIT have such good athletic teams? If you are going to state something that you feel is factual you might add a sitation of what you are referring to. To be literal the early rocket scientists that created NASA were not athletes by any stroke of the imagination.

Apparently according to your definition only elite athletes count as athletes?? Seriously now you are being argumentative and very short sighted. Just because someone does not participate in atheltics at the elite level does not mean they are not an athlete and it doesn't make the importance of athletics any less important in their lives. The valedictorian of my high school, who went on to Yale, participated in two sports in high school (cross country and tennis), he wasn't great but he played them, every single person who ranked academically inside our top 25 (out of 325 students) played atleast one sport in high school, and the overwhlemign majority of our top 100 played sports. Interestingly none of the students in the bottom 25 played any sports at all in high school. I am not aware of a single public high school in my state where the overwwhelming majority of the top students don't play atleast one high school sport if not multiple ones. Youa re seriously confusing excelling in sports with utilizing them as part of becoming a well rounded person, which is what I have said from the beginning. And FYI, I bet you'd be flabbergasted at how many of those MIT students and rocket scientists played some sort of sport growing up and in high school. Just because they don't continue beyond high school doesn't make the fact they participated in them until that point any less important to how they developed as people.