http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFiCRzkDXOU
To me the interesting part came after the highlights though. Kuselias acted quite surprised and Kurkjian made a great point that we actually underestimate how good the top athletes really are. Seriously. He noted that almost all of these great athletes excelled at SEVERAL sports through high school. Ochocinco apparently played soccer. Lebron was an all-state football player in Ohio I believe. Many baseball players were also great basketball or football players.
So the real question is, why do we spend so much time specializing young kids at such a young age now? Have we been force-fed so much propaganda by competitive, off-season leagues that we now believe the only way to make it to the next level is to pay them your hard-earned money to gain the exposure of college coaches and big league scouts?
I had a conversation with a local basketball player recently. I asked him about a teammate of his whom I hadn't seen in a while. The teammate hit his growth spurt at an early age; was much stronger, faster and bigger than the rest of the 7th graders he competed with or against. So what did his coaches do? Made him learn how to play center. No problem here. Well at least there wouldn't have been a problem if he had continued to grow. Fast forward 2 years. The same athlete, plenty of athletic ability, is now too small to play in the post and is apparently a couple years behind on his ball-handling skills. Long story short-word is he "doesn't really like basketball that much anymore."
Can you blame him?
The main goal for youth athletics should be to be as well rounded as possible!
Any thoughts?
Jon
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