A couple months ago I got an e-mail from our soccer club commissioner indicating someone had contacted him to see if her son could play on the team in our age group. I'd been that this road before - I wasn't optimistic.
My first conversation with the boys Mom did nothing to stir my enthusiasm. The kid had played one season of organized soccer in a low-level rec league.I assumed this was another Mom with an unrealistic view of her son. His experience was one step up from "he's never played organized before, but he loves it, he's always playing in the backyard." I coach a travel team made up mostly of kids of kids who have played for 5 or 6 years.
However, half my kids were going to be playing a lot of baseball this Spring and I figured it wouldn't hurt to contact his coach from the Fall. He was good enough to write me back and tell me the young man was worth a look.
So he "made" the team. I figured he'd be a nice benchwarmer.
The first time we played a game - we didn't have any practices before we played in a friendly tournament - I put him in after a few minutes. My main assistant asked who the heck that kid was... I said - I don't know, I figured we needed another body. My number one - who knows a hell of a lot more soccer than I do said "he's got it."
And he was right.
He's raw. He needs a lot more touches. He gets caught out of position sometimes. It's all to be expected from a guy who played his first game 8 months ago.
He's also one of the best kids I have - he blows away kids that have been playing for years and have attended the camps, gone to the clinics, done all the things that are supposed to produce talent.
. He has "it."
"It" is footspeed., agility, vision and aggressiveness.It is also intangible - "presence" if you will. It can be taught to a degree, but to overuse the word, for the most part you either have it, or you don't.
There's nothing wrong with a kid playing a sport for years - if he/she loves it. I believe in everything that sports teaches - no matter what the talent level is.
But I laugh at the notion that a kid needs to specialize in one sport at an UnGodly early age - in the name of scholarships. Scholarship level athletic talent is overwhelmingly God given, or for my agnostic friends - genetic.
Allow me one example.
I went to a middle school football game this fall. I saw kids who have played football for six years lined up as defensive backs, and they don't have any recovery speed. There are kids all over the city playing Xbox who could be taught to break on the football faster than these experienced kids...If one of them decides in high school..."what the hell, I'll go out for football" they're going to beat out these kids - you can't teach recovery speed. The parents of the kid who has played most of his life will go ballistic because the coach was so stupid to take a kid who hadn't played.
The coach can teach how to play. He's got 5 days/week and 2 hours a day to do it. He can't teach recovery speed.
Basketball might be even worse, In my sons age group they had 50 kids - most of them won't make their middle school team. When you play basketball, height is part of (but certainly not all) having "it."
Yes - years of work getting a head start is going to make you better. It can take good and make great - but it can't compensate for slow feet, poor vision, and all the intangibles.
I guess you can send the kid to speed and agility training...but one thing I've never figured out...If a slow kid goes to speed and agility training and a fast and agile kid goes to speed and agility training..., Who is going to be faster and more agile? What's the use?
This is not dissuade anyone - no matter what their level of ability - from playing an organized sport. But if you're spending thousands to get kids to camps so he can have that edge, and he's still a "pretty good player" but nothing special. If he's still bringing home 3rd place ribbons on field day, - don't blow the kids college fund on a new car just yet.
