502 words
I have been playing sports almost since I could walk as do most
people. That’s just how it is. But I feel that today we put way too much
pressure on little kids to do well in sports. Now don’t get me wrong, playing
sports at young ages isn’t bad. In fact, it’s the total opposite. But when your
five year old son misses the ball in t-ball, he’s five. You don’t have to keep
him after a game for half an hour having him hit ball after ball. He’s five.
Take him home, buy him an ice cream cone and tell him you’re proud of him.
When kids have this image in their mind that they need to be
a five star athlete by the time they reach middle school, things start to go
seriously wrong. You have juniors in high school with injuries you used to only
see in adults. You never used to see teenagers needing ACL surgery or tearing
tendons in their knees. But because we are putting kids in competitive sports
so early, they are more prone to these potentially career ending injuries.
When I talk to my mom and dad about this topic, they always tell
me that when they were my age, you never really knew what your talents were
until you got to high school, maybe even college. Can you imagine someone who
had never played football before, going into the University of Iowa and saying
to the athletic director, “I want to play football,”? Sure it’s been done
before and there have been movies made about it but life isn’t a movie. If you
want to do that, you have to make up ten years plus of training and skills.
Sometimes if you are in a sport for so long, you can get
really bored with it. I have played volleyball since fifth grade so next year I
will have played for eight years plus five years of club volleyball. I used to
LOVE playing volleyball. I wanted to get a scholarship and had dreams of
playing for the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. I could picture myself on
their court playing other Big 10 teams. But after a while, it just gets tiring.
I have spent so much time and money and spent up so much of my summers with private
training and camps and practices that I finally realized how much I was missing
out on. There is so much more that I wish I could have done looking back that I
was never able to do because of volleyball.
So this is a message to both kids and parents alike. Don’t
push yourself so much that you hurt yourself and are out all season and try and
maybe see what else there is out there. There is a whole world out there full
of opportunities that are just sitting there waiting for you to find them. Take
a step back from your sports and realize what the world has to offer.
~Skooogster(:
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