I strongly believe that sports play a vital role in the development of children. It teaches you hard work, teamwork, sportsmanship, and even how to handle losses and wins. This is the reason why me and my wife go out of our way and work extra hard to afford to keep our kids in sports. This is also the reason why I coach as much as I can because I know that at the recreational level, most coaches are just there, and I want to be a guide to all kids I coach to what sports is.

My children all have the green light to play whatever sport they desire, but I have a rule that gets instituted at 11 years old. One sport must become the focus. Why 11, you ask, well that’s about the age you need to start training your mind and body for the sport if you wish to become good enough to go to college for that sport. That is the ultimate goal for each of my kids is scholarships to college playing a sport. I am not saying that after 11, they can not play another sport, but that sport has to take priority. If it’s prime season for your sport, then you will be at all those practices, and the other sport takes a backseat. This is easy to do in some sports like baseball as it has a defined season and football, soccer and basketball are at different times. Others like swimming are year round, and finding time to play other sports is hard but not impossible.

My oldest made her choice a few years back, but I let her play other things all the time for fun. This year was the first year I made her focus more on swimming than anything else because soccer was right in prime time for short course state finals. We did not go due to not qualifying, but I would rather she stayed focused than worry about her team missing her because she was at swim more than soccer practice.

My second child has been trending toward soccer as her sport, but this last season, I saw a change in her. She is playing better than ever, but she has wanted to try other sports to see if any of them were more interesting to her. I did not have the time to coach a softball team this spring due to having 2 other teams going right now, and she wanted me to coach if she played that. So today, she took a leap of faith and tried out for the swim team. She is super interested in it, so I gave her an ultimatum. She has things she must do for the family if she wishes for us to have to work hard to get swimming paid for like her sister. Swimming is year-round, and swim tank fees and other fees hit all the time for us. She made it past the tryouts and was invited to the week long invite only group. This is to see if she has the capacity to learn how to swim and take instruction. So she has the next couple of weeks to show she can do at home what she must and to show the coaches she has what it takes to swim.

This moves us to my son. Honestly, the kid is a rockstar at any sport he tries. He is a top soccer player in his division and is moving up a year early to the next division to go play with them. He already hits baseballs like he’s ready for player pitch and in two weeks learned how to field much better than a 5 year old should. He just takes to sports naturally and may end up playing a bunch of sports. I hope it’s baseball that he chooses because I love coaching it and hope to be able to coach baseball for years. I’m sure he will try out to swim at some point and be a top-notch swimmer and have to choose which sport to pursue, but if I get my way, baseball will be a priority, hopefully. Now, I will not force him into anything. I just politely poke him that way.

My youngest is not old enough to walk, but the second she is, I’m putting a ball at her feet and a bat in her hand. I still need a softball player, and if my second doesn’t go soccer, I will want a soccer player too. 

I know people can go too far in sports, but with the proper guidance, sports can lead children away from so many things. How many kids that are truly concerned about being an athlete get in trouble or walk the road of a rebel. If nothing else, I will have healthy and athletic kids that get a college education for free, and maybe just maybe one of them will win a gold medal or a national championship.

I sometimes worry I am pushing my dreams on my children, but honestly, if you could have seen the smile on my daughters face when the coach called her name to tryout or saw the look of determination on my sons face when he put on a slugging show for his new team on Friday or even the look up at the clock post race of Zoey. You would know I may force practice and hatd work, but they enjoy every second of the game and the competition. They get mad when seasons end and new teams aren’t formed yet. They get upset when we don’t spend hours a week on a field working with other people, and they get sad when the team doesn’t take it as seriously as them. My children may complain about the practice and the daily hitting drills or kicking drills in the backyard, but when they get to show off their new skill that got developed in the backyard it’s nothing but smiles.

I hope they all have bigger dreams than even I have for them. I hope it’s a dream I get to live with them because at some point I won’t be a coach. I’ll just be dad in the stands cheering and crying that my kid is a star.