Club Sports

There is one key theme here: sports are really important for social and physical development and colleges place a high value on a 4 yr athlete for admission tiebreakers. Travel baseball is the biggest grind of a club sport with a bunch of very entitled kids but without playing at that level the kid stands zero chance of making the HS team as baseball Is the hardest team to make. Football
Is usually the easiest to make especially in a heavily Asian district. Track as well.
To make the team or to play? Lots of bloated high school teams rosters... look no further than.... nevermind :)
 
There is one key theme here: sports are really important for social and physical development and colleges place a high value on a 4 yr athlete for admission tiebreakers. Travel baseball is the biggest grind of a club sport with a bunch of very entitled kids but without playing at that level the kid stands zero chance of making the HS team as baseball Is the hardest team to make. Football
Is usually the easiest to make especially in a heavily Asian district. Track as well.

It's not just schools that like athletes. I've hired two early-career employees in recent memory who were captains of their collegiate sport teams. They were both excellent at dealing with other people in the workplace, much better than the average early career employee. They also happened to go to excellent undergrad schools so they were plenty smart.

I played football as an undersized Asian kid in elementary school (not in California) as well as a freshman in high school around here. I'm not sure I would want to push my kid in that direction.
 
To make the team or to play? Lots of bloated high school teams rosters... look no further than.... nevermind :)
not baseball - 100% skill sport - and hitting good pitching in HS which the kids that play travel start seeing at 12 or so is really tough if you haven't been doing it for a while
 
It's not just schools that like athletes. I've hired two early-career employees in recent memory who were captains of their collegiate sport teams. They were both excellent at dealing with other people in the workplace, much better than the average early career employee. They also happened to go to excellent undergrad schools so they were plenty smart.

I played football as an undersized Asian kid in elementary school (not in California) as well as a freshman in high school around here. I'm not sure I would want to push my kid in that direction.
Managing college athletics and graduating from a prestigious school shows an ability to perform under pressure.

Football is getting better in how they teach heads up tackling. Pop Warner helped our son win the 3 fights he was in during middle school - no one ever ran their mouth to him after that, and kept him in incredible shape all the way through freshman year after which he moved over to track and field, being tired of hitting and getting hit. In retrospect this was a good decision as he got through all those years without a concussion or any other serious injury. The best players were routinely getting their bell rung and I worry long term about some of those kids. His freshman year the Varsity team had a 2,000 yard rusher (junior, white guy) that got his bell rung hard in a playoff game and hung up his cleats for senior year.
 
not baseball - 100% skill sport - and hitting good pitching in HS which the kids that play travel start seeing at 12 or so is really tough if you haven't been doing it for a while
really? Baseball is a skill sport? That and carrying a bloated roster aren’t mutually exclusive.
 
Football is getting better in how they teach heads up tackling. Pop Warner helped our son win the 3 fights he was in during middle school - no one ever ran their mouth to him after that, and kept him in incredible shape all the way through freshman year after which he moved over to track and field, being tired of hitting and getting hit. In retrospect this was a good decision as he got through all those years without a concussion or any other serious injury. The best players were routinely getting their bell rung and I worry long term about some of those kids. His freshman year the Varsity team had a 2,000 yard rusher (junior, white guy) that got his bell rung hard in a playoff game and hung up his cleats for senior year.

Yeah, I liked the idea of playing football more than actually playing football. Agreed that there is a safety risk too.
 
really? Baseball is a skill sport? That and carrying a bloated roster aren’t mutually exclusive.
where I live it is. Our community LL was over 700 players - by far the biggest sport participation-wise at my son's elemtary school back then. Several of the top HS programs in CA are up here as well. I knew an ex-minor leaguer at my club that made a living between working in admissions and being an assistant coach at one of those HS programs and running several travel baseball teams.
 
Managing college athletics and graduating from a prestigious school shows an ability to perform under pressure.

Football is getting better in how they teach heads up tackling. Pop Warner helped our son win the 3 fights he was in during middle school - no one ever ran their mouth to him after that, and kept him in incredible shape all the way through freshman year after which he moved over to track and field, being tired of hitting and getting hit. In retrospect this was a good decision as he got through all those years without a concussion or any other serious injury. The best players were routinely getting their bell rung and I worry long term about some of those kids. His freshman year the Varsity team had a 2,000 yard rusher (junior, white guy) that got his bell rung hard in a playoff game and hung up his cleats for senior year.
The good thing about hockey is the kids learn fighting skills directly on the ice.🥊
 
Parents didn't want me to play football. Coaches hounded me in high school because I looked like a gorilla.

Ended up playing my senior year... wish I had played earlier... who knows where I would have ended up.

Didn't really want one of our kids to play football in elem but all their friends were... didn't even make it more than 2 "clinic" sessions. But... turns out they are not the football type so that worked.

What is the football type? Depends on the position... but I think you need some level of aggression... which.. based on the way our kid yells during video games... you would think they were the type. :)
 
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