So,
hopefully you read my last post and had some serious thought about the
nature of these club sports. Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “I
know my child is not Michael Phelps, I’m just hoping he or she can do
well enough to get a small scholarship to a small college somewhere.”
Well, you’re still not getting it.
First, it’s important to understand that only Division I and II
colleges give athletic scholarships. Even then, those are typically
partial scholarships for non-revenue sports which are pretty much
anything outside of football or men’s basketball. That is true for even
the large universities with dominant athletic programs. Also, most of
those “small colleges somewhere” are private or are going to be out of
state....read: more expensive. Lastly, consider the fact that sports are
tuition cash cow’s for many small schools. If they give you a chance to
play tennis in college and can sucker you into coming from out-of-state
(or even in-state) and paying some tuition even after a little
scholarship money, that is still money in the college’s pocket. Would
your child be considering that school if athletics were not involved?
Even
if that small college offers your child a $12,000 a year scholarship
you need to look at the bottom line. Is tuition $48,000 a year?
Congrats, you just a got a 25%-off coupon. Did you spend $6000 a year
for four years in high school while driving your kid 40-minutes one way,
three days a week so they could spend a significant part of their
after-school “family time” on a soccer field before they came home to do
their homework? Man, you must have really wanted that coupon. Run the
numbers, if you put that money in the bank, let it earn some interest,
then go to a cheaper college, even without a scholarship, where will you
be?
The
kind of schedule the club sports presents can take an emotional toll on
your child as well. You need to figure out how much your child, deep
down, really likes that sport. For many adolescents the sport becomes
their identity. They’ve always played baseball, or whatever, so now they
are a baseball player. You, as a parent, kind of ran with that and now
it’s all your kid knows. For many of the students I see, that fire burns
out in high school but the kid has lost sight of how to be anything
else but a baseball player. On top of that, they are kind of scared of
letting you, their coaches, and their teammates down. Don’t let that
happen. You need to figure out whether your kid is really, I mean
really, still into that sport so much so that it is worth making the
incredible sacrifices club sports entail. Be warned, if you ask them if
they want to do (or keep doing) the club sports they are going to say
yes. You have to dig pretty deep on this one and perhaps do the same
with yourself.
Last
but not least, you have to think about how the time commitment to club
sports affects academics. If you see your child’s grades slipping be
sure they have the time and energy
to devote to their studies on top of practice. You also need to think
about what kind of academic scholarships your child might be eligible
for if they worked on school with the same fervor they gave to their
athletics.
By
no means do I mean to vilify athletics or the great people who run
club sports. However, I am consistently amazed at the blinders parents
wear when it comes to the reality of them. For many many young people,
sports are important to them and they are pretty good on the field or
court. If your child has a legitimate passion for a given sport and a
legitimate ability to play, that’s wonderful. There are far too many
parents though who really don’t understand the system as a whole and get
too caught up in the big and bold dreams that they fail to make
realistic and efficient choices. Please, take the time to step back from
it all and examine where you family sits with the club sports lifestyle
in order to make decisions that are right for your child and your child
alone.
