Is extra, sport-specific training a must these days?

A little more than a month ago, as his high school wrestling season was coming to a close, my son asked me if it would be OK for him to do some work at a wrestling club over the summer. All the wrestling dads I'm friendly with tell me that working in the clubs is the only way -- or the fastest way, anyway -- to truly improve as a wrestler.

But besides being one more thing my wife and I have to pay for, club wrestling now becomes one more thing to add to our very busy son's agenda for the summer. He's already got football practice and club lacrosse, and we'd like him to get a job, if he can. Now he has to wrestle, too?

The answer to that, I suppose, is if he wants to be competitive next winter, then yes. This year he did fine against the other kids like himself -- the football players who are trying to stay in shape over the winter, and the good athletes who aren't great wrestlers -- but there were too many nights when he had to face one of those committed, year-round wrestlers who's been doing it since Kindergarten. He couldn't compete with those kids, and he knew it.

As a competitor, that's hard to accept. And if going the wrestling gym this summer gives him even the slightest chance to win just one more match next winter, then how could my wife and I say no to that?

These days, extra training is just part of the landscape. The kid who's playing against your son or daughter probably has a personal pitching coach, quarterback coach, skating coach, shooting coach, or yes, wrestling coach. And if your kid doesn't have one, then he or she is going to be at a disadvantage. And if your son or daughter plays a team sport, then the team is at a disadvantage, too.

On the other hand, a friend of mine whose oldest son is about to graduate high school and head off to a large university (where he will not be playing a sport) was joking with me recently that he wished he hadn't spent all that money on pitching lessons when his son was young. His son ended up not even playing baseball in high school, and my friend's point was that money he spent on pitching lessons now looks like it might have been put to better use somewhere else.

So I guess what I would take from that is, before you dive into the world of extra, personal sports training, you should probably first examine what your expectations are. If you think your child will want to try and play a sport in college, then yeah, you'll most likely want to invest in extra training at some point. But that's probably not something you need to worry about in second grade. Maybe you can wait a little while.

If your child isn't likely to play college sports, but you just think he or she would enjoy a better experience by improving his or her skills through extra training, then go for it, if you can afford it.

Is extra training a must for every athlete? No. But as more and more athletes use extra training to get a leg up on the competition, then more and more are going to have to do it just to keep up.

To youth sports officials: Priority No. 1 is to protect the kids

My wife hates it when I yell at the referees at our kids' games.

She's right, of course -- it's unseemly to yell at referees for any number of reasons. And while I really don't do it often, her point is I shouldn't do it, ever. I know that. But sometimes I just can't help myself. Hey, I'm human. And I will say, in my defense, that the refs have to be pretty bad for me to yell at them.

Usually I only yell at football refs, and occasionally, lacrosse refs, for some reason. I rarely yell at basketball referees. Inside a gym, with fewer people watching, somehow I don't feel as comfortable calling a referee out for every mistake. Perhaps it's because my nephew is a basketball ref, and I realize that referees are people too. I don't know.

Last week, though, it was hard to remain calm as I watched while the two referees working my son's CYO league basketball game allowed the game to get completely out of control. The opposing team was extremely physical, and the referees took the approach where they "let the kids play.'' 

At the youth level, I always prefer referees call a tighter game, so as to teach the kids what is a foul and what isn't. But allowing some physical play is fine, as long as the referees A) remember to let both teams' kids play, and B) at some point, take control and don't allow the physicality to reach a level where the game becomes dangerous to the participants.

The two referees at the game in question did neither of those things in this particular instance. The opposing team spent the entire game pushing, bumping and banging my son's team and it wasn't long before my son's team -- which has three football players on it -- decided to push and bump and bang back.

The problem is, as the contact got more and more intense, the conditions got more and more dangerous for the players. At one point, my son swiped at the ball after a rebound on a missed free throw and fouled an opposing player. The player swung his elbow -- violently -- at my son, and grazed him with a glancing blow on his jaw. He wasn't injured, thank goodness, but he's the only one that got charged with a foul on that play.

And that's where the game went completely off the rails.

My son's coach began to argue with the referees, not protesting the foul call against my son, but the lack of a call on the elbow that the opposing player threw at him. Eventually, the coach got a technical. And then a second technical, which meant he was ejected. The other team hit a bunch of foul shots in the sequence and a tight game began to slip away. That led to things getting even more physical. Thankfully, no one got hurt, but things got so bad that the referees ended the game with 16 seconds still left on the clock.

But that wasn't the end of it. Our coach called the league to complain about the officials, but the league decided to go along with the referees' report, which painted our team as the aggressors. The league suspended our coach for two games and two of our players got two-game suspensions as well, because they were assessed technical fouls in the game. The technicals came late in the game, as the refs were no doubt trying to rein in the players on both teams. At that point it was too late; the game was already out of control.

By the way, in case you're wondering, I didn't yell at the refs -- much.

If I could send a message to the two referees that I believe allowed all this chaos to occur, here's what I would tell them: Call fouls when you see them. By doing that, you set the tone and let the kids know what will and won't be tolerated. That's the best way to keep everybody safe on the court, field, or ice: If you do that, I promise, I'll keep trying to stop yelling at you.

Watch your weight, sure, but don't get crazy

This morning, my son decided he was going to skip breakfast.

He intended to skip lunch, too.

This, apparently, is what wrestlers do on match days. And he's got a playoff match tonight.

Look, I've made no secret of the fact that wrestling makes me squeamish. I appreciate all the positive things the sport offers and I have a great deal of respect for the kids who wrestle. They are all in great physical condition, they develop great mental strength, and they enjoy a wonderful team camaraderie with one another. Overall, it's a positive experience for most kids, and my son enjoys it, which is all that really matters. My wife and I support him wholeheartedly, and we go to the matches and cheer for him, and for all the kids on the team.

But honestly, it's hard to watch sometimes. We were powerless to do anything at a recent match, when an opponent looked like he was going to pull our son's arm out of its socket; and even when he wins a match -- when he pins the other kid, I end up feeling kind of bad for his opponent.

On top of all that, there's the weight thing, which makes us uneasy, too.

As a freshman, he's been content to wrestle his actual weight, or near it, even though that meant he had to start the season on J.V. He did have to lose two pounds to get to the nearest weight limit, but that wasn't a big deal, considering that other kids have had to lose a lot more than that to find an available spot they can fill in the varsity lineup. One of his teammates told me he had lost 20 pounds since the summer. It was the only way for him to earn a regular varsity spot.

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday, and with a playoff match tonight, my son and his teammates couldn't afford to go hog wild on Buffalo Wings and bleu cheese dip like most of the rest of America. He actually went running earlier in the day to burn off some calories and give himself room to have a wing or two and maybe some chips and a soda. This morning he woke up right at his weight limit, so all was good -- except he didn't want to take a chance that eating breakfast might push him over the limit.

Now, believe me, I understand that in the real world, there are many children who don't eat breakfast because there's no food in their house. And that's absolutely heartbreaking to think about. Thankfully, that is not my son's situation. Instead, he chooses to skip the most important meal of the day because of his commitment to a sport, which sounds very much like a First World problem. My wife and I were able to convince him to have an apple this morning, but he wouldn't even drink a glass of water with it, afraid that might push him over the weight limit. He made himself a fruit smoothie and packed a few snacks for after the weigh-in.

Weight management is just part of the sport, and I get that. And fortunately, our son isn't doing anything crazy -- at least not yet. But he likes the sport, and at this point intends to do it again next year and to continue doing it throughout high school. So there could come a point, over the next few years, where he will feel the need to lose a massive amount of weight -- either for his own benefit, or for the team's. 

I'm hoping that never happens.

Got cut from the travel team? It's not the end of the world

At the end of the tryouts for the travel basketball teams for our town, they always tell the kids not to be discouraged if they get cut; but to find another team somewhere and keep playing. Our high school boys varsity coach, who oversees the boys travel team tryouts, likes to tell the kids that his varsity squad often is largely made up of kids who never played on the town travel team, or if they did, they played on the B team.

I always thought they were just trying to make the kids feel better, but it turns out, it's true.

When my youngest son failed to make the travel team this year, a few parents whose kids were also cut got together and formed a team at a local facility that runs basketball leagues and clinics all year round. One of our son's teammates has an older brother who is on the high school's freshman team, and looking at that roster, I realized that many of those players had not played travel basketball at the youth level. My older son is a freshman, and he'd played travel basketball through sixth grade. Of the 11 kids who were on his sixth grade team, only five of them are playing high school basketball now.

And that perfectly illustrated the fact that making the youth travel team doesn't mean your son or daughter automatically will play in high school. Conversely, getting cut now, or choosing not to play for some other reason, doesn't mean your son or daughter won't be able to play in high school.

My wife and I knew -- and our son knew, too -- that he was always a longshot to make the team, even though he'd spent a lot of time in the summer and fall refining his shot in our backyard, and working diligently on improving his ballhandling. The odds were against him at the tryouts because everyone who played on the A and B teams the previous season returned, so unless the basketball association decided to expand the rosters, any new player who was going to make one of the travel teams was going to have to take the spot of someone who had been on the team last year.

Two new kids did make it. Both were obviously too good not to -- no-brainer picks for the A team. That meant two kids dropped from the A team to the B team and two kids got cut from the B team.

Ultimately, my son wasn't good enough to bump someone else off the team. But that's OK. He is enjoying the team he's on and my wife and I and the other parents believe that, in the long run, our kids may end up being better off on this team than they might have been had they made the travel team. They are practicing and playing games against travel-level opponents, and that's the most important thing for their development. And without intending any disrespect, our kids are being coached by a paid coach who knows the game and how to teach it, whereas the travel teams are coached by parent-coaches.

High school is still a few years away for our son, so we can't get caught up in looking too far ahead for him. But it's comforting to know that when the time comes, nothing that happens now will hold him back then.

Is playing three sports in high school still a thing?

One of the best things about living in a smaller town, or going to a small school, is that often it means more opportunities to do things, especially from an athletic standpoint. A big town/school may provide more opportunity in that it may offer more sports sometimes, but a smaller town/school most likely will have less competition for playing time in the sports that are offered.

In high school, that means a good athlete may be able to play three different varsity sports over the course of a school year, something the best athletes routinely did when I went to school.

But these days, playing three sports in high school is not always easy, and it's often not as glamorous as it sounds.

In our town, the high school football team begins practice the day after the championship games for the spring seasons, meaning practice for the fall season begins before the previous school year is over and runs throughout the summer. By the time the football season ends, the players have been going at it very hard for half the year, and their bodies and minds are tired. The idea of rolling directly from a fall sport right into a winter sport without a break in between can be daunting -- and even more daunting if the athlete knows he or she will later have to roll right from the winter sport into a spring sport.

When is there an opportunity to rest? When is there an opportunity to do something other than play a sport?

My son the freshman just wrapped up a very enjoyable football season and is currently in a one-week dead period before he starts wrestling practice next Monday. A month ago, he wasn't sure he wanted to wrestle; he was thinking he'd just work out over the winter, train and get ready for lacrosse season in the spring. He'd tried boxing a couple years ago and liked it (it was actually more training than real boxing) and he thought he'd like to do that again this winter.

But, of course, the wrestling coach was disappointed to hear that. And the football coaches gave him a hard time about it, too. They all acknowledged that giving maximum effort for three hours a day, six days a week at football practice takes a lot out of a person. None of them suggested wrestling would take up less time, or require less effort.

My wife and I told him we supported whatever decision he made, but both of us figured he'd probably end up wrestling. Last week he decided to take the plunge. He said he had changed his mind and now wanted to do it; he said he thought he'd give it a shot freshman year and see how it goes.

Personally, I kind of wish he would have taken the winter off. As much as I advocate kids playing multiple sports when they're younger, as they get older the commitment level for all of the sports keeps getting higher and higher. At some point, I think giving the necessary commitment to three different sports is too much for most people.

There's much more to life than playing sports. But when you're a three-sport athlete in high school, there isn't enough time for much else.

Sometimes, taking a step back from sports is a good thing

This fall, our youngest son decided not to play football. Considering he had practically grown up at the junior football field -- he'd been going there since he was 2 years old and in a stroller, when we were taking his older brothers to practice -- it was a pretty significant decision on his part.

He opted not to play because he wasn't sure how much playing time he'd get, and he knew he'd be miserable if he didn't play much. Now, he's a decent athlete, if not exceptional, and, for all we know, he might have gotten plenty of playing time. But there was also a chance he might not have, and since he's had issues with losing his temper when he's frustrated on the sports field, my wife and I were proud of him for making what we saw as a mature decision.

The thing for him was, he had to develop a new identity. From the time he was 6 years old, and playing flag football, he was always a football player. And he came from a family of football players, so that's how everyone saw him. This year, he had to figure out what he was going to be and how he would spend his time without football.

The good news is, he adjusted just fine. He did miss the game, we're sure, but observing him closely, it doesn't seem like he missed it all that much. Not playing football allowed him the chance to do some other stuff he wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, like playing on a fall lacrosse team, and playing basketball in the fall open gyms that were offered at the same time as football practice. Perhaps best of all, not spending so much time at the football field allowed him to spend more time with some of his friends who don't play football. And he even made a couple of new, non-football-playing friends at the middle school.

Unfortunately, he didn't make the travel basketball team. He had invested a lot of time in the summer and fall working on his skills and his game to get ready for the tryouts, and he really had hoped against hope he'd make it this year. But while he clearly was disappointed, he doesn't seem devastated. He was happy with the way he played at the tryouts, and knows he did the best he could. Disappointment is part of life, and he's handling it well. It's almost as if he's realizing that there's more to life than being on a sports team.

Now, I'm not suggesting he's better off without sports, or anything -- we're a sports-loving family, and he's a sports-loving kid -- and all indications are that he'll return to football someday, whether it's next fall, or perhaps in high school. If that happens, it'll be great, but for right now, this time off from football seems to be teaching him that his self worth doesn't have to be attached to his identity as "an athlete.'' He can just be a nice kid who is a good friend, a good student, and one who is pretty good at sports. He's learned a lot of life lessons from sports, and now maybe he's learning one more: How to put things in perspective.

Folks: Please don't yell at the quarterback

It's different when your kid's the quarterback.

My son is enjoying his first taste of high school football this fall. He's on the freshman team, and after spending most his time in junior football as a quarterback, he's having great success on the field as a receiver, defensive back and punter.

I've never seen him so happy. He's happy with his role on the team, happy being with his teammates both at and away from the field, and in the bigger picture, he appears to be making a smooth overall transition from middle school to high school. As far as football is concerned, he doesn't seem to miss being the quarterback at all (he still is the backup), and it looks now as if not being the quarterback is the best thing that could have happened to him.

The quarterback position is unlike any other in team sports. At every football game, all eyes are on the quarterback, and rightly or wrongly, the quarterback usually gets a disproportionate share of the credit or blame for the team's success -- or lack thereof. Of course, being selected to play the position is an honor, as it means the coach is counting on you to do a lot for the team. But sometimes it seems it might just be more fun to play a position with less pressure attached to it.

The boy who is playing quarterback for the freshman team is a great kid -- and a great quarterback and athlete. He and my son have played football together since the second grade, and while they don't hang out together away from the field, they do like and have a tremendous amount of respect for each other. They share the same values as far as desire to win, work ethic, etc., and I view them almost as partners dedicated to working together to help the team win. I've been friendly with the boy's dad since our sons were on that second grade team together.

The boy's older brother is the varsity quarterback, and sometimes I feel bad for their parents at games. Not the freshman games, so much, but the varsity games can be brutal. At a recent varsity game, the older brother was struggling some, and I was disappointed to hear parents in the stands yelling at him. On one play, the mother of another player screamed at the quarterback, yelling frantically at him to throw the ball as the defense closed in him. When he did, and the pass was incomplete, the mother yelled at him again, shouting, "Who are you throwing it to?!''

The following game, another parent approached the quarterback's dad and their conversation -- about football -- became so heated that they had to be separated by a third man.

My first thought, when I saw the one incident and heard about the other, was: What the heck is wrong with people, yelling at high school kids?

My next thought was this: If this is what happens when your kid is the quarterback, I'm glad my son isn't the quarterback.