what's wrong w/ the country right now?

[Panjandrum]

also kid sports. 3rd grade travelling baseball teams with parents upset over positions, playing time and coaching moves. actual adults ending friendships over it. I mean yeah it's hilarious, but it's also kind of sad. definitely something that is a wrong and not a right.

My son is in first grade, and we want him to try stuff.  He did soccer for a year, didn't like it, so we didn't sign him back up.  He hasn't shown any interest in baseball, so we didn't force it.  He seems to like tennis and karate, so that's what we're setting into.

My four year old likes gymnastics and karate.  So, we'll probably keep signing him up for that stuff.

I'm just not into forcing kids into stuff they don't want to do.  My oldest son loves art, so he spends a ton of time on that.  My younger son really loves to build things with legos, duplos, Lincoln Logs, etc.  I'd rather they do that stuff that they enjoy than force them to do something they don't have any interest in.  We did tell them that they need to try and do one physical activity that they like because they need to make exercise a part of their life.  But what they do is up to them, and I certainly don't give a crap if they play for some traveling baseball team.  I did that and it sucked my parents' life away.  We only did two vacations when I was a kid because we spent all of our weekends traveling for baseball.  I totally regret that for myself and them.

I have no doubt you're a very good dad. I have two kids. one loves the crap out of sports, is pretty decent at them and plays a bunch of different ones.the other is the worst kid athlete that I've ever seen in my entire life. he was in a play last summer and hasn't played a sport since tball. different strokes.

My oldest actually likes sports when he plays, but it's pulling teeth to get him out there.  I think once his friends get really vocal about playing, he may want to join, but I've been informed that seven years old is too old to start playing organized sports.

To which my reply was, "**** you, go **** yourself.  Jerk."

[Rage Against the McKee]

Tell that dumb SOB that Lorezo Cain didn't play organized baseball until high school, Panj.

[Skipper44]

one thing that I think is not great right now is how helicoptery a lot of parents are. my generation (x) grew up pretty ignored and left alone by their parents and now there is an overcorrection happening. kids are being overscheduled and smothered. kids should be left alone more to be on their own and free play with other kids/siblings.

also kid sports. 3rd grade travelling baseball teams with parents upset over positions, playing time and coaching moves. actual adults ending friendships over it. I mean yeah it's hilarious, but it's also kind of sad. definitely something that is a wrong and not a right.

The sad thing is these two things are completely related -  the cul-de-sac goes from being filled with kids most days when they are all under 8 or 9 and then the club soccer, tournament baseball, etc starts and becomes a ghost town so you start finding organized activities for your kids and the cycle continues

[Asteriskhead]

also kid sports. 3rd grade travelling baseball teams with parents upset over positions, playing time and coaching moves. actual adults ending friendships over it. I mean yeah it's hilarious, but it's also kind of sad. definitely something that is a wrong and not a right.

My son is in first grade, and we want him to try stuff.  He did soccer for a year, didn't like it, so we didn't sign him back up.  He hasn't shown any interest in baseball, so we didn't force it.  He seems to like tennis and karate, so that's what we're setting into.

My four year old likes gymnastics and karate.  So, we'll probably keep signing him up for that stuff.

I'm just not into forcing kids into stuff they don't want to do.  My oldest son loves art, so he spends a ton of time on that.  My younger son really loves to build things with legos, duplos, Lincoln Logs, etc.  I'd rather they do that stuff that they enjoy than force them to do something they don't have any interest in.  We did tell them that they need to try and do one physical activity that they like because they need to make exercise a part of their life.  But what they do is up to them, and I certainly don't give a crap if they play for some traveling baseball team.  I did that and it sucked my parents' life away.  We only did two vacations when I was a kid because we spent all of our weekends traveling for baseball.  I totally regret that for myself and them.

I have no doubt you're a very good dad. I have two kids. one loves the crap out of sports, is pretty decent at them and plays a bunch of different ones.the other is the worst kid athlete that I've ever seen in my entire life. he was in a play last summer and hasn't played a sport since tball. different strokes.

My oldest actually likes sports when he plays, but it's pulling teeth to get him out there.  I think once his friends get really vocal about playing, he may want to join, but I've been informed that seven years old is too old to start playing organized sports.

To which my reply was, "**** you, go **** yourself.  Jerk."

a family member is going through a similar situation right now with his oldest. he expresses interest in the sport, but every time they ask him if he would like to join a team/ practice/ play etc. he says, "i'm too small right now."

[Skipper44]

one good result of the rush to get kids that can barely tie their shoes on to teams that practice 2 or 3 nights a week is the regular old rec teams are usually missing the hyper competitive dads that will be playing to win and/or their kid to be the star by 3rd or 4th grade.  So it kind of goes in reverse

[sonofdaxjones]

I'm old and I can say that it was my friends who prodded me to start playing organized sports.  Nothing my parents did, but I was fortunate to grow up in a time where we spent nearly every moment we could outside playing, mostly sports. 

[CNS]

one good result of the rush to get kids that can barely tie their shoes on to teams that practice 2 or 3 nights a week is the regular old rec teams are usually missing the hyper competitive dads that will be playing to win and/or their kid to be the star by 3rd or 4th grade.  So it kind of goes in reverse

Well, when you can't even form a rec league in your medium to small town because a decent number of kids are on competitive leagues, it can kill it all for everyone.  Parents think that because their kid is top 50% of their current 2nd grade team that they should be groomed by a coach that gets paid even though that kid is still playing at a 2nd grade level.  It's ridic.  It eliminates enough of the player pool in my town that we have to travel to two other small towns.  Rewind to when I was a kid and not only did we have enough to fill a league, but we had a smaller pop. 

[Panjandrum]

one good result of the rush to get kids that can barely tie their shoes on to teams that practice 2 or 3 nights a week is the regular old rec teams are usually missing the hyper competitive dads that will be playing to win and/or their kid to be the star by 3rd or 4th grade.  So it kind of goes in reverse

Well, when you can't even form a rec league in your medium to small town because a decent number of kids are on competitive leagues, it can kill it all for everyone.  Parents think that because their kid is top 50% of their current 2nd grade team that they should be groomed by a coach that gets paid even though that kid is still playing at a 2nd grade level.  It's ridic.  It eliminates enough of the player pool in my town that we have to travel to two other small towns.  Rewind to when I was a kid and not only did we have enough to fill a league, but we had a smaller pop.

I was driving to a client site with a co-worker a while back, and we needed to prep for the presentation before we got there.  Our plan was to discuss it all in the car on the way there since it was about a three hour ride.

Well, we didn't get to do any of that because her 15 y/o step-daughter's soccer team had some dramatic blow up, and half of the girls got kicked off the team when the better ones decided to merge with some other club.  So, she spent the entire 3 hours making phone calls trying to get her on a team since there was now a 'market flood', and she needed to line up a try out before all of the spots were taken.

It was legitimately the most Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!) thing I've probably seen in the last two years.  Three hours of begging, non-stop, to anyone that would give her a phone number and then whatever coach would answer the phone.  And then the coaches were being picky because they had so many girls to choose from, so they were being assholes.

I mean, when I was a kid, the most dramatic thing that happened was our goalie's dad got kicked out of Sunflower soccer because he went after a ref with a chair.  But if you wanted to be on a team, you were on a team.  Hell, we were just a bunch of randos put together that wanted to play soccer, and we ended up winning the Governor's Cup against teams from all over the midwest.

I'm done ranting, but this whole thing pisses me off.  Just because my six year old doesn't want to spend 3 nights a week playing soccer doesn't mean he shouldn't be able to play ****ing soccer.

[8manpick]

To get back to an earlier topic, skiing should be more expensive.  Thin out the crowds a bit for the rest of us.

[CNS]

To get back to an earlier topic, skiing should be more expensive.  Thin out the crowds a bit for the rest of us.

In the "Thin out crowds" thought process, perhaps mountains should be steeper, have more trees, and the skiing should be free.

[8manpick]

To get back to an earlier topic, skiing should be more expensive.  Thin out the crowds a bit for the rest of us.

In the "Thin out crowds" thought process, perhaps mountains should be steeper, have more trees, and the skiing should be free.

I don't like that idea one bit. I don't want to thin out skiing as with the Kennedys, I want to thin it out for the Kennedys

[cfbandyman]

I'm old and I can say that it was my friends who prodded me to start playing organized sports.  Nothing my parents did, but I was fortunate to grow up in a time where we spent nearly every moment we could outside playing, mostly sports.

I'm fairly young, not far off 30, and this was actually true for me too. Not that all young people experienced what I did but we had a rather decent stock of kids around to play sports. Organized sports was done through more my parents if I wanted to play them (which I only did soccer one year and baseball through HS), but I remember playing tons of pick up basketball, street hockey, backyard football, HR derby using a tennis ball in a back yard, etc. with other kids in the neighborhood.

[Rage Against the McKee]

one good result of the rush to get kids that can barely tie their shoes on to teams that practice 2 or 3 nights a week is the regular old rec teams are usually missing the hyper competitive dads that will be playing to win and/or their kid to be the star by 3rd or 4th grade.  So it kind of goes in reverse

Well, when you can't even form a rec league in your medium to small town because a decent number of kids are on competitive leagues, it can kill it all for everyone.  Parents think that because their kid is top 50% of their current 2nd grade team that they should be groomed by a coach that gets paid even though that kid is still playing at a 2nd grade level.  It's ridic.  It eliminates enough of the player pool in my town that we have to travel to two other small towns.  Rewind to when I was a kid and not only did we have enough to fill a league, but we had a smaller pop.

I was driving to a client site with a co-worker a while back, and we needed to prep for the presentation before we got there.  Our plan was to discuss it all in the car on the way there since it was about a three hour ride.

Well, we didn't get to do any of that because her 15 y/o step-daughter's soccer team had some dramatic blow up, and half of the girls got kicked off the team when the better ones decided to merge with some other club.  So, she spent the entire 3 hours making phone calls trying to get her on a team since there was now a 'market flood', and she needed to line up a try out before all of the spots were taken.

It was legitimately the most Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!) thing I've probably seen in the last two years.  Three hours of begging, non-stop, to anyone that would give her a phone number and then whatever coach would answer the phone.  And then the coaches were being picky because they had so many girls to choose from, so they were being assholes.

I mean, when I was a kid, the most dramatic thing that happened was our goalie's dad got kicked out of Sunflower soccer because he went after a ref with a chair.  But if you wanted to be on a team, you were on a team.  Hell, we were just a bunch of randos put together that wanted to play soccer, and we ended up winning the Governor's Cup against teams from all over the midwest.

I'm done ranting, but this whole thing pisses me off.  Just because my six year old doesn't want to spend 3 nights a week playing soccer doesn't mean he shouldn't be able to play ****ing soccer.

Don't 15 year olds just play on their high school team?

[CNS]

I'm old and I can say that it was my friends who prodded me to start playing organized sports.  Nothing my parents did, but I was fortunate to grow up in a time where we spent nearly every moment we could outside playing, mostly sports.

I'm fairly young, not far off 30, and this was actually true for me too. Not that all young people experienced what I did but we had a rather decent stock of kids around to play sports. Organized sports was done through more my parents if I wanted to play them (which I only did soccer one year and baseball through HS), but I remember playing tons of pick up basketball, street hockey, backyard football, HR derby using a tennis ball in a back yard, etc. with other kids in the neighborhood.

Same, but I am almost 38.  When I was a kid there were rules not allowing your school coach to be your AAU coach and you also couldn't have more than like 3 kids from a school team on the same AAU team.  Those rules were removed about 3-4 yrs after I grad'ed HS.  The rules kept the crazies from creating the year round bullshit and kept other sports healthy, imo.  Also, made it so that kids had to play pick up sports part of the time, if you really liked playing the sport.

[sonofdaxjones]

We had "little league" dads and politics in sports once I got into middle and high school.  But, we played 2-3-4 sports, and had very few who only did one sport. Also far less helicopter parents overall and "travel" anything was almost non existent.   Yet I played with a bunch of guys who played college ball, and against some future D1 all SEC, all Big 8 and all Americans

[The Big Train]

One good thing about the country is some really old people have seen a lot in their lifetimes.

[The Big Train]

They can share the experience of how far we have come from things like the telegraph to the Internet and texting.  Glad you're here dax

[Panjandrum]

Don't 15 year olds just play on their high school team?

Well, where do they play the other 9 months of the year?

[star seed 7]

This kids sports discussion is so joco it's making my head hurt

[cfbandyman]

I'm old and I can say that it was my friends who prodded me to start playing organized sports.  Nothing my parents did, but I was fortunate to grow up in a time where we spent nearly every moment we could outside playing, mostly sports.

I'm fairly young, not far off 30, and this was actually true for me too. Not that all young people experienced what I did but we had a rather decent stock of kids around to play sports. Organized sports was done through more my parents if I wanted to play them (which I only did soccer one year and baseball through HS), but I remember playing tons of pick up basketball, street hockey, backyard football, HR derby using a tennis ball in a back yard, etc. with other kids in the neighborhood.

Same, but I am almost 38.  When I was a kid there were rules not allowing your school coach to be your AAU coach and you also couldn't have more than like 3 kids from a school team on the same AAU team.  Those rules were removed about 3-4 yrs after I grad'ed HS.  The rules kept the crazies from creating the year round bullshit and kept other sports healthy, imo.  Also, made it so that kids had to play pick up sports part of the time, if you really liked playing the sport.

Yeah, I played for my HS coach on a summer league team. That was about it for non-HS associated teams. I knew I wasn't going to make it into the college level for me when it came to baseball, I just liked to play, and was decent but knew my money would come from other spots.

I think trying to be competitive or getting fits over anything, participation trophy rant or not in elementary school level athletics is stupid. The kids are young, rather uncoordinated, and learning. By the time middle school comes around that's when there should be more actual levels of competition, and if there are kids that like to play but don't really care to win, then a rec league level stuff. But usually kids by the time they hit middle school going into HS realize if they are good at a sport or not, and stay with it, or as you said, if they cant get on a league, play in a pick up. It's ok.

[star seed 7]

Ricky d, does your kid like video games?

[Asteriskhead]

They can share the experience of how far we have come from things like the telegraph to the Internet and texting.  Glad you're here dax

Why are you popping off at my guy, dax?

[The Big Train]

They can share the experience of how far we have come from things like the telegraph to the Internet and texting.  Glad you're here dax

Why are you popping off at my guy, dax?

Not popping off, just bringing some good news into this Debbie downer thread

[sonofdaxjones]

They can share the experience of how far we have come from things like the telegraph to the Internet and texting.  Glad you're here dax

Telegraph?  #tears

[Institutional Control]

Yeah, no one has gotten weird.

I totally got weird and don't try to deny it.  Once I posted a map, you knew I had just put you in your place.