b i g m a c posted:Overthehill posted:Baseball Dad, we ask our athletes to get in three days of extra weights (beyond our 4th period athletic period) each week. Coaches have the weight room open at 5;30 am and stays open to 5:30 pm each day. Our spring sport guys get their lifting done in the mornings and have time to recoop before afternoon workouts. Every thrower we have is a football player. I'm a firm believer in keeping kids busy and there is nothing you can do in offseason athletics that can compare to competition. We live in a small country town and I often laugh at parent comments on kids not playing football because of injury. But, the same one sport kids have lots of time on their hands to ride around in a $45,000 truck and get in trouble with drugs and alcohol. I've never seen a kid be able to drink beer through a football face mask or a catcher's helmet.
I agree with all the sentiments regarding the benefits of football, many of which applied to our son -- training, weights, camaraderie, keeping him busy/out of trouble, competition, you only live once, etc. All that stuff is important/excellent. And, yes, arguably all of that collectively outweighs the injury issue (it did for us). But, the injury risk is nothing to laugh at.
Big Mac - I can assure you that I do not take the injury risk lightly but he loves football and baseball and happens to be decent at both. I never even wanted him to play football early on but all of his friends were playing and he literally begged me to play.
He made his own decision to not play basketball the past two winters in order to use that time for strength and speed training. He's pretty adamant that he wants to play both sports in high school and college. It's not my goal, it's his. Now he's 14, so that may change in two years or two months but I would be surprised if it he changed his mind.