Gotwood, thanks for that story.
Apologize in advance if this is a little winded:
My son too found himself on the outside of popularity on the high school ball team. He found that it takes a lot of inner strength to not participate with the rest of the group. His high school team had its issues, and the coach turned his head when some of the better players got caught up with it.
You see, at the high school level, the majority of kids on the team will not go on to play at the next level, so those kids wield a big pack of peer pressure. Son did not have a lot of friends from the team that he hung with, mainly one other player who also did not party.
His freshman year in college, where most of the players are transfer upper classmen, many of them were of legal age and imbibed a bit from time to time. Nothing to the extreme as several of them had pro aspirations. (10 of them went onto MILB.) He found a couple of upper classmen who were like him and that was enough to know that he would be alright.
Now in his sophomore year he has moved back home after his freshman year in the dorm because he couldn’t get the sleep and study time in the dorm. He relates to me sometimes with anger that the average student who doesn’t have a job or sport must have tons of free time to fill, and much of that free time involves alcohol, or planning for alcohol. It is just a fact of life, and it doesn’t make it right but that is the norm at almost all colleges.
This year the coach has outed son a few times in front of some new guys on the team and said be like him when it comes to social and study time. We have heard through son’s high school grapevine that a high school teammate who is now a freshman on son’s College team, has told his high school friends that “the kids on the college team are a bunch of Adams (son’s name).” We know what he meant by that – non-hard partier, not out solely for a good time, serious ball players. It may or may not make that freshman player happy now, but in the end it may be beneficial for him. I know for a fact that the coach recruits good kids like that purposely.
So for those of you with kids who want to stay on a solid track and not abuse alcohol, there are others out there, but they just have to be willing to seek them out and walk away from the rest. IMO, eventually they will attract others who either are like them or want to get away from abusing alcohol too. I think in the end all the real players want to get to that point but some struggle on their way there.