For a wide range of reasons, youth sports have grown increasingly competitive over the last decade...as a result players are driving, and being driven harder than ever before...(it's now a kids job as much as it is a game)...year round play and training is the norm and overtraining is now endemic to youth sports in a way that it never was before. Part of it is trying desperately to turn kids of limited athletic ability into studs, part of it is turning studs into household names.
As this continues to ratchet up (and it will)...the presssure, the physical demands, the $, the comittment will drive some players out of the game...willingly or unwillingly. Some of those who leave will get away unscarred others will not.
It simply comes with the competitive territory....survival of the fittest...and it aint going away...we can tweak and twist but it is bigger than us.
Multiple sports? The studs can play more than one sport simply becasue they can, and get away with it just fine....but the majority are going to pay a price in a single sport if they do so. Which leads to a discussion of what the endgame of youth sports really is...for the studs and for the rest of us. Life lessons? Success? $? Fame?
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