2025prospect and TerribleBPthrower,
Interesting stuff. For the life of me, I don't understand all this. Possibly I need Dr. Rick's help as I feel like I'm becoming my parents. I can't figure out why parents would make athletic development calls for 5-6th graders for the possibility of a slight future edge in high school baseball, or recruiting. My old man would have told any SEC college coach who suggested re-classifying me back in 1980 to get "freaking lost", and frankly I would have said the same thing about my kids today. My oldest did have an SEC preferred walk-on offer with academic money, so we had experience telling an SEC coach to get lost . ;-)
I can definitely see that today's parents are spending significantly more of their disposable income on youth sports than they did 40 years ago. Where does it end and are we really helping our kids with this approach? If your above examples are true, this has become absolutely ridiculous in society. Maybe it is around me and I don't see it, but I don't recall seeing this 5-10 years ago when my kids were playing high school and college baseball. I hope it isn't true. Sorry, I had to vent a little. I truly don't understand this.
