quote:
Originally posted by Tiger Paw Mom:
I don't know about anyone else, but I had no clue either.
We weren't thinking college (neither was he) in pre high school, it was about having fun.
College sports were never a discussion in our house until my daughter hit the college recruiters radar screens when she was fifteen and verballed at sixteen. Personally, I never saw it coming. Until her soph year/summer travel there was nothing about her play that hinted at the potential. Maybe it was growing (late) fourteen inches in eighteen months. Once she verballed, guess what eleven year old JR's goal became?
I used to hear "You'll never have to worry about paying for college with him" going back to when he was little. I just thanked people and laughed it off. It's a clueless statement to make about a pre high schooler. Parents were always telling him how good he was and ask if he was going to play in college (pick the sport in season). I keep him in perspective by telling him to make the high school team and star before thinking about college ball. He believes college ball is his right of passage because of dad and sister. But he works hard at it. We'll see.
Other than this board with all the focus on college ball, I don't think about him playing college ball. I bookmark valuable websites I learn about here for future reference. I think about how to help my son (skills and mentally) get to the high school varsity lineup. I don't have a dream of him playing at a major D1 and turning pro. My dream is he plays at Penn and graduates with an undergraduate degree from the Wharton School of Business. This means he'll spend as much time in SAT prep as he will in the batting cages in a couple of years.
I know plenty of dads with kids my son's age who spend a lot of time plotting their son's baseball future right into college ball. It started when the privates started recruiting our boys in 13U. Can you believe these schools ran showcase tournaments and had radar guns on 13U pitchers? I entered my team due to the quality of competition. I listened to the pitch and compared notes with other dads. It didn't take long to figure out these schools were over recruiting. They were bringing in ten future prospects per freshman year.
It sure has changed from when I was a kid. The only choices we had were play LL, then Babe Ruth, then high school/Legion. There weren't other options. No one thought about being prospects for college or pro ball. We found out by our coaches telling us. I just figured as long as I went to school/college I'd play ball. I never thought about D1 or D3.