Three Sport Athlete Dilemma

Hey Bball. While I am not the old timer that many on this forum are, I am a dad of a three sporter whose true love is baseball. I think much of this depends on how your HS coaches will work with you.

Is your school football intense, requiring non stop camp/preseason activity in the summer? Basketball too? Summer league play/tourneys? These are the things that will cause conflict.

What does the schedule look like for your summer baseball team (assuming you are on one)? This is the critical summer for you as a college baseball prospect. If you are going to be playing in showcase tourneys every weekend you can probably count on upsetting the hoops coach. If you have weekday baseball activity that will cut into summer football camp.

It comes down to communication. If college baseball is your dream you need to talk to your other coaches and explain this is the summer you have to give everything to it. If you are the all conference athlete you say you are it should not cost you. My son actually gave up football this year (junior) but kept his three sport designation by playing golf. It should be noted our HS football program is awful so it's not like he was missing much.

You will probably have more trouble out of your high school coaches than you will college coaches. College coaches want players and if you are progressing and showing potential to get better they will probably make an offer. If you chose another sport they will move on to another player.

If you truly want to play baseball in college then you need to make sure that your skills are improving first and foremost. That might require missing offseason work in other sports. This is where the trouble may come in at. If there is trouble and the high school coaches won't work then you may have to make a tough decision and give up a sport.

If you have the ability and put yourself out there then a college will probably find you. If the skills aren't there then you need to find a way for the skills to get there and that might mean giving up the other sports. But overall a college coach won't hold playing other sports in high school against you.

bball:

I want to let you know that tennis is complimentary to both baseball and basketball. The conditioning, the agility required, hand eye coordination, the rotational aspects of the swings and most of all the emotional intellegence required to play tennis well all translate to baseball.

Good luck, keep up the great work in the classroom.

If you letter in all three sports and are baseball-worthy, most college programs will value the athleticism. Agree with Coach, the hurdle is your high school coaches.

I saw an interview that Eric Bakich gave when he was Coach / Recruiting Coordinator (or whatever his title was) at Vanderbilt. (He is Coach at Univ MD now.) He was asked about the characteristics of the ideal recruit. This being Vandy of course he mentioned very good academics, some of the normal baseball stuff and he said he really likes the kid who played a couple of sports in high school. He was asked why he wanted the kid who has played a couple of sports and he said he wants an athlete. Now you look at the Vandy roster and most boys played only baseball in high school (Sonny Gray was high school quarterback and some people say he is the best quarterback on the Vanderbilt campus today), but Bakich was describing the ideal recruit.

John Lackey was a multi-sport letterman and I know there are many, many more.

bball15,

Have fun! Do it your way. Many have done it that way. If you are good enough at baseball, the other stuff could be benificial. If your not good enough at baseball, there's even less reason to give up the other sports.

Some concentrate on one sport, some don't. Both ways have reached the top!

Good luck

Welcome to the forum.

My son is facing similar dilemma. He ran cross country to build up his endurance and legs for baseball in the off season. It was a logistical nightmare between Fall baseball and traveling to various showcases/tourneys. His CC coach was upset, and his Fall baseball coach (aka varsity coach) was not thrilled either. Now that CC is over he wants to play for his varsity basketball team again because he enjoys it. The problem of course is he also needs to be working to improve and get stronger this winter for his last year as a varsity baseball player. While he is a decent basketball player, he is not going to play beyond HS.

So we cant decide if he should play basketball this year and risk injury, or if he should concentrate on baseball which is his best sport. He needs to decide soon because tryouts are next week.

bball - great question - Speaking from experience, RightyShortstop played 3 sports in HS. Baseball, Basketball, and Golf - He was captain of all three teams and earned 10 Varsity letters (4 golf - boys golf is a fall sport here, 3 baseball, 3 basketball). He is only playing baseball only college. In the recruiting process, college coaches liked to talk a good game about how great it was to be a 3 sport athlete, but in reality, we found that they just recruit baseball ability. Admissions counselors LOVED the three sport thing.

Most of all, coaches and ad-coms liked the captainships. My son has always theorized that playing all three sports held back his baseball development. He has improved quickly in college ball by concentrating on baseball. He thinks that some coaches recruited him because they also believed that playing all three sports had held back his baseball development, and thus saw "upside" for him as a college baseball player.

Prior to Junior year we went on an unofficial visit to a mid D1 school where we had a long talk with the coach and asked him his opinion of playing three sports. The coach gave the usually mumbo-jumbo about how he recruits athletes and then qualified it by talking about baseball ability. Finally, he gave some good advice that my son followed. He said "If you are going to be captain, play all three. If you can't play the sport AFTER HS make sure you play it IN HS. If you stick with all three you will probably never know if playing them all helped or hurt your baseball career. However you will always be sure you had great HS memories."

quote:

"If you are going to be captain, play all three. If you can't play the sport AFTER HS make sure you play it IN HS. If you stick with all three you will probably never know if playing them all helped or hurt your baseball career. However you will always be sure you had great HS memories."

Wow! What a great quote. It's good to know that some coaches out there still appreciate that HS should include some fun.

Thanks everyone for the great advice. With regards to being captain, it is always the seniors who hold the title at my school. I think I am in line to captain all three teams next year, but you never know. I do expect to graduate with 16 letters (12 athletic and 4 academic.) My coaches are pretty supportive as long as I give them 100% effort during their season. But it is definitely difficult to stay competitive and improve my baseball skills during tennis and basketball season. And vice versa.

I play one-single for the tennis team and went to the state tournament last month with an 11-1 record. I was beaten by a kid who only plays tennis and can practice everyday. Then the following week I went to Jupiter and only did OK because I hadn't really played much baseball since August. I might have won the state championship if I didn't play baseball and I certainly would have been better prepared for Jupiter if I didn't play tennis.

It is good to know that there are baseball coaches out there who might want me anyway and consider the three-sports an asset. I think I will write the Maryland coach a letter!

Found the interview with Coach Bakich.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1123737

Our son now plays for Coach Bakich at Maryland. During his recruitment he was specific that part of his interest in our son was his athletic ability. He played football, basketball and baseball in HS.

At the start of his senior year he thought about concentrating on baseball and Coach Bakich told him no. He loves mutiple sport athletes.

I think most coaches feel the same way.

If your high school will let you do it - DO IT!! 2011 son regrets giving up football and basketball - although he's thrilled to have signed for baseball next year.

There's no way he could have done basketball and baseball as the seasons overlap by 4 weeks.

Football - challenge is having Saturday games on the schedule and also making camps and showcases.