what is a multi sport athlete?

 

The only activities that I encouraged my son to get involved with to impress college coaches, were activities that I already wanted him doing (and college baseball was just an extra incentive). Those were things like getting good grades, working hard, good sportsmanship and being a good citizen.

With recruiting, I think it’s a mistake to try to represent yourself as something that you aren’t. The courtship analogy works well here.

If your kid is a diamond rat and wants to compete year-round, then nurture that. Don’t make him play a sport that he doesn’t like just for his resume.

When baseball coaches talk about multi-sport athletes, it’s usually a guy like Michael Vick or Carl Crawford. Guys who are just freakishly athletic and can excel at any sport. They know that a kid who starts at QB, point guard, and short stop on his high school team is probably going to be a stud on the diamond. Part of the appeal may be that the kid loves to compete, and is coachable, but mostly it’s the athleticism.

My son lettered in 3 sports this year. He plays the "other" sports because he loves to compete, he loves the team comradery, and his school has a proud athletics history and there is a definite sense of obligation to do your part. My kid is not a stud athlete, and I don’t think his multi-sport status made any difference in his recruitment.

Every sport has a uniqueness about it that brings out particular skill sets and mind sets.  You can even break that down further by position.  The way you compete mentally and emotionally in each sport tends to be different.  Some involve much more physical contact, some more endurance and agility, some more emotion/adrenaline vs a more calm focus, different footwork, different types of fast-twitch and mental quick reaction and on and on.  One can replicate and/or replace some of these things through training and drills but in many ways it's just not the same as playing the sport.  Certainly not as fun for most.  So, I think multi-sport athletes are better off from that standpoint. 

 

On the other hand, as 2020 says, athletes are generally better today.  But I think they are better in some ways and worse in others.  Those who specialize typically get more reps on the field and get more specific training off the field.  But as a coach, I can usually pick out an incoming athlete who plays another sport and identify which sport that may be by observing the mental and physical approach.  There are benefits to both.  But a baseball player who is a multi-sport guy can catch up with all the reps and specialized training once he decides to focus on baseball.  A baseball-only guy can't go back and compete in other sports at a high level vs his peers.

 

Another advantage of being a multi-sport athlete in HS is that it requires something closer to year-round commitment to daily practice and competing which better prepares him/her for the college routine.  Some baseball-only HS athletes will push themselves to work as much when not in-season but most do not.

 

At young ages (thru 12 or 13 at least), kids should be encouraged to try different sports (as well as other interests, of course).  This ties back to the original OP.  Skills are developed naturally this way, more so than mechanically drilled.  Beyond that time, I think, most importantly is that the person wants to play the sport or sports because they've come to love that sport or sports.  Once near HS, you can't force the multi-sport direction on an athlete that doesn't have the desire to do so.  And everyone is different.  I've certainly seen baseball-only kids who are as competitive and athletic as any others.  But rarely have I seen this where those attributes can't be tracked back to other youth sports at some point. 

 

I'm not sure there is really so much disagreement at the core. I think playing multiple sports is wonderful if a kid wants to do it (and FWIW 2019Son played soccer, ran track, etc. for his middle school teams this year). And I think that many kids who play multiple sports through high school are, in fact, great athletes with terrific competitive drive.

 

Where the disagreement comes in is where people notice a correlation (hey, many of my top D1 baseball players played multiple sports in high school) and argue causation (playing multiple sports in high school helped them become top D1 baseball players). I just haven't seen much evidence for that causation -- and I have seen evidence in the opposite direction (e.g., the last few years, about two-thirds of the high school players drafted in the first round played only baseball in high school (I've posted the specifics on other threads)).

 

Really, the disagreement centers on a few years: grades 10 - 12. I haven't heard of college baseball coaches urging their most athletic players to try to play multiple sports in college. And I've rarely if ever seen parents urging junior high or younger kids not to play multiple sports. So, when is the right time to stop playing multiple sports? 

 

I will add, and probably get drilled...

 

Through HS, there are more non-athletic baseball players than non-athletic football, basketball, volleyball, hockey, s@cc%r, cross-country or tennis players.  It is partially due to the nature of the game.  Constant running, jumping, pushing, swinging, skating, kicking are not required.  We get players come through our HS baseball program who we identify instantly as "he could definitely benefit from the footwork and conditioning of basketball or $occ%r" or "he could definitely benefit from the strength conditioning and physical contact of football".  In these instances, if such players wish to continue competing in and beyond HS, they clearly will be or would have been in a much better position to do so if they had chosen to play the other sports as well.  But again, they have to want to.

I can agree with that infield.  Sort of like this week when we have 6 games in six days and not enough pitchers to go around.  Who's pitching saturday?  I have no idea.  But I know who's pitching today and that is my concern.  For the younger kids just still near the beginning of their journey they have to worry about getting there before they worry about playing once they do!

I guess there are exceptions to every rule and different coaches work different sports differently, but the past two years, when my kid started baseball practice after a full season of HS basketball, he'd come home saying, dang, I had no idea how out of shape I am!

       
       
Certainly wouldn't drill you but my experience has been exactly the opposite.  Baseball players seem to look more at home playing basketball than a basketball player would look on the baseball field.  And I believe the same could be said of football.  The extreme skills required in baseball - think about the near impossibility of squaring up a 90mph pitch and yet somehow they still do it at a higher than expected rate.  The hand eye coordination.   The quick reflex reactions.  And the concentration level needed.  I think sometimes we mistakenly equate athleticism with running, jumping and footwork things.  There are a lot of ways to be athletic.

Cabbage I will say though that there is no real way to track any skills back to other sports.  That can be a hunch a theory or whatever.  And no one can prove it or disprove it.  Unless we take a large group of 8 year olds and somehow assess their athleticism then group similarly.  Then have those groups for the next ten years do different things.  One group specializes to the max.  Another group plays three sports and only works on in season sports.  Another group...  etc. Etc.  Now I don't know (thank god) of any parent that would let their kid participate in such a study.  So in reality we can all have our opinions but we will never know for sure.

Guys it's not about what those sports will do as far as making you a better player. When a coach goes to look at players he doesn't say "Yeah he isn't very skilled at baseball but he played multiple sports." Or "He can definitely play for us but he doesn't play multiple sports." It's about these coaches wanting kids that have competed, learned to compete, had to grind in a sport that they are not the man in, kids that have had to figure it out on their own in an environment they may not be as comfortable in. The showcase player, best team all my life, best uniforms, best glove, best bat, best private instruction guy who has never faced a licked of adversity who is skilled in playing the game but lacks the attributes that will allow him to grind it out in their environment is what they are talking about.

 

There was a quote recently by the ULL HC who said "We want the guys that drink from a garden hose." I talk to college coaches on a regular basis. Many feel that the players today are far more skilled. Many feel that they are also soft, entitiled and lack the toughness that is required to compete. Of course they are not going to stop recruiting the skilled players. Of course they are not going to start recruiting the players who are not skilled.

 

Multi sport athletes in some cases benefit from playing multiple sports as far as skill development in baseball. Just baseball players who work hard year round on developing their athletic ability as well as their specific baseball skills greatly benefit from that as well. Thats not the point these coaches are trying to make. Many feel that playing these other sports helps develop the intangibles that can not be measured by a stop watch or a radar gun.

 

Those same intangibles can be learned without playing multiple sports. But that is not the point of the article. Don't take this as an attack if your son doesn't play multiple sports.

I posted this before, a couple of years back. I had the opportunity to talk with Buddy Bell.  Who at the time was in charge of scouting for the White Sox.  It wasn't in a one on one setting but there were maybe 15 folks at a private event I was invited to down at US Cellular.  Through some connections my son and I were allowed to take BP on the field one day when the team was out of town.  There were maybe 12 other people there.  It was cool to see my 14U son (at the time) hitting the outfield wall and one hopping the fence.  Better then all the adults who were bragging beforehand….

 

But I digress.  Before we started hitting we got to talk with Bell.  He spent time talking about recruiting as well as how the year was going for the Sox.  I specifically asked him about multi-sport athletes and recruiting. 

 

His basic take on it was this.  They would much rather go after kids who have not spent their entire lives dedicated to one sport.  They feel that a multi-sport athlete offers things a dedicated athlete does not.  Mainly in the area of discipline and the mental side of the game.  He really was down on the single sport baseball player who has spent all his time since he was 5 being coached up to pitch.  They felt that a lot of those kids did not posses as much upside.  Now all that said, he did see if they saw a left pitcher throwing 95, who never picked up another type of ball, that there was no way they were not going to go after the kid.  But if they were weighing two kids with very similar talents that the fact that one may have been a multisport athlete would play in their favor.

 

Back to the cool stuff.  When my son was done hitting, Ron Kittle walked up to him.  Basically told him he looked good and then introduced him to some of the trainers/coaches that were around and then they went off into the outfield and did some drills.  While I am a Cubs fan, and wish we were at Wrigley it was still a cool day for my son and I.

2020dad, in my mind you are talking about the top percentage baseball players in a program while cabbagedad may be talking about the lower percentage of players. Not trying to put words in your mouth, just looking at this conversation through the filter of our program. The top baseball players in our program are often the top basketball and football players too (I don't think we have a single soccer/baseball player). While the lower 50% of the players in our program could never square up a 90 mph pitch. Heck, some of them cannot square up a 70 mph pitch. They can barely make consistent, hard throws from 3rd to 1st. They get winded running from home to 1st. Yet, they still have dreams of playing college baseball somewhere. Those kids would definitely benefit from participating in multiple sports, but few of them do. 

       
       
Interesting take.  And funny because I was just having a conversation last night with the dad of the hands down most dominant 13u pitcher in my state.  80mph guy (I personally gunned him not hearsay).  And part of our conversation was the skewed viewpoint we get constantly watching the best of the best.  And I have to guard my son against depression cause there is a tendancy to look only up and see the few players better than you instead of down to realize how very many there are behind you.  But I think that is what driven people do.  I got to get there...  but in the process you may be right.  You lose contact with what the average kid looks like in the midst of fireballing pitchers and 13u's hitting the ball 350ft.

P.s. the 'guard against depression thing was tongue in cheek.  Please don't blast me regarding letting kids be kids etc.

Agree 100%. As you suggest, I suspect that the kids who think like this -- the ones who don't think they are great because they know kids better than them -- tend to improve more. For an example from another sport, there was an article yesterday about Jack Nicklaus:

 

“I think that if you feel you’re overachieving, or getting more out of what you should get, then you stop working,” Nicklaus said. “I always feel like I’m never getting what I should be getting out of what I’m doing. So you’ve got to work harder to make sure you do that. I always wanted to climb a mountain. I always wanted to get better. ... So I just tried not to believe anything about what I would read or what I would hear or what I even thought.

“I still don’t think I achieved what I could have achieved in my career."

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...5090d64ae_story.html

 

 

I've tried to skim through some of these newer posts so I apologize if something has already been said.  My overall take on this whole thread - 1) 2020 and myself probably will never agree on football and that's OK.  2) I agree that football isn't the only sport to teach you toughness and how to compete.  That's the concept and idea floating out there but It's not always true.  Sometimes it is and kids do learn to compete in other sports from playing football but the opposite is very true as well.  Baseball (or any other sport) can teach you to be tough.  The common thing is you have to want to be tougher.  3) I will truly believe that playing multiple sports helps you in other other sports.  Not sure if anything will ever convince me otherwise but the good thing I don't think anything is out there to prove one way or the other except for the longitudinal study 2020 talked about - that ain't going to happen.  4) It's been a great discussion and lot of valid points by everyone - even the ones I don't necessarily agree with - but there are so many variables and luck that go into making it into the next level to say "this is the way to make it happen".  

 

Great stuff everybody