Early success doesn’t always translate to high school level

What Parents of Young Athletes Need to Understand about Athletic Competition

The world of young athletic competition provides joy and excitement for parents from early elementary school, youth sports and middle school play as their children are always heading for the next level.

It is often with heartache and disappointment parents don’t see their child perform as well at a higher level than they performed in the level before. Having coached at various levels of youth sports and all levels of high school athletic competition, and watched children and nephews as they grew older and moved up the level of play, it is felt that a fairly decent observation can be made by this old coach of the problems and misgivings often entertained by parents as their children moved and progressed to higher and more rugged areas of play.

A good question for consideration is what is the chief item of misunderstanding on the part of parents? The main one is parents fail to understand that from any level of play to the next higher one is always a great difference that presents problems of great magnitudes. Whatever sport it might be, the fact is things change greatly from one level to the next.

The development of skills is not constant among young people; young athletes grow at different rates and some surpass their peers in both size and ability to perform. I wish I could relate all the times I have heard parents of high school football players take exception to their son’s status on the high school team by telling what an outstanding performer the son was at the 12-year-old level or on the eighth-grade team. It is true that many outstanding athletes at a young age remain outstanding at every level; this isn’t always true. Let me give a couple of examples.

A dad argued (angrily) that his son was the most outstanding player in the 12-year-old recreation league. And indeed he was. I saw him play at that age and he often dominated play in games. But, and listen to this “but,” he was the biggest boy on his team at that age. In the 11th grade he was one of the smaller boys fighting for a starting position. His fellow players had passed him by in size, strength, speed and skill; sad but true.

One mother told me I was playing her son out of position on the varsity. Why did she take this position? She said her son was the best back in the 12-year-old rec league.