I love sports. But, I see an alarming trend of an athletic focus moving away from an academic focus.

I understand the pressures of ensuring your child is a top competitor in their sport. For example, I fully understand the parent whose child dreams of being the starting shortstop in high school. Since there is only one starting shortstop on a baseball team, you want to do everything you can to help him achieve that goal. It’s extremely difficult to counter that desire with conversations about spending enough time on academic excellence. I also want to make it clear that for those who can balance, there is no problem.

But today, the monomania of developing greatness in particular sports is creating a culture of athletes who try too hard and ignore their academic knowledge.

For example, it was the case of those who grew up in the last century that students played one sport in one season. Many student-athletes played two different sports in two different seasons. The best of athletes could handle three sports. Certainly, for the few specials that seemed destined for college scholarships, there was a focus beyond the season. But, for most student athletes, baseball, for example, was a spring sport. That was it. There may have been a few summer games and certainly a lot of impromptu play.

But, now, we work with students who play almost the equivalent of a season of major league baseball through the combination of their high school baseball team and their major team(s) who have a spring, summer and fall schedule. Also, many of our students who play baseball have a winter training league that consumes 6-8 hours.

Here’s the tricky part: In terms of our general philosophy regarding mastery, these students are doing exactly what we suggest. They receive excellent training and then undergo a rigorous training program to master a skill.

There is something about mastering anything, even if it has no particular practical application, that deserves praise. If students can take the same stamina they have from mastering baseball and apply it to other areas, then they are learning an extraordinarily valuable process.

I also want to make it clear that we fully understand the wonders of athletic recruiting. We actually have a program that we call Student-Athlete Mastery. In this program, we help young student-athletes navigate the balance of excelling in both sports and school with the ultimate goal of being recruited by schools for athletic scholarships or leveraging their athletic ability to get into schools. of Elite.

But, the focus for many student-athletes has been disproportionately on the athletic part of the equation. Most parents fully understand that their child’s athletic career will last, at best, through college. But, you wouldn’t know from the amount of time, energy, and money many parents spend on sports.

The problem for most students who live in upper-middle class suburbs is that they have no idea of ​​the level of competition that exists in other areas of the country. The sports culture at the youth level creates dangerous delusions for both the child and the parents in equal dimensions.

For example, I worked with a student who was one of the best soccer players to ever play in his school’s history. But, the area where we live in Connecticut is made up of a small and non-diverse population. This student was an excellent soccer player for our area. Part of the reason was that he was too big for his job, at least in the face of the competition he faced in our little corner of the woods. Since he was completely dominant in the games he played and he received a lot of local accolades, his parents were sure that he would get a scholarship to play at top universities across the country.

He didn’t want to burst his bubble. However, it seemed obvious from an objective perspective that being the best football player for his position in a wealthy region of Connecticut did not necessarily mean that the kid would be in the top 100 for his position compared to kids in big football states like California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida. So even though the parents thought this child’s ticket would surely be punched, they hadn’t done the recruitment calculations. And, the student, full of bravado related to his soccer potential, wasn’t doing his math either, which is why he was working with us. He was about to fail in school when his parents were forced to get tutoring help at their southeast CT high school.

There are a limited number of Division I schools that can award athletic scholarships. Some of these schools also care about academics. At the lower levels of Division II and III, scholarship money begins to dwindle or disappear and at many Division II and III schools, academics really matter.

As the year wore on and the national high school player ratings came out, the family was shocked to see that their superstar was not in the top 500 for his position. Her size, which for our zone made her extremely large and was undoubtedly a reason for her dominance, was simply above average at the national recruitment level and the rest of her abilities didn’t make her stand out. 50 states, most of which are much bigger than Connecticut, each had an average of 10-11 better players than him.

He was good. But, he wasn’t good at college scholarships.

This sad story reminded me of a boy I knew in high school. He played basketball. And, he was cool in high school. For his age, he was probably one of the best players in the history of our high school. His parents encouraged his commitment to excellence in basketball. They let him play all hours of the day at the expense of his homework. They hired a private trainer to work with him.

His parents, however, failed to realize some critical problems associated with their son’s early basketball prowess: First, their son was too tall for high school, in part because he had his growth spurt earlier than most. Second, his skill level was comparatively so high because other 12-14 year olds had not yet taken up the sport like he had.

As he progressed through high school and other kids caught up with him in height and ability, he went from being a prodigy to being a good high school basketball player. But being a good high school player doesn’t give you scholarships. And, perhaps, the focus should have equally been on getting tutoring for his poor grades and test scores. During the last conversation I had with him, I could see his squashed expression as he explained that he was going to work at a local factory after high school.

Parents should certainly embrace sports. But doing it at the expense of academics is foolish.