My kid will be a star athlete

I've written fairly often about the current state of child athletics, where it seems that many parents devote a lot of time and money to fostering their child's athletic abilities, primarily in one sport. It's quite different from when my kids grew up, where the sport they played depended on the season. David Epstein has a must-read op-ed as to why this over-focus on one sport is not good for the child.

Epstein starts his article with this classic example of today's childhood athletics:

One New York City soccer club proudly advertises its development pipeline for kids under age 6, known as U6. The coach-picked stars, “poised for elite level soccer,” graduate to the U7 “pre-travel” program. Parents, visions of scholarships dancing in their heads, enable this by paying for private coaching and year-round travel.

Epstein asserts that several studies have shown that those kids who do become top athletes later in life did not, in fact, specialize at an early age. For example, Steve Nash, the NBA all-star, did not pick up a basketball until he was 13.

He also contends that the focus on a single sport played on adult-size fields has led to more serious injuries, such as stress fractures in their backs, arms or legs; damage to elbow ligaments; and cracks in the cartilage in their joints.