Coaching: Are Kids Today Pushed Too Hard in Sports?

He will get 3 weeks off (his only break of the year) and then start football practice the second week of August.  He will have practice 5 days a week for 3 weeks and then drop down to 3 practices a week for 7 weeks when the games get started.  His season will be a six game schedule with a bye week lasting until October 15^th.  Basketball practice will start during football season around September 15^th, having two practices a week for a month and then games will start.  The basketball season will last until the middle of March playing approximately 35 games.  He will continue to have 1 to 2 practices a week on top of his games. 

So a recap of a normal year for him would be 45 baseball games, 40 baseball practices, 6 football games, 30 football practices, 35 basketball games, and 40 basketball practices.  The scary thing about this is we are a smaller school district for our area, the bigger school districts around us tend to have more games and practices than we do!

Now I will compare that to a normal year for me when I was a kid.  I had 16 baseball games, 20 baseball practices, 6 flag football games, 6 flag football practices, 10 basketball games, and 10 basketball practices.  That is quite a bit different!  When I was a kid I don’t remember hearing the words “he/she quit when he/she got to high school because they were just burned out from playing so much as a kid”.  Unfortunately I hear these words quite a bit now.