New FHSAA (Florida) ruling on year around coaching
Starting next month, high school coaches in
Under the new provisions the only requirement is that “the off-season high school team must be participating in a league or playing in a tournament or similar event run by an outside agency such as the Amateur Athletic Association (AAU). There are no restrictions during the summer.”
I am not very optimistic about this ruling. Based on what I have seen over the years this will put kids in the middle. They will be forced to choose between sports. There will be more conflicts and this will force earlier specialization.
posted by Vern Gambetta @ 8/04/2006 03:33:00 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I think this is a vicious cycle of increasing expectations in high school, and I am not sure who benefits. Winning results have become more and more important in high school sports requiring more specialization and out of season participation. High School kids have to commit to one athletic team to the exclusion of other activities in high school. Besides being unable to participate in a different sport, they often cannot partipate in the high school arts program or other extracurricular programs. Because so much time is devoted to one team, a lot more is at stake when the team actually plays. Playing time becomes much more contentious and wins become much more important. When things aren't going well for a team as they sometimes do with high school kids, the coach gets the blame. It recently happened around here in the Chicago area where a well known High School Baseball coach was fired with no notification or no cause. The coach feels it is due to playing time issues, but he is not sure. I can tell you this if my son was playing fall ball, winter workouts and summer ball -- as many high school baseball programs require -- and then didn't get to play when it counts during the spring season, I would be mad too -- irrational as it may seem. Year round coaching may seem great to some high school coaches, athletes, and parents. But I am no fan of it. I think we lose track of how high school sports are supposed to complement a kids education and physical development. Instead we seem to be obsessed by the pursuit of the few college scholarship dollars that are out there.
I think there is potentially more to this than either the original post or the first comment on this issue allow. Yes, there is too much early specialization in sport, but as you (Vern) mention in another post on this site, we often play to train in this country instead of the other way around. Isn't it possible that this would be a solution to that? Instead of having a bunch of kids who spend twelve months out of the year competing for different teams and different coaches who all think their program should be number one in the kids' minds (and all compete more than they train), now there is the chance that a single coach might actually look out for a young athlete's well-being and actually train them instead of rushing the shortest route to success. It of course hinges upon the coach knowing enough to implement a sound year-round training program, but...
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