Multi Sport Athletes

[Eddie Hoffmeier]

I am looking for some advice and thought I would ask this question to get some honest responses from the forum. My daughter is an 09 eighth grader and plays travel softball at the A/B level. She also plays volleyball, basketball and runs track for her grade school. Next season she will move up to 16u and I am considering trying her out for a national softball team. If she makes the team, I need to know the level of commitment to the travel team she will have to have in relation to high school sports. High school volleyballbasketball/track is every day after school with games during the week. I doubt missing practice for travel softball will be an option or is it? On the other side, I doubt it will be ok for her to miss softball either. If anyone on this forum has dealt with national level softball and a multi sport player in high school, I would love to know if it’s possible to do both. Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Captain_Thunder]

Is she not planning on playing Softball in High School?

 

[Chardon Storm]

Most coaches say that they encourage multisport athletes. I think an honest answer to your question is that it depends on how good your daughter is at any of the 4 sports she is playing. If she's the best player on the team, very few coaches are going to take a hard line with her on missing practices because coaches want to WIN! The worry there is how her teammates will treat her if she has a different set of rules than the rest. Even if the coach allows sporadic attendance, her peers may not, and that pressure can be very difficult for a teenage girl.

 

[IRdad09]

It will all depend on the high school your daughter goes to. What I've noticed in the less than a month of high school we've experience (09 dd as well) is that high school coaches are expecting you to attend their practices, which do fall on Saturday's. Talking to families so far, high school sports, right or wrong, take precedence over travel sports.

 

[yocoach]

As @IRdad09 stated, HS sports usually take precedence over travel sports in my experience as well. HS coaches have a tendency to make playing time dependent on practice attendance and honestly, I always told my players HS sports took precedence over my practices which is why I held them on Sunday afternoons.

Also, I've known many National teams that recruited from across multiple states if not the entire country at one time or another. These teams met once at the beginning of the season to introduce the players to each other and meet the coaches. After that, the players would work on their own at home and they never saw each other again until they met at the various tournaments to play. I'm not saying it's an ideal situation but they made it work and were pretty successful.

 

[daboss]

Most coaches say that they encourage multisport athletes. I think an honest answer to your question is that it depends on how good your daughter is at any of the 4 sports she is playing. If she's the best player on the team, very few coaches are going to take a hard line with her on missing practices because coaches want to WIN! The worry there is how her teammates will treat her if she has a different set of rules than the rest. Even if the coach allows sporadic attendance, her peers may not, and that pressure can be very difficult for a teenage girl.

I cannot say enough good things about about this answer to your question. Very insightful.

It all starts out so innocent.

 

[Stedman00]

IME - the national team will be busy with tourneys, camps, practices and showcase events in the fall, winter and summer. and of course this is all in addition to school work, lessons, etc.

honestly, it comes down a little to the player needing to be a little selfish for themselves and say "I'm playing Sport X. school sport X" and drop all the others. IMO, elite level playing of multiple sports is just not doable for vast majority of athletes. Every person in the world only gets 24hours per day.

 

[flygirlsdad]

Have a sophomore daughter playing school volleyball and softball plus club volleyball and softball. I feel club volleyball has been the least accommodating.
What it takes is having coaches that approve. In the fall during school volleyball, a travel softball coach needs to be aware she will miss Saturday some of the time. I would look for a team that practices on Sundays in the fall. I would also look for a team that may carry a larger roster so that absences for Saturday games are not overly adverse for the softball team. Missing high school practices for club softball would be frowned upon.
Winter sports like basketball don't cause many conflicts.
It is near impossible to play a spring sport with club volleyball. Our high school coach has let my daughter go to club volleyball practice instead of softball practice. There were no issues. Some of her days were long though if she had a HS softball game then VB practice after.

 

[The Dude]

I haven’t commented on here in years, but this is a topic that is near and dear to me. My daughter played both travel softball and soccer about till her 8th grade year. Once the actual travel got both too costly and hectic we decided to narrow the travel down to softball, and continue rec soccer for a single year. It just wasn’t fair to her soccer teammates that she could only be there about half the time. The following year she continued her soccer playing in high school and still did travel softball. Although schedules conflicted, we were lucky enough to play for a great family based team w/ a true gentlemen coach (Shawn Brey) and things worked out great. She wound up playing at a very high level at both, declining a last minute soccer offer at Salem (DIi) because she had accepted an outstanding offer for softball and academics at Robert Morris. So, my advice to you, keep going and play them all until you guys just can’t spread yourselves out any further. At an early age, you really don’t know what will be the niche just yet. Make sure you’re all happy, not frazzled.

 

[IRdad09]

I haven’t commented on here in years, but this is a topic that is near and dear to me. My daughter played both travel softball and soccer about till her 8th grade year. Once the actual travel got both too costly and hectic we decided to narrow the travel down to softball, and continue rec soccer for a single year. It just wasn’t fair to her soccer teammates that she could only be there about half the time. The following year she continued her soccer playing in high school and still did travel softball. Although schedules conflicted, we were lucky enough to play for a great family based team w/ a true gentlemen coach (Shawn Brey) and things worked out great. She wound up playing at a very high level at both, declining a last minute soccer offer at Salem (DIi) because she had accepted an outstanding offer for softball and academics at Robert Morris. So, my advice to you, keep going and play them all until you guys just can’t spread yourselves out any further. At an early age, you really don’t know what will be the niche just yet. Make sure you’re all happy, not frazzled.

Very well said. Thanks!

 

[DanMaz]

simply said. Highschool sports come first. PERIOD -------

and YES play as many sports as she can to avoid overuse injuries and she needs to experience all aspects of each sport and help understand the importance of teamwork and teammates.

 

[ChrisDennis13]

I will be following this discussion. My DD is a 7th grader this year and made the school volleyball team. Our travel softball coach has been very open to the girls that are now in school sports, 9 of our 12 are playing volleyball for their respective school and grade, 7th or 8th. Now that said my DD is not chasing a national team and is a decent A/B player on a very good A/B team. The real issue for her is she is one of only a few athletically inclined girls in her school. She is being asked to play in other sports, which will cause some scheduling issues for us, if she makes the squad.

I had a friend who's daughter made that tough decision to drop softball to play JO volleyball exclusively at the age of 12 on the "request" of her JO coach. She went hard on JO Volleyball, just like many of our DDs do for softball, and come her Sr. year, she had multiple volleyball college offers on the table and she looked at her parents and said, I am done. She has spoken with my daughter several times and told her focusing on a single sport is good developmentally, but she encouraged her to find one or two other sports or activities away from her primary sport and make time for them. In her opinion, they need the break, they need the break from the stress of playing at a high level, the need the break for their body, and it keeps the fire for the game they love. She asked her this. "Are you a softball player that enjoys volleyball, or a volleyball player that enjoys softball." How you answer that tells you where to put your "travel effort" and where to put your "recreation effort".