re: What is the solutions to the age issue identified by Malcolm Gladwell?

She started soccer at 3 years old. Never played volleyball until 4th grade on a rec team. By end of the season, she was best on the team.

In 5th, she played on school team and when it ended in October, she got on the club team. Played club soccer and volleyball last year.

She is going into 6th and doing both again. It’s practice 5 days / wk between the 2. Soccer is year round, volleyball club is November through May.

Guessing she plays both until HS. We live in a huge city where we don’t need to travel to play good competition.

Our daughter heading into 4th grade, so thinking we will start the club volleyball track next year and will figure out if we can continue with club soccer or drop down to rec soccer.

Volleyball is her best sport.

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Kids need to be playing rec ball instead of having a thousand travel teams. But alas.

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sorry 15 games and 10 practices is not nearly enough for development when over 50% of the league is only there because their mommy makes them. Rec is nothing but baby sitting with terrible rules.

at almost all 5a or powerhouse smaller schools you essentially have zero chance of making the team if you play rec only.

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sorry 15 games and 10 practices is not nearly enough for development when over 50% of the league is only there because their mommy makes them. Rec is nothing but baby sitting with terrible rules.


at almost all 5a or powerhouse smaller schools you essentially have zero chance of making the team if you play rec only.

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This attitude is 100% the issue he’s talking about in his post. I’m not saying you’re wrong but it didn’t used to be that way. The reason rec ball is bad now is because the top players and coaches all leave for club teams. If everyone stayed and played local rec leagues, those leagues would be good again.

Also to the other poster

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It would be nice to know which of the eight Malcolm Gladwell books you are talking about here.

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If you know he’s written 8 books surely you know which book I’m talking about based on the thread

The difference is a lot of the world identifies the elite kids early and they get a high concentration of training, games, “high level” competition etc…

In America anyone willing to pay for it can play “elite” travel ball, so a lot of these clubs are experts at separating naive parents from their money, recruiting the best players to their teams, and looking the part, instead of developing the kids.

Im sure whatever club you or your kid is in is different. But a lot of them are t actually developing them any better than the rec team does. It’s just giving them a false sense of competency that will come crashing down when they get cut from their high school team because they weren’t actually playing in rec “majors” because they are talented enough, but because they weren’t actually playing willing to play 100 games/year and their parents were willing to pay for it.

If our youth travel programs focuses on identifying the best kids and developing them, I’d agree with you, but it’s not

ETA: Also most of the kids on the club programs top teams are on “scholarship” so the club can promote how good they are at developing kids and Johnny’s dad will pay his $10k not realizing they didn’t develop those top kids at all

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I know some baseball organizations allow, or used to allow, grade exceptions where a kid who was over the age cutoff could play down in the younger age group if they were in the same grade as the majority of that group. And yes, a lot of dumbass parents and teams used it because they can’t stand for their kid to not have the same advantage in travel/club ball as they do in school sports from being held back or starting a year later than they could have.

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2D sports allow 2 per baseball team.

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The data he presents backs it up and it seems like he’s probably right, the question is what is the solution to fixing this problem?

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There's the rub. What do you do for that? Change the eligibility date? Then that just shifts it back. Say you pick a date that means all the kids on an 11U team will be 11 at the most, so you push the date back 6 months. You still have the same issue. The kids born right before the deadline will be a year older than the kids born right after.

The dates are often chosen to try to keep classmates together; if you back that up, you still have kids with an age advantage, even if the number doesn't reflect that (you don't magically grow or get better on your birthday), but now you force classmates to play at different levels. If you do that, some kids who want to play a sport with their friends are now suddenly with younger or older kids. Do they decide they really don't want to do that anymore, or worse, decide they don't want to participate in the first place?.

If you have a reasonable solution that isn't just window dressing, I'd love to hear it.

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In America anyone willing to pay for it can play “elite” travel ball, so a lot of these clubs are experts at separating naive parents from their money, recruiting the best players to their teams, and looking the part, instead of developing the kids.

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no they cant. just because it says elite, doesnt mean it is

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Im sure whatever club you or your kid is in is different. But a lot of them are t actually developing them any better than the rec team does. It’s just giving them a false sense of competency that will come crashing down when they get cut from their high school team because they weren’t actually playing in rec “majors” because they are talented enough, but because they weren’t actually playing willing to play 100 games/year and their parents were willing to pay for it

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then why arent High schools full of rec only kids?

nobody plays 100 games a year another myth

most travel teams in LA, except for a handful, are made up of kids local to the area. they dont travel more than 1 hour away except maybe 4x per year.

they practice 2x week.

if a kid starts playing travel at 10u he will have roughly 200 more game and 300 more practices by the time hs tryout roll around compared to a rec ball only kid. not to mention normally they would be around the better kids and would want to work outside of practice time too. Individual Development mainly happens outside of practice.

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ETA: Also most of the kids on the club programs top teams are on “scholarship” so the club can promote how good they are at developing kids and Johnny’s dad will pay his $10k not realizing they didn’t develop those top kids at all

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hang on. you are talking about the true national level teams. There are about less than 10 of those in the whole damn state, if that.

Traction canes national 14u- still practices together some when they can
gold cultures top 14u team
Atown astros in 11u
Barnes when they put together their national team


pretty much it, might be a couple others. and yea even the top teams usually have some fees, its not 100% free except for a few teams across the nation, less than a dozen if that and not every kid on that team is like that either. Is it subsidized by the lower level teams, sure but those team overall are few and far between

and not to mention there are very very few orgs like that in LA. very few. and no club in LA cost close to 10k 14u and below.

and why are you focusing on national teams when talking development? 99% of teams in LA are not like that and practice together multiple times per week.

i seriously do not understand how so many of yall come to these conclusions.

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2D sports allow 2 per baseball team.

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:WellThereItIsGif:

I assume they’re not the only one. I once saw the director of one organization post that he didn’t agree with it but had to allow it because other organizations did it, or else he would lose some of the participating teams in his tournaments.

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sorry if you go up to the dullins dodgers they are not going to put your kid on their best team just because you pay. now i guess if you pay enough, liek 20k then sure they may put him on it but not play him. USA prime national....same way

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now you are getting it, I think you’d be surprised to know how often this happens. You ever seen a great team like that and wonder why there is a kid or two that doesn’t seem to be nearly as good and never plays? That’s why, and unless you are someone who is in charge of the finances of the team, you have no idea, even the kid himself or maybe the coach probably has no idea.