Stephen Parker's Library tagged select → View Popular, Search in Google

Aug

2011

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This is the age of the youth-sports industrial complex, where men make a living putting on tournaments for 7-year-olds, and parents subject their children to tryouts and pay good money for the right to enter into it.
There are buzzwords in this business, sure to coax the gullible parent. The big three terms are "elite," "select," and "travel ball." Oh, the power of those words. Waving the prospect of "travel ball" under the nose of the ambitious father of a talented 9-year-old is like wafting a steak under the nose of a sleeping dog. After all, the more you travel and the farther you go to play a sport, the better you must be at that sport, right?
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- These are 9- and 10-year-olds, which raises a question: What the hell are we doing?
- We're creating a class of kids who are being labeled with terms such as "elite" and "competitive" and "best of the best." They're being worshipped by their parents and coaches, who keep statistics to post online and send photographs to the local paper. It's organized insanity.