Kids now seem to specialize a bit more

Jul 03, 2010

By: Oakland Press Sports

By KEITH DUNLAP
Of The Oakland Press
In general, high school sports coaches understand and respect the opportunities AAU/travel sports can bring to an individual athlete.
They know the ways that AAU/travel sports can enhance competitiveness, skill level and exposure to college coaches who are looking for talent.
On the other hand, some high school coaches have concerns that AAU/travel sports have changed the landscape of high school sports in negative ways.
One way is that the growth of AAU/travel sports has led to an increased emphasis on specialization. Parents are given the advice that the best way for a kid to receive a college scholarship in a sport is to devote their time year-round to that sport, and that playing other sports takes away time from the one sport deemed an athlete’s ticket to a scholarship.
That infuriates many high school coaches who want their kids to play multiple sports, not only to improve other motor skills that might not be enhanced playing a particular sport, but to improve their competitiveness.
Coaches who feel that way believe that playing multiple sports makes them better in the sport they want to play in college and possibly beyond.
In addition, high school coaches realize that most high school athletes won’t be in consideration for a college scholarship, so playing multiple sports is another way to provide the life lessons athletics can teach.
Birmingham Detroit Country Day boys basketball coach/athletic director Kurt Keener said a glaring example of someone who benefited from playing multiple sports is NBA star LeBron James, who was an all-state football player at his suburban Cleveland high school.

Birmingham Detroit Country Day boys basketball coach Kurt Keener said he believes athletes benefit from playing multiple sports. (The Oakland Press file photo/Jose Juarez)

Country Day is one school that requires non-senior athletes to play a sport in at least two different semesters.
“It certainly didn’t hurt his ability to play basketball,” Keener said of James.
Of course, there’s the other side of the argument as well.
Derek Denham, recruiting expert/public relations director for PlaymakersU, a sports-performance company that provides athletic training, academic tutoring and character building, said pushing an athlete into one or multiple sports depends on the athlete itself and the college prospects of that athlete.
Denham said he played in high school with Andre Rison, Sr., a former NFL standout who Denham said was such a phenom that he could excel in whatever sport he played, whether it was football or basketball.
Typically though, athletes that have legitimate college prospects are more and more pushed to choose one sport.
Denham cited an example of former Country Day running back Jonas Gray, who is now at Notre Dame.
Gray’s best sport was football, but he also played basketball and was a sprinter on the track team. But at 5-foot-9, it was going to be hard for Gray to go anywhere in basketball, a reason why Denham felt Gray should just focus solely on football.
“I depends on the individual what he wants out of this,” Denham said. “If you have aspirations to move on to be in college or even a pro, you have to empower yourself to do this.”
Concerns also abound that AAU/travel sports have poisoned the purpose of playing those sports, which is to try and better develop skills both in the sport and in life.
With more and more AAU programs allowing players from another town or even out of the state onto a team, oftentimes coaches serve as agents for college coaches, who have been known to coincidentally show up at hotels the players are staying at during tournaments.
Tom Hursey, executive director of the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan who coached basketball at Midland for 21 years, said AAU works best and its purest form when organizations take only local-based players, but acknowledged more and more AAU teams stretch county and state lines.
Hursey said it’s not a bad thing that AAU teams go more out of the area to get players and out of the state for travel, but that those in charge of the teams can get “a little too enthusiastic.”
With that in mind, Hursey said roughly 10 years ago that BCAM made an effort to reach out to AAU coaches.
The attempt from BCAM was to set up guidelines and an accountability system for AAU coaches that were trying to do more than teach the game and develop skills.
Hursey admits he’s unsure how much that has worked.
“I won’t say it’s been a big success, because what happens is that coaches don’t want to turn in other coaches for breaking the rules,” Hursey said. “We tried our best to do that. Whether it helped, I don’t know.”
In addition, there’s an opinion of many high schools coaches that AAU/travel sports have actually hindered skill development and competitiveness, not improved it.
The emphasis among AAU teams has become more about going to as many tournaments as possible and playing as many games within these tournaments as possible, which some feel has left less time to practice fundamentals.
“That’s kind of hit the national scene now,” Hursey said. “It’s sad when you have all these foreign players come over and they have better skills. The blame is on AAU and I can understand that. These great players play on these great teams, and it becomes a case of winning the tournament rather than spending a couple of hours on fundamentals.”
Dave Smith, an AAU coach who presides over “Team Basketball,” a program for boys in grades 6-12, said that his players more often than not use their time in AAU to better themselves for their high school seasons, and thus do try to enhance skills.
That’s particularly the case with players who aren’t likely to receive a college scholarship, according to Smith, who believes a good AAU program does stress skill development.
“Kids that are playing at a high level in school and at a high level in AAU understand they take the best points from both coaches and incorporate that into a game,” Smith said.
Birmingham Marian volleyball coach Irick Gardner also runs an AAU program, and said he has seen instances where playing so many games in AAU can negatively effect player skills.
Gardner said it’s just a matter of what type of training players are getting. He said if it’s just a matter of playing games to get better, players might as well save the money spent on AAU and go to local recreation centers to play games.
Parents can obviously counter with the thought that college coaches are at AAU tournaments and not recreation centers, but Gardner said that can be a negative.
“The problem is that if you do it the wrong way in front of those college coaches, they’re going to bypass you,” Gardner said. “One hundred college coaches are there seeing you doing it the wrong way if you’re not training the right way. (Parents) just don’t get it sometimes.”
Kids who compete in AAU tournaments also play game after game, which often doesn’t have much meaning since those kids know there will be more games the next day regardless of whether they win or lose.
That has hurt the competitiveness of kids, according to Keener.
“I think these kids play so many games that they lose their competitiveness because all of the games can just run together,” Keener said.
Going forward, the rising costs to play high school sports could also lead to more parents putting a greater emphasis on AAU/travel sports, and thus further change the landscape of high school athletics.
A recent Michigan High School Athletic Association survey found that the use of participation fees to fund athletics has doubled the last seven years, with fees paid increasing more than 30 percent.
Of the 62 percent of the MHSAA member schools that participated in the survey, 47 percent of those schools charged participation fees during 2009-10 school year.
Parents who have the intent of trying to buck the overwhelming odds and get a college scholarship for their kids might feel it’s a better investment to just stick with AAU/travel sports.
But as Hursey points out, the odds of a typical athlete getting a college scholarship are still slim.
As long as people have that mindset, high school athletics should still have a prominent role in the lives of families.
“High school athletics do not exist to get kids college scholarships,” Hursey said. “High school athletics exists to provide things such as some positive life experiences, learn some leadership and get some conditioning, and so forth. That’s why we exist.”

E-mail Keith Dunlap at keith.dunlap@oakpress.com.

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