Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Michael Jordan did it, basketball first, but PGA-level golf and just the strike kept him out of Major League Baseball after he reached AAA. The greatest American athlete remains Jim Thorpe. He could do anything. Professional baseball, football, Olympic Gold, a true multi-sport athlete.
The three-sport athlete. They’re still out there. The pampered, prepped and coiffed son or daughter of snowplow parents might be surprised, but college recruiters seek the three-sport athlete much more often than those who specialize in a single sport.
The NFL is the pinnacle of football and the realm of the three-sport athlete. The linemen threw the shot and discus, played the low post or were state champion 215- and 285-pound wrestlers as high school kids.
The running backs dominated the long jump, triple jump, 100 and 200-meter dashes, were all city point guards or state champions at 145 to 190 pounds on the mat. The quarterbacks hurdled, triple jumped, played the three-guard and were incredible at shortstop, on the mound and at third base.
The wide receivers and tight ends were all-state basketball players, high jumped, ran the 400-meter dash or covered the outfield like cheetahs on speed.
How many kickers are soccer players? The better question is how many are not?
If you want to be a better football player, go out for track or play soccer. There’s nothing wrong with golf, it’s a great sport, in the fall during the state championship season. If you’re a football player playing spring golf, you’re not getting any better and the guy who is putting the work in during the spring will beat you every time next fall.
A few multi-sport athletes take a different route, cross country, swimming, skiing or track. You’ll find quite a few of them competing for the Tigers and Lady Tigers of Lander.
There is a growingly disturbing trend that is infiltrating high school and even junior high school athletics. That is the “specialized athlete.”
The specialized athlete plays a single sport 12 months a year. Yes, they get good at that sport. If they didn’t, they have no business being on the soccer field, the wrestling mat or the volleyball or basketball court.
Mom and dad think they’re doing them a favor, and overzealous lower-level and rec league coaches add to the idiocy by convincing these kids that playing only a single sport will increase their chances at a college scholarship or even a professional contract someday.
News flash, they won’t, and they stand an excellent chance of developing overuse injuries.
A few years ago, a Riverton athlete switched from track and field to soccer in his senior year. As legendary Wind River track and field coach Leroy Sinner said for generations, “Track is not a senior sport.”
Coach Sinner was right; he was always right. Track, with its emphasis on hard work, personal dedication and devoid of excuses, isn’t the sport of a soon-to-be graduate who is thinking of only the world beyond.
This senior was a good track athlete, a 6-2 high jumper and capable of a 50 flat in the 400-meter dash. He decided to join his friends on the soccer field.
To the chagrin of the parents who had driven their little superstars thousands of miles to Denver and points beyond for “premier traveling teams” and spent thousands of dollars on camps, he was the best player on the team.
Raw athletic talent is hard to hide even in a team sport.
Your child isn’t diminished if they’re not the best player on the team. It’s time for many parents who are living vicariously through their children to realize that.
When people approach me, telling me I just don’t understand how it is for a lesser athlete since I was a star I can only laugh. I was far from a star, but I did block and do my best to get the athletes on our team a chance to score and for us to win.
That’s a process that is lost on many parents, and sadly, many lower-level coaches who do their best to backstab the head coach of a program.
I’ve been a head coach, an assistant and a junior high coach in my career. There are different roles for all three positions.
As a head coach, I only asked my assistants and lower-level coaches to teach fundamentals. On the basketball court, it was left-handed layups, the crossover step, blocking out on rebounds, shooting free throws, and playing solid man-to-man defense. That’s it. Everything else was open to their judgment and how it helped their players win.
If you hear a lower-level coach trying to convince a kid to not go out for football, wrestling, track and field, rodeo or baseball to concentrate on basketball, it’s time for them to step down and leave the position. They’re hurting, not helping the program.
When I started teaching in 1980, the only thing I ever wanted was to be a head football coach. I was a varsity football assistant for three years, an assistant basketball coach for eight years, a head track coach for 20 and a head basketball coach for six, but never a head football coach. I even put in two decades as a junior high football and track coach and another 10 as a junior high basketball coach, but never the top dog on a football team.
My late friend Harold Bailey often asked me if I wanted his position. I had too much respect for Harold to ever challenge him for it.
“I can wait Harold,” I always told him. “As long as you want to coach, it’s yours. When you’re ready, I’ll be glad to take it. But you’ve earned the position.”
I never took the helm for the Wranglers and Harold was treated like dirt by the administration and board, never getting his place in the sun. Yes, it will always bother me.
When my son Brian was being recruited as a college football player and track athlete, the various coaches we spoke with all asked about what other sports he played. By high school he’d given up baseball but was still an all-conference basketball player.
To a man, the coaches all told him to continue playing all three sports.
When he arrived at Dickinson State, they gave him a choice of wide receiver or defensive back. He ended up as a strong safety.
In track and field, he was recruited as a hurdler, but the coaching staff soon discovered he could throw the javelin a mile and was able to compete well in the shot, discus, long jump, and pole vault as well as on the track.
He became a nationally ranked decathlete and a member of three national championship NAIA track teams.
If he’d simply specialized in football, track, baseball, or basketball, none of that would have occurred since all those complementary skills came from other sports.
The three-sport athlete is easier to coach, handles criticism better, and improves quickly.
The one sport, highly trained athlete is already near the pinnacle of their ability before they arrive at college. They don’t improve much and as a result college coaches have learned to shy away from them.
If you’re focusing on a single sport for your son or daughter, you’re doing them an injustice. If a clueless coach is trying to get them to avoid other sports just to concentrate on his or her sport, it’s time to get rid of that coach or get your child out of their reach.
We have four sports for junior high boys and girls for a reason, along with softball and baseball in the summer. Expose them to all of them, you never know what the future holds.