Allen High School - 2021 (Plano, Southlake: layoffs, theater, university)

[tmtex]

Originally Posted by texstout

I hated going to a huge HS with over 1K in a grade -

Same here. I graduated in 1986 and we were at 1K in Richardson. I see these people who were in my class on facebook and have no clue who they are.

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by jgn2013

Allen HS could easily be split up into 2 or 3 high schools. If you have an athletic kid (D1 scholarship; pro athlete potential), Allen is a great place for them to shine. If your kid is the type that would be lucky to get looks from a D2 school or just wants to do sports as an extracurricular.....I think there might be better schools for it.

This isn't the place where you find that random freak athlete that picks up a sport at 14 and then goes from there. It seems like the kids there play their chosen sports/sports from pee-wee all the way up. They're polished more so than just a gang of super-athletes. Lots of training and money spent by parents to get Johnny in the starting lineup.

Ain't that the truth. A little anecdote. Overheard some parents at a bday party a few years ago plotting out their son's select baseball team (7U) - basically they wanted a core group of kids to take all the way up until they were basically the core nucleus of the Allen HS varsity team. For baseball.

It's worse if your kid wants to play football.

[texstout]

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

Ain't that the truth. A little anecdote. Overheard some parents at a bday party a few years ago plotting out their son's select baseball team (7U) - basically they wanted a core group of kids to take all the way up until they were basically the core nucleus of the Allen HS varsity team. For baseball.

It's worse if your kid wants to play football.

Yikes - thats not to say that your kid will even like (or be good at) baseball in 7 years. I know 8th graders who were on select baseball starting that age (and were actually pretty good) who have all quit by now.

It does suck that kids have to specialize in specific sports at such a young age - even when all the evidence shows its better to play multiple sports (and college coaches prefer it).

But with year-round expensive select teams, its hard to do too many at one time.

A friend mentioned that her 11 year old was interested in learning how to play baseball and wanted to find a YMCA team. I held my tongue and didn't try and burst her bubble - but most kids in our area have graduated from Y teams by now and are on select teams if they are still playing baseball.

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by texstout

Yikes - thats not to say that your kid will even like (or be good at) baseball in 7 years. I know 8th graders who were on select baseball starting that age (and were actually pretty good) who have all quit by now.

It does suck that kids have to specialize in specific sports at such a young age - even when all the evidence shows its better to play multiple sports (and college coaches prefer it).

But with year-round expensive select teams, its hard to do too many at one time.

A friend mentioned that her 11 year old was interested in learning how to play baseball and wanted to find a YMCA team. I held my tongue and didn't try and burst her bubble - but most kids in our area have graduated from Y teams by now and are on select teams if they are still playing baseball.

Yeah, my kid is playing 8U ball at the moment. It's craziness. Both ASA and PSA have rec teams at 8U that would be solid AA select tournament teams. Most of the kids...in rec...have been playing for 3-4 years already in 8U (including t-ball, of course). I didn't pick up a bat and start playing baseball until I was in 3rd grade, and there was no money for private lessons, select teams, or even trips to the batting cages.

I don't think 11 is too old to start playing baseball - a lot of the struggles with coaching kids <10 is a lot of time is spent teaching raw motor skills (because they aren't developed in most of the kids, especially as video games has replaced playing outside for a lot of kids). Once kids get over 10 years old, they tend to be able to listen better, for longer, they know how to emulate movements better, and it's a lot easier for an 11 year old to catch up on mechanics that other kids have been doing for 5 years than an 8 year old to catch up to the mechanics the other kids have been doing for 3 years. So 11 years old isn't too old - but, it's going to be challenging getting good coaching. A lot of good coaches aren't going to want to deal with someone super raw (unless they are a superior cross over athlete), and you aren't going to get a lot of good coaching in rec. You'll get a lot of mediocre coaching, some bad coaching, and rarely, some really good coaches. I say this as an admittedly former bad rec girls soccer coach (in my defense, it was coach or not have a team for my daughter).

But bottom line, athletics are hyper competitive in Collin county, and plenty of parents are willing to spend thousands of dollars (per year) on 1-on-1 training with their 8 year old with coaches with college and even pro pedigrees, on top of the cost of putting them on select teams. What's unfortunate is a lot of these players will crash a rec league during their off-season and crush the Y-teams full of kids just learning to play. IIRC, this was (and probably still is) a serious problem with Y soccer. So, that 11 year old - he can pick up baseball, but his first exposure might be getting whipped game after game after game rather than having some measure of success and failure. And baseball really is a team game (unless you have shutdown pitching - but most teams won't).

[BLDSoon]

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

Ain't that the truth. A little anecdote. Overheard some parents at a bday party a few years ago plotting out their son's select baseball team (7U) - basically they wanted a core group of kids to take all the way up until they were basically the core nucleus of the Allen HS varsity team. For baseball.

It's worse if your kid wants to play football.

What is the end game here? I would think parents that can afford this kind of time and coaching can also afford college so this cant be about college scholarships can it? Given how hard those are to come by and how often those awards tend to be disappointing amounts of money given the overall cost of college and all that peewee to D1 coaching.

What’s the main purpose of all this effort and training and how well/often does it pay off?

[TheOverdog]

What’s the main purpose of all this effort and training and how well/often does it pay off?

How well it pays off is kind of abstract, but again anecdotally, the year Kyler Murry went in the NFL Draft (2019) Allen High had more players drafted than the entire rest of the state of Texas, and since Texas gets lots of people drafted in the NFL comparatively, more than most other states in the US. Maybe CA, Florida, and Pennsylvania collectively had more when counting all draftees.

[texstout]

Allen is known to be a sports powerhouse - so college recruiters will pull heavily from there. But I'm not convinced its just for college recruiting...I think its parents wanting to live out their dreams with kids. Additionally, there is so much pressure to pick a sport at a young age to focus your attention on. So parents pick a sport they like or know about. I have a friend whose son is a natural athlete and keeps begging to place baseball. But his Dad hates baseball - so focuses his son only on soccer.

[ChristieP]

Originally Posted by texstout

I think its parents wanting to live out their dreams with kids. Additionally, there is so much pressure to pick a sport at a young age to focus your attention on.

My brother in law played and coached college football. He would totally agree with you. He says that kids should not play contact football until 6th grade due to them learning bad habits which they have to undo later. He has also said that most of the peewee leagues don't give kids a good intro to the sport, and they can be permanently turned off by bad experiences.

[turf3]

The whole thing seems like a bad idea. Kids who are not the very tippy-top stars, in anything whether it be sports, music, art, etc., will be either left out or at the bottom of the pile. If you go to a school with 250 students in the whole high school, like I did, and you want to play football, you'll have a real good chance to play football. You won't have to be the greatest athlete to play. If you think of high school sports as providing a value in themselves to those who participate, and not just as a stepping-stone to possible future greatness, you won't want to put your kids in Allen. Of the fellows I graduated high school with, not a one even played ball in college. Every single one would have been too small, too slow, not talented enough. Yet a very large number of them report that high school football was an important and valuable experience for them. Should every single kid who isn't a giant, fast as lightning bruiser at 14 be kept out of that just because he is attending a giant school?

[75214Dad]

Originally Posted by BLDSoon

What is the end game here? I would think parents that can afford this kind of time and coaching can also afford college so this cant be about college scholarships can it? Given how hard those are to come by and how often those awards tend to be disappointing amounts of money given the overall cost of college and all that peewee to D1 coaching.

What’s the main purpose of all this effort and training and how well/often does it pay off?

While I don't think most of these parents understand "the rules", and so this isn't the motivation they have for a 7 year old, there are significant advantages for athletes to get into highly selective colleges.

In 2018 Amherst enrolled 676 athletes- more than Alabama!- for a total of 36% of the undergrad student body. Alabama by contrast is only 2% athletes. The people who understand this aren't looking for a scholarship, or an NFL draft pick, they are after an advantage in admissions to the top university possible.

My impression of Allen, though, is that their kids are more likely to play D2 athletics, or even JUCO, than to use the leg up in admissions for a prestigious D3 school. Probably has a lot to do with being able to afford the sticker price, plus an unrealistic understanding of their chances at professional success in sports.