Dear Charlie,

Hi-while perusing the web this p.m. in search of people who may know of this issue so that I could find some stress relief I came across your article. As a middle school track coach I do believe all these elite travel squads in the team sports have all but destroyed school sports. There is no longer any school loyalty. Kids competing on several sports at the same time will sacrifice their school sport obligations for the travel team.

 Alas what comes from it is injuries & extreme burnout at the wrong time when we are poised to win a state title. I tried like hell to convince them of team responsibility, loyalty to fellow relay members, but they told me flat to my face that at their age they are entitled to choices & if it means they care more about soccer then so be it. When I spoke of the concussions & injuries that I woke up to yesterday, they made it clear that soccer was worth any concussion. They didn't care if it meant they would burn out, lose the track title, see their academics go downhill from brain dementia, or end up in a group home. They didn't care. I asked their opinion about the NFL players saying that they were not made aware of repercussions in the concussion dept. They said it was worth the concussion. I spoke to the school nurses--they agreed with me & said it's broken & I can't fix it--13 years of bad parenting. It's not so much that they are playing a second sport that bothers me is that they would not sacrifice that sport for the final 2 weeks of my season so that they could peak properly. 

And then I learn that some of these kids have travel games 4 schooldays a week plus the town league on weekends. When do they do homework & sleep? As a coach I'm lost for a solution & believe me I'm reasonable-I allow kids to attend say jazz band after school & then come to practice, etc. but these club sports must be feeding these kids some kind of fuzzy baloney & they are making much more than I do. They have taken over the schools' tradition. Now the devil's advocate may say well what about clubs in your sport. Well, they dominate the middle school track title meet-the kids are far better but these clubs are located mostly around cities where the schools are too poor to offer any kind of sports at the middle school level. They don't attend meets every week but they will occasionally travel out of state. The clubs are also run by volunteers & I don't believe they have practice every day. I just don't get it anymore.