Odds Are, Your Sport-Playing Child Isn’t Going Pro. Now What?


By KJ Dell'Antonia
September 8, 2015 5:45 am September 8, 2015 5:45 am 60 Comments


Parents investing large amounts of time and money in their athletic offspring with the belief that they’re nurturing a possible professional player should take note: Odds are, you’re wrong.

But you’re not alone. An astonishing 26 percent of parents with high-school-age children who play sports hope their child will become a professional athlete one day, according to a recent poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The percentages are even greater among less-educated and lower-income parents: 44 percent of parents with a high school education or less and 39 percent of parents with a household income of less than $50,000 a year are dreaming of the bigs and the majors for their kids.

Those parents are deluding themselves, and possibly cheating their children out of other opportunities if they are demanding a single-minded approach to the game. The National Collegiate Athletic Association puts the real odds right up front on its website, and they’re nowhere near one in four. For baseball, only a little more than half of 1 percent of high school players who go on to play in college will be drafted by Major League Baseball (0.6 percent), and even of those, most will not ever play in the majors — only about 17 percent of draft picks play in even a single big league game. That means only about 1 in 1,000 baseball players who play in high school ever gets a chance in make it big — and the odds of becoming a real star are even smaller.

And that’s baseball. According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the odds of going from high school play and then college to become a professional baseball player are higher than those in football, men’s or women’s basketball, or men’s soccer. (The percentages for men’s ice hockey are similar to those for baseball.) Of that 26 percent of hopeful baseball parents, to stick to that example, about 98 percent will be disappointed.

Those fond parental illusions would be fine if sports were free and childhood endless. We could chase all the dreams we wanted to if the pursuit didn’t take limited resources away from other things. Consider the impact of a sports season on the budget of a family with an annual income under $50,000: Club fees can run several thousand dollars even before you add the uniforms, equipment, travel expenses and additional coaching, camps and year-round leagues considered necessary for real “success.” Consider, too, the time. A child focusing on a single sport will spend thousands of hours on it by the time he graduates high school — hours that necessarily aren’t spent on exploring other options or learning new skills.

There are many excellent reasons for children (for everyone) to play sports. In that same survey, parents reported that playing a sport improved their child’s health, discipline and ability to get along with others. And the adults surveyed who participate in sports offer an even better reason to get out on the field or the ice: They enjoy it.

Which is exactly why children should play — for the fun of it. That is not to say that every game has to be fun, or that a child should blow off practices, let the team down, or quit midway through a season. We can take fun seriously. But fun should be why children play. Not for the college application. Not for a maybe-college-scholarship: The percentage of high school players who go on to play in college for most sports is less than 10 percent for both men and women across all divisions (ice hockey and lacrosse are exceptions: slightly more than 10 percent of male ice hockey players and male and female lacrosse players and a surprising 23 percent of girls who play ice hockey in high school go on to college play).

The percentages of high school players who later play on Division 1 teams are smaller, and the percentages of students who receive athletic scholarships smaller still. Mark Hyman, author of “The Most Expensive Game in Town,” puts the number at about 3 percent — of all college players. (Others estimate it to be even lower). That’s not 3 percent of athletes in a given sport. It’s 3 percent of the athletes who go on to play in college, already a much smaller number of the players you’re looking at on the high school field. For baseball (using the N.C.A.A.’s player numbers to run the numbers) that would be 999 scholarships. And the average amount of a Division 1 athletic scholarship? That’s $13,821 for men; $14,660 for women. Most scholarships aren’t four-year scholarships, either, but renew (or not) every year.

As students and families sign up for sports this fall and winter, we should be asking: if you knew this was just for fun, would you still do it? Would you do this much of it? Would you do it differently?

Because if you wouldn’t — or more important your child wouldn’t — then it’s time to put some or all of those hours and dollars into something else.

Read more about youth sports on Motherlode: Lackeys of Youth Soccer, That ‘Arrogant’ Sport; What Happened to Recreational Sports?; The Crazy, Intense Schedule of Competitive Youth Soccer? Bring It On; How Not to Be ‘That’ Sports Parent and What Do Baseball Players Want Parents to Do During the Game? Nothing.

My oldest is trying out for volley ball and I believe he told me basketball this morning just because he feels like playing on the team.

Considering the number of kids that are injured and have life long partial disabilities that effect their ability to be employed from sports I am inclined to think we need to get very serious about limiting the sports programs. Concussion is getting a lot of head lines but chronic knee and rotator cup injuries cost thousands and lead to pain killer addictions.

I was not impressed with the eating habits of athlete's and how it effected their later over all health either. I saw way to many that were either under weight, anorexic, from gymnastics and water sports or morbidly obese from football and wrestling. Wild fluctuations of weight make kids on medications very vulnerable to complications. Kids on medications that require adequate hydration to prevent liver damage, or failure that is not always immediate, can die or become psychotic from being dehydrated.

That does not even bring into play the abuse of drugs from over use of caffeine form an exhausted kid too tired to drive or study, to a kid on steroids, or party drugs that are easily attainable in a play hard party hard mentality of communities that look the other way while hometown hero kids are circling the drain. Often "special " athletes become the drug "pipeline" for team mates and the parent doesn't have any idea the kid is "skipping" doses or "sharing" inhalers that can spread oral std's and other things like mono, colds, even flu.

Doesn't account for the number of male and female cheerleaders and team groupies that are sexual abused in poorly supervised often under staffed situations such as buses, locker rooms, and campus areas around playing fields on and off the "home" campus.

If you factor in the number of "special" kids that are "targeted" for abuse by coaches and players as expendable it is something I would closely monitor. No kid should be a tackle dummy. Especially when the kids will be silent for and extended period before reporting abuse, if ever, because they don't want to disappoint parents that are pleased with their participation. And it may give them school status that they never could have any other way.

I am a BIG supporter of adapted recreation programs but parents need to be very aware that it takes highly qualified coaches, plural, and not some second string "questionable" volunteer that thinks they are some how heroic because they are helping or on punishment and "working off" some first string team infraction. Or only doing it to pad their chances in a college resume to a big name sports school. When you are talking about highly distractible easily manipulated kids the ratio of staff to athlete should be extremely high. In some cases a one to one shadow player. A kid who half listens to coaching can get seriously hurt.

My oldest is not in high school yet but I already see how ruff they can be in sports he plays at school now. A lot of his friends join into the teams with him and the majority have gone to school together since JK .

However when high school starts up for my oldest next year I will worry more about him being in sports I am already discouraging football.

sports are still among positive ways to spend time for kids and with kids.
regardless of whether or not the athlete becomes a professional, they gain some lifeskills from sports. like discipline, challenging oneself. learning from mistakes.
additionally, in many schools if a student wants to play on the team, they have to at least maintain a certain grade point average.

for my kids like the one who is now in my life, school can be a challenge and he tends to get frustrated. his desire to be in the starting lineup motivates him to keep pushing himself to keep the grades up.

a positive aspect as far as family is concerned, is for those who attend their kids games, it's a show of support, bonding and time spent together.

That will be something that I will think about the next time my oldest mentions wanting to play foot ball when he gets into high school. I worry about injuries but his cousins play so that is why he wants to. He is used to playing a wide variety of sports now my youngest and I enjoy watching him play with his team mates most of which are his friends.

Yes in order for kids to play sports they need to have good grades and be caught up in home work. You could look into getting a tutor that has helped my oldest significantly in his grades he was 2nd place in the science fair along with his science partner thanks to the help with having a tutor it has helped my oldest son self esteem as well.