The End of Late Bloomers?

[Mystery Train]

I like this discussion. It has been in my mind the past couple of years. As my oldest gets closer to high school age, I may decide to drop club sports and join AYSO and community basketball leagues to be able to maintain multi sports involvement (actually multi-activities in general).

I think if more families made this choice for their kids, especially the older ones, it would create a broad, positive effect. I'd like my son to do this (he's going into 8th grade) but it's taking some convincing. There is a definite vacuum of participation in AYSO as the ages go up. If more of his peers did the same, it would be more fun for him. The club culture has now painted a stigma onto AYSO as being for little kids only, and if you play it as an older kid, it's not seen as cool.

 

[jojon]

I think if more families made this choice for their kids, especially the older ones, it would create a broad, positive effect. I'd like my son to do this (he's going into 8th grade) but it's taking some convincing. There is a definite vacuum of participation in AYSO as the ages go up. If more of his peers did the same, it would be more fun for him. The club culture has now painted a stigma onto AYSO as being for little kids only, and if you play it as an older kid, it's not seen as cool.

That is correct. In a few tryouts I experienced, the coach is screaming "...you are not in AYSO anymore..." to the kids. It is a flight 3 team so my son is telling me that he does not like the coach, especially when most of the kids are below his level. We did not join the team, but most clubs definitely paint that picture for the kids and parents.