My boys came late to hockey because we told them…you can be a hockey player if you want, but we are not going to be a hockey family.The funniest part of the story is he ultimately went to play basketball at FDU, which is impressive in its own right since he’s only like 5’10”. He said one day the FDU lacrosse coach came up to him and found out he was from Long Island. The coach said you should play lacrosse for me. My friend said, I’ve never picked up a lacrosse stick in my life. I loved baseball growing up. Coach said, I guarantee you are better at lacrosse than most of the kids on this team from just growing up on LI. He said what the hell, did a workout and played 4 years of college lacrosse.
Some kids are just better athletes.
And some coaches are just dumb.
These are hard lessons to learn for most parents, especially if they’ve forked over thousands of dollars and countless hours into private training for kids ever since they were 7.
- Inline on roller blades outdoors near the beach was first. That was great for kid and parent.
- House league at normal hours and times for intro to ice.
- Middle school league made up of teams likely where most of the kids would go to HS. Funny to see “representatives” from high schools from all over, and I mean all over, watching those games.
- High school season and a really mellow season of spring/summer of HS teams (make it when you can, if you had to work or were playing a spring sport like my guys did, lacrosse, no worries or consequences).
- NO travel, ever.
Come college they ended up at a school that had a DIII program and both ended up making the team.
Scholarship? Nope. But lots of fun and saved me a ton of money compared to what some of their teammates parents laid out all those years.
Have family on the other hand though who did the exact opposite for soccer. Older niece got a scholarship to a CAA school and her younger sister will probably get something too.
Not sure how the ROI worked out with all of the money, time and travel spent on everything that goes with it, but everyone seems happy with it.
Funny though, my boys DIII games got a lot more people in the stands than my niece’s D1 team did.
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