On Thursday, I’m recording an interview about Soccer Dad with former soccer dad and now prominent sports parenting podcaster Todd Merkow. In preparation, I listened to the second of two of Merkow’s interviews—and if you’re interested you should start with the first—with his daughter Sydney. She had a promising but troubled youth soccer career that ended before college and led to a harrowing period that she almost didn’t make it through. She sounds astonished to even be telling the tale—and astonished that she was once the person she’s telling it about.
Along with her father, I listened to her testimony with a pounding heart and watery eyes.
What are we doing? What have we done?
When I was a kid my little sister was in ballet from a very young age. Rehearsals two towns over four nights a week, performances on the weekends, summers away at ballet camps at places like the North Carolina School of the Arts and Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center and the New York City Ballet.
Watching that madness for my whole childhood, I thought my mother was crazy for getting my sister wrapped up in that. Chronic injuries to growing young bodies, overzealous stage moms, abusive ballet masters, rampant eating disorders, an insane time commitment, a myopic dance-world focus and a Total Identity Takeover—no way was I going to get any daughter of mine involved in a thing like that. It just wasn’t healthy.
So when I had a daughter, I enrolled her three-year-old precious self in soccer. By the time she went D1, 14 years later … what of those terrible ballet perils had I actually saved her from?
My generation of sports parents had no idea what we were getting ourselves or our kids into. We thought it was Little League, and it turned out to be big league. And Scout emerged from her college soccer career intact, but facing a transition that our whole family deals with and talks about all the time. And we all still hope and expect that the experience will provide a foundation for the rest of her life. (And with sisters.)
But knowing what I know now—and having talked to hundreds of parents and youth sports-involved folks in the wake of Soccer Dad‘s publication?—where would I steer another child of mine for whom I wanted a balanced, rich and well-rounded upbringing, and a healthy transition from youth to adulthood?
In the podcast with his daughter, Merkow almost offhandedly makes the point that—you know how we understand that professional athletes often go through a terrible time when they retire, and “the cheering stops”? After living the formative decades of their lives as a big star, who are they now? We always knew that was terribly dangerous, and felt sorry for these folks as they inevitably thrashed around, reinventing themselves to contend with a future they must see as blank—and a mirror they must see as empty. Well, that now must happen to thousands and thousands and thousands of kids when their all-absorbing youth sports careers end: whether at 15, 17, 19 or 22.
I repeat: What are we doing? What have we done?
And: What are we going to do about it?
I wonder if sadder and wiser ballet people have something to teach us. A quick search reveals an article from the Royal Ballet School: “The Evolution of Ballet Training: Considering What’s Beyond Early Specialisation.”
Sounds familiar.
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