Joe Madden's view on Travel Baseball vs the multi sport athlete.

[chinamigarden]

Jennie is 6 feet tall (US average is 5.4) and in the top 1% for female height. You know what her other two HS sports were: basketball and volleyball, sports that put a premium on height to perform well. BTW, for most high schools, it's not that difficult to make a team sport and they only play that sport 3 or 4 months out of the year. I would be curious to know what % of Jennie's time in the year was related to softball practice / playing vs. her other 2 sports? My guess is greater than 75% of her total athletic time was to softball (especially because she was a pitcher on a top travel ball team and would have had to practice year round to have the kind of success that she did).

Regarding Tiger Woods. No doubt in my mind that being driven to excel and specialize in golf at a very young age is what made him one of the best golfers of all time. Maybe he overused his body and its now breaking down, but it still doesn't change the fact that he has won almost 100 professional golf tournaments worldwide.

Being a mulit-sport athlete is over-rated when it comes to excelling at one sport. There is only so much time and energy in the day to be really good at multiple sports for the typical athlete.

I suggest you look at the post I replied to. I think it was a post of yours that used Jennie Finch as the example of the athlete who probably specialized young at softball.

I don't think anyone is saying that you can be the best at 3 sports. But you sure can be great at 1 and good at another. My dd probably would have been a better ball player if she only played fast pitch. But she was happier also playing volleyball and basketball.

 

[#10]

Softball is the only sport DD is interested in playing. I guess I'm lucky. Broke, but lucky.