Travel Ball vs. HS Sports vs. other club sports

[Dabears17]

Your right but this is a very dragged out schedule. All of May dedicated to HS softball when the TB world is in full swing.

Softball - CIF Southern Section

Digging into the schedule more, the Southern Section Softball championship games are a week before Memorial Day. The San Diego Section has its Section championship games Memorial Day weekend, so Regionals end the first weekend in June. Sounds like Southern Section AD's need to lobby the other Sections in that region to get on the same schedule as the Southern Section to have Regionals played Memorial Day weekend.

Do LA travel teams start playing tournaments before Memorial Day weekend? Looks like Southern Section has 32 team brackets, with play-offs starting the first week in May?

When do Southern Section schools have graduation? Memorial Day weekend?

https://cifss.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2023-Softball-Playoff-Bulletin-Final-Revised.pdf

 

[jdint]

Like I said, my post was not merely anecdotal, though I certainly have countless stories of grades improving with the motivation of being able to participate on the team. There are studies on this. I'm sure there are some kids who can't handle it. That's not the typical case though.

I think you (in general you, not you specifically) need to distinguish the level of sports/academic performance that is being discussed. I'm sure there is a block of kids who do better in school in order to participate in sports, but at the higher levels of academic performance, most studies show an inverse relationship between sports participation and academic performance.

A blurb from the National Library of Medicine: Despite the widely reported association between PA, fitness and sports participation with academic performance [5,15,44], sports participation at the highest competitive level seems to be associated with an impaired academic performance regardless of sex and the type of sport.

 

[Sonerai]

Like I said, my post was not merely anecdotal, though I certainly have countless stories of grades improving with the motivation of being able to participate on the team. There are studies on this. I'm sure there are some kids who can't handle it. That's not the typical case though.

There may be 2 different perspectives here to consider. I can see where having a minimum standard to meet to be able to play sports can incentivize students to put in the extra effort to hit that standard. That often times doesn't require that much more effort to get a C average. However in some cases high academic students are trying get all A's while taking multiple AP classes. That is where I think HS sports can impact their ability to achieve at a high academic level.

 

[daywalkerdad]

I do not think school sports are as bad as travel. School practices are right after school. If school ends at 3 practice until 5 then rest of the evening to do homework.
Travel and lessons you often have a 2 hour break then practice to 7.
School does have more games during week b so I can see a loaded schedule to be problematic.

 

[Dabears17]

I think you (in general you, not you specifically) need to distinguish the level of sports/academic performance that is being discussed. I'm sure there is a block of kids who do better in school in order to participate in sports, but at the higher levels of academic performance, most studies show an inverse relationship between sports participation and academic performance.

A blurb from the National Library of Medicine: Despite the widely reported association between PA, fitness and sports participation with academic performance [5,15,44], sports participation at the highest competitive level seems to be associated with an impaired academic performance regardless of sex and the type of sport.

Interesting study. It appears to be a study done on a high school in Spain?

Glancing through study, it is comparing “Elite” athletes to normal students. Are “elite” athletes missing class time or spending most of their weekends traveling, practicing, and/or competing rather than studying?

Is there a study comparing grades for athletes that just participate in high school athletics during the school year to “control” students? Near me typically high school athletes are home by 6PM the days they have practice, maybe 7PM the one or two days a week they have games.

Is the study an argument against playing on a sports team in college?

 

[uncdrew]

Like I said, my post was not merely anecdotal, though I certainly have countless stories of grades improving with the motivation of being able to participate on the team. There are studies on this. I'm sure there are some kids who can't handle it. That's not the typical case though.

Yup. I'm sure you're right and I know girls who fit into that.

Just isn't how it works with my kids. They need hours each night to keep up with coursework and HS softball prevents that.

 

[RADcatcher]

Older article but does offer a glimpse at different parameters high schools implement. Definitely becoming ineligible is a real thing.
Should be noted:
Which can create extra pressure/stress for academic athletes.

A Comparison of Academic Athletic Eligibility in Interscholastic Sports in American High Schools

Submitted by: Dr. Bruce J. Bukowski Academic eligibility for student-athletes in public high school athletic programs across America has many variations and has been changing over the past twenty years. But how far have we come in motivating athletes in the classroom? The term student-athlete...

thesportjournal.org

 

[uncdrew]

I do not think school sports are as bad as travel. School practices are right after school. If school ends at 3 practice until 5 then rest of the evening to do homework.
Travel and lessons you often have a 2 hour break then practice to 7.
School does have more games during week b so I can see a loaded schedule to be problematic.

It's the games. Start at 5:30. So home at 8:30. Yes, they could study after school and before the game (for like 45 minutes) but that's just not realistic.

When the planets are truly out of alignment, they have an away game starts at 6:00 and two AP tests the next day. And it just takes one crappy test score to put their grade in jeopardy.

 

[jdint]

It's the games. Start at 5:30. So home at 8:30. Yes, they could study after school and before the game (for like 45 minutes) but that's just not realistic.

When the planets are truly out of alignment, they have an away game starts at 6:00 and two AP tests the next day. And it just takes one crappy test score to put their grade in jeopardy.

I'll just piggy back on this post. The game nights are the killers. It's not unusual to get home after 9:00 or 9:30 at night depending on the commute. Some of our games are an hour plus away. School starts at 7:45 the following morning and they play at least 2 times a week, sometimes 3.

We also play 3 to 4 tournaments on the weekends. These, much like travel ball, can last all day and into the evening. Volleyball and Basketball are the worst in my own experience. Extremely time consuming, not to mention they practice all summer now also.

Edit: I'm in the middle of what seems like and endless vball season, so I'm talking more about that than softball. I know from friends that basketball in our area is even worse. The HS softball season isn't as big as an issue for us personally.

 

[Dabears17]

I wasn’t thinking about sports like basketball that games might start at 6PM or 7PM. Softball games start at 4PM near me and the latest start times when my daughter played High School soccer and volleyball was 5:30PM.

California passed a law a couple years ago that for public high schools the first class can’t start before 8:30AM.

In California High School tournaments can only be on Saturdays, so Sundays were not tied up.

Summer practices/workouts for High School sports can be annoying. My DD got cut from HS volleyball her senior year to a certain degree because summer workouts conflicted with her club softball practices.