Any good coach especially one like CTB is going to explain situations to players. Shed and Mom may not have liked what he said but in no way do I believe it wasn’t a sit down talk.
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Back in the day there weren’t as many kids playing sports and those who did were more self driven. They wanted to play and our parents just let us. Now we’re the parents and we realize that sports can be a good resume point for college admissions and also promote good teamwork and habits. We’re pushing kids to do these activities to some extent. And we have the means and time to invest in our kids activities. We all want our kids to succeed, maybe not have it as hard as we did growing up, but everyone has a different idea on how to do that.
Personally, I want my kids to fight through struggles so they can learn how to overcome adversity and bounce back from failure. So they learn that it’s OK to fail. As long as failing at whatever they’re trying won’t lead to some permanent disfigurement or something. But I want the struggle to be useful and fair. I mean, who cares if a kid struggles through mental math? We have calculators now, which are so much quicker and more accurate. There’s nothing to gain for that particular struggle.
So sometimes I struggle to fight urges to make things easier for my kids. Make things too hard and they quit and I have no energy to work to make them do things they don’t want to do anymore. But make things too easy and they don’t appreciate the work necessary to achieve the result, so the next time if they don’t work hard enough they wonder why they didn’t get the result.
Anyway, to:dr. Even if our parents didn’t intervene on our behalf, we’re the generation snowplowing for our kids now, for whatever reason.
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Parents are so soft these days.
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This is the interesting part. How so?
True story: My UVA classmate was recruited to play on the baseball team. The coach never actually saw him play. Just called him up and offered him after getting some recommendations from people he trusted. My friend gets to school his freshman year, goes to the coach’s office, introduces himself, and the coach says: “Who the hell are you?”
Point being, with the exception of football and basketball, most college sports – even at big schools – used to be much lower-pressure, under-resourced, under-the-radar affairs. I think part of what we’re seeing now, with players and parents and “posses,” is a reflection of the stakes getting so much higher.
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I think part of that is scarcity. US population has probably doubled over the last 50-60 years, while the number of sports teams is around the same.
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Forgot that coaches name. Lot of my dudes were baseball players and I dont think liked him
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Just guesses, but my impression is that the great majority of us are UVA grads and almost all of us are college grads working white collar desk jobs. I’m guessing that’s more true of us than our parents.
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Per capita, Gen X was more economically successful at the same age as Baby Boomers.
Just speaking from personal experience, my parents didn’t actively encourage any of my extracurriculars and best I remember never attended any events unless there was an awards ceremony they were invited to. At best I got dropped off and picked up. Sometimes I got a ride one or both directions. Mostly they were working to get by and make their kids’ lives easier than theirs was.
Which now that I put it that way, is the same thing we’re all trying to do. Just different social norms on how to do it.
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I can’t believe you actually read my long ass rambling post and picked something out of it.
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Dennis Womack I think.
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Family sizes have dropped even in the last 50 years, so parents are putting more time into each kid. Also, the schools that were good 50 years ago are mostly still the good schools and there aren’t any more of them but there are more kids. More than that, US News and World Report only started ranking colleges in the mid 80s. Today it’s normal for a school to be a top 25 or whatever university, and for the high achieving kids to be funneled in really granular fashion to the right schools, but if you’re older than 55 it wasn’t a thing when you applied.
So there’s WAY more pressure to get into the good schools so parents are pushing their kids harder to get through the hoop. The average Harvard student in the 50s would never have gotten in during the 90s and the average 90s student probably wouldn’t get in today. So, more pressure on the kids.
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I can confidently say that I wouldn’t get into UVA today.
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Definitely Womack. But the guy had an eye for talent — Buchanan, Greisinger, Daneker, Lopez, Zimmerman, Reynolds, Gilleland, all his finds.
Rumor in Southside VA was that he offered Poindexter his freshman year at Jefferson Forest. Best ballplayer he ever saw.
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Someone should start a poll relating to the demographics of the members here as it relates to this. I’d be curious to see the results.
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Yessir that was him
I love this stuff and think it is important. Especially when you have kids man
Back then I felt like Womack and Ace Adams were the same guy. All my baseball and Lax homies felt like both needed to move on.
Lax hit a homerun early and baseball maybe kinda later did the same
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Baseball team was so bad that at one point in the '80s, I believe the university was considering eliminating the program. Glad that they didn’t.
My son knows lots of current and ex-UVA baseball players. Seems to be a split of opinion about O’Connor. Can’t deny his success, but he is not universally loved. I think that’s probably an occupational hazard for all coaches.
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Oh for sure. Similar to George the soccer coach
There was talk of that in the late 90s as i recall. They were prepared to cut scholarships.
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