Kids in sports

[catamaran]

I coach midgets in Bozeman, and its a phenomenon all over. For some reason coaches who got good at sports by playing many different ones are now convinced that a kid should find one and stick to it. What they forget are all the ones that get burned out quickly without the variety

[Scrogger]

I recently read a study (wish I could find it on the web) that stated that kids specializing in a single sport are more likely to sustain a serious injury compared to kids playing many different sports. Reason is that a single sport person only uses specific muscles, whereas multisport people use a variety of muscle groups.

[MSUCATS]

All kids should be involved in some type of extra curricular activity, more than one is better. If a child is involved in several activities, once they are older they can decide what they'd like to pursue rather than have the parents choose, and try to live through their child. Make sure they stay involved in at least one activity throughout highschool, that way they're going to be more well-rounded (they have better time management, higher grades, more friends, an activity to keep them inshape, etc...)

If you wanted your son(s) to play football, why not have them play football in the fall, wrestle in the winter, and have them play on a spring soccer league or club (it's usually a traveling team once they are over 12 or something like that).

Soccer is a great way for kids to release built up energy, especially those who are on 'hyper-active' mode.

With wrestling, my only suggestion to you is to make sure you start talking with your son(s) about the weight issue and make sure they know the proper way to lose weight. My brother wrestled, and when he was in high school, my mom told the coach that she wanted to be notified if he was going to be 'cutting' weight. She wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to be an unhealthy 'cut'.