http://www.startribune.com/no-off-season...ball/450292853/Year-round sports push kids to limit
Families are pouring in more time and money — and more athletes are burning out.
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By Joe Christensen Star Tribune
OCTOBER 19, 2017 — 3:41PM
PROVIDED PHOTO
Kali O'Keeffe in a team photo from 2008.
The sport Kali O’Keeffe loved at age 12 had turned into a chore, devouring her free time, leaving her out of touch with friends.
She was the starting second baseman for Chanhassen High School’s softball team by eighth grade and a major college recruit by 15. But O’Keeffe reached a breaking point before her junior year, on the way back from Tennessee, where her club team had played in a national tournament.
Three hectic years traveling to tournaments across the country and spending countless nights inside a batting cage had taken a toll. She sat down next to her father on a curb outside their roadside hotel. Crying, she told him the pressure of playing year-round softball was just too much.
“When I told my parents, I felt so bad,” she said. “They had spent so much money on softball, and I just didn’t want to do it anymore.”
O’Keeffe is among a generation of Minnesota athletes who have pushed themselves to extremes, developing highly polished skills through year-round dedication to their sport, while their families make major investments of money and time. Her father, Bryan, said the family spent a minimum of $7,500 per year on softball, adding, “That could be on the conservative side.”
Youth sports are an estimated $15 billion industry, and the increasing specialization of these budding athletes is irrevocably changing Minnesota’s high school landscape in softball, baseball, soccer, hockey, basketball, volleyball and lacrosse — basically, every team sport except football.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
After seeking input from coaches, the Star Tribune spent the summer examining some of the most profound changes affecting high school sports in the metro area. What we found reflects the growing influence of year-round youth sports, where seasons and training never seem to let up.
Part 1: Year-round sports push kids to limit
Part 2: Club teams become the price of admission to youth sports
Part 3: Crunch time never ends for coaches
Coaches survey: A summary of responses from about 140 coaches.
The offseason is disappearing, fueled by an explosion of pay-to-play club sports that have scores of young athletes training year-round. While a select few, such as O’Keeffe, become good enough to attract college scholarships, others devote countless extra hours in the quest to make varsity teams.
In the never-ending blur of year-round practices and games, the importance of the high school season itself is shrinking, to the chagrin of many coaches.
“The genie’s out of the bottle now,” Totino-Grace activities director Mike Smith said. “I don’t know how you’re going to reverse it. These athletes just don’t have very long to be a kid.”
The Hill-Murray boys’ hockey team, for example, practices with its coach five days per week — in July. The morning after the state volleyball tournament ends next month, hundreds of girls will flock right back to the gym for club volleyball tryouts the next morning. The same happens with basketball.
Teen athletes and their families spend thousands to play for club teams, attend skill-instruction camps and hire personal trainers and college recruiting advisers. A local baseball recruiting service offers a $2,400 guarantee that the teen will play college baseball — or their money back.
“You see families that can’t afford to buy groceries, but they’ll somehow find a way to get a thousand-dollar pair of skates and get to New York,” Hill-Murray boys’ hockey coach Bill Lechner said. “It scares me; our priorities are out of whack.”
A Star Tribune survey of metro-area coaches, which drew about 140 responses, found that most varsity athletes in volleyball, soccer, basketball, hockey, softball and baseball spend as much time on their sport during the offseason as they do during the high school season. Coaches in volleyball and boys’ and girls’ soccer reported the highest rates of offseason play by their athletes, sometimes reaching 90 percent.
Chanhassen softball coach Joe Coenen supported O’Keeffe’s decision to drop club softball and continue playing varsity ball in the spring. O’Keeffe returned to help the high school win the 2016 Class 4A state championship.
Now she’s a freshman at the University of Minnesota, studying nursing, and happily retired from sports. Meanwhile, Coenen said he has a sophomore going through the same stress O’Keeffe did.
“Her whole summer is softball,” Coenen said. “For some people, it makes them despise the sport. But for every kid out there whose family would love to cut back, there’s a kid who wants to do more.”
How it’s changed
Lechner remembers a much more leisurely pace to sports when he graduated from Cretin High School in 1971. He and his friends played in a Roseville summer hockey league, nothing that frequently interfered with baseball and summer revelry.
“The kids are put in a tough spot, and I think parents are put in a tough spot, too, with all the pressure with all these offseason programs going on. If everyone would back off a little bit, then it wouldn’t be so bad, right? But you feel you have to play.”
Kevin Merkle, former associate director, Minnesota State High School League
Now Lechner runs a summer camp that’s “optional” but always well-attended for his Hill-Murray boys’ hockey team. Hockey coaches at Wayzata, Bloomington Jefferson and other prominent metro-area programs run these summer camps, too, with parents footing the bill.
“I live on a lake. I coach baseball. I want to golf,” Lechner said. “It’s not mandatory to run a summer camp, but if I don’t, they’d hit me over the head.”
The Minnesota State High School League didn’t allow coaches to work with players during the summer until 1998. The league had faced pressure from parents who felt their sons and daughters couldn’t maximize their potential under the old system.
“Our kids were running off and spending thousands of dollars for training in the offseason,” Bloomington Jefferson boys’ hockey coach Jeff Lindquist said. “We just felt it was a time to let them train in our community.”
The measure, allowing coaching instruction from June 1 to July 31, passed 79-9.
Faribault Bethlehem Academy volleyball coach Franz Boelter was among the nine who voted no, citing the added time commitment being asked of athletes. Now he has worked summer practice sessions into his calendar, and the Cardinals have won seven state championships since 2002.
“I worry that we are asking so much of our kids who are never going to play more than varsity,” Boelter said. “They get tired of us.”
Football is a different animal. For safety reasons, the high school league limits coaches to 11 full-contact summer football practices.
Kevin Merkle, a former league associate director, said football coaches appreciate that rule because they “can have some time off” knowing “the coach down the road in the next town isn’t doing anything more either.”
ANTHONY SOUFFLÉ, STAR TRIBUNE
Taylor Manno played softball for Chanhassen, but it was her performance for a club team that got her a scholarship to Rutgers.
Competing training options
Taylor Manno was the starting pitcher for Chanhassen in the 2016 Class 4A softball championship game. But there was a four-hour rain delay, and when play resumed, Manno was gone. She had a flight to catch to New Jersey, where her club softball team was beginning a tournament the next day.
Manno’s teammates, including many like herself who played year-round, didn’t blink. They recognized Manno’s need to showcase her talents that weekend for East Coast coaches. Sure enough, Manno received a scholarship to play at New Jersey-based Rutgers.
“I don’t really regret it because the tournament I went to was the reason Rutgers recruited me,” Manno said. “The only part I regret is not being able to celebrate [the state championship] with my teammates.”
Athletic directors said stories such as Manno’s are becoming more commonplace, citing examples of top basketball players missing high school playoff games to attend national soccer tournaments, and top high school baseball players missing games to go play hockey.
When they aren’t playing games, these athletes most likely are working out, often paying trainers to help them.
Former Minneapolis North and University of Connecticut standout Khalid El-Amin runs Ultimate Hoops out of Life Time Fitness in St. Louis Park. Clients pay him between $40 and $100 for hourlong basketball instruction sessions.
Trevor Morning, head performance specialist at Englebert Training Systems (ETS) in Lakeville, said about 500 high school athletes work with trainers through the facility, including several teams from Lakeville North High School. A year-round package at ETS costs about $199 per month.
“To be honest, all athletes should be training year-round,” Morning said. “That helps with injury prevention, maintaining strength and maintaining mobility.”
For families seeking extra help attracting college recruiters, there’s help available — at a price. The Baseball Advising Team is one example, assuring clients they’ll play college baseball for $2,400. It works with the Hit Dawg Academy in Chaska, creating a training regimen to follow while the company networks with college coaches on players’ behalf.
“I believe that anybody who wants to play college baseball can,” said Matt Paulsen, the company’s founder. “It doesn’t mean you’re going to be playing for Florida State.”
While some athletes and their families can approach these pursuits with open checkbooks, others can’t. In 2016, children from families making $25,000 or less were only half as likely to take part in a team sport as families making at least $100,000, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
In modern youth sports, overall participation numbers for team sports are declining. In 2016, about 36.9 percent of children ages 6 to 12 participated in a team sport on a regular basis, down from 44.5 percent in 2008, according to the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program.
“When you play a bigger school, you’re not necessarily playing the best athletes in the school,” said Mike Grant, Eden Prairie’s football coach and activities director. “You’re just playing the people that have spent the most money and more time in the gym.”
