Single or Multi-Sport Athletes? Is there a better way?

It seems to me like high school sports are becoming more and more like a business. Summers are consumed by American Legion Baseball, or Summer League Basketball, this football camp or that, a tennis tournament every weekend. I can remember the summers of high school, running from a baseball game to a basketball game, then to tennis practice and football drills, finally crawling into bed that night just to get up and do it again. Of feeling pressure from coaches to work with their team that summer, year round even. High School student athletes are working harder than every before on their game so that they can have a shot at a college scholarship. Often times, parents reinforce their kids drive to compete and perform day in and day out so that they can be the best player they can for the college scouts.

Many student athletes make the choice to give up playing multiple sports in order to concentrate on the sport they have the best chance to succeed in.

But do single sport players have a better chance of getting college scholarships that multi-sport athletes? Which makes a better person?

Let me put forward my bias at this point. All throughout growing up and throughout high school I played four sports. Each season brought a new sport, new challenges, new chances to improve my game in that particular sport. So, obviously, I’m a bit partial to the multi-sport side of this tough question. But there have been times when I’ve looked back on my sports careers and my college football career and wondered to myself, ‘If I would have given up every sport but football, would I have been a better quarterback? Would I have played somewhere else? Would I have had a shot at the league?’

I think many people look back on their sports experiences and wonder those things, and hindsight is always 20/20. But after I ask those questions, I think about all of the experiences I had playing baseball, basketball and tennis. I think about the relationships I built with teammates, the places we traveled, the epic contests I was a part of. I think about how those experiences shaped me into the person that I am today, how each sport trained different parts of my body and my mind to be a whole person, and how I will be able to pass on a love of each of those sports, and others, to my kids and other student athletes. I wouldn’t trade those other sports for a better football career, because, in the end; sports, school, religion, family life, is all about forming a better, more whole person. That should be the aim of parents and coaches, not a college scholarship. Because college and professional sports are an unrealistic goal for most, and at best, a short lived dream compared to the rest of life that is to be lived. I would hope that the parents of America would shape their kids to become better people first, before they become better athletes.

That’s how I feel. What do you think?