They own them in the spring. They own them in the fall.
But should high-school sports also own young athletes during the summer?
Let me just say that, as of a few days ago, I thought we had summer vacation figured out: A weeklong day camp here and there for the 14-year-oldwho just finished middle school. A family reunion in the North, another in the South. Lazy days at the lakeshore to fill in the rest.
Then we got the middle-school graduate's upcoming high-school soccer schedule.
Starting the day after school ended in June and continuing through September, soccer training would be held Monday through Friday, five days a week, up to five hours a day.
"It's pretty tough stuff," the coach told parents at the introductory meeting a few days ago. "Yesterday, during conditioning, we had four boys throw up."
To be fair, the training sessions in the earliest part of the summer are considered voluntary, according to standards set by our state's high-school athletic association. Every state is different.
Here, in the state of Ohio, these "voluntary" sessions are led by high-school seniors. Coaches are only allowed to lead 10 days of practices before Aug. 1 when the official, mandatory practice season begins.
Ah, but don't let the word "voluntary" fool you, so says the parent grapevine.
"It's 'voluntary' --- wink, wink. But everybody knows, if you don't show up, you don't play," says Elliot Hopkins, who is educational services director for the National Federation of State High School Associations and who advises schools on sportsmanship and other issues related to athletics.
My concern about the environment surrounding organized youth sports isn't new.
I've written in the past about youth sports being too much about winning and too little about the fun of sport. I've written about scholarship-crazed, vicariously living parents hyper-focused on competition and perfection, even as their child athletes suffer a record number of overuse injuries, even as 13-year-olds burn out and quit after 10 years of one sport.
All that intensity being confined to a single fall or spring during the school year is one thing. But in our tradition and culture, summer is sacred time, family time, well-deserved time away from the schoolhouse and its rigorous routine. Indeed, a school-sanctioned team pilfering a child's offtime in the summer is not much different than an employer forcing employees to work while on vacation. The only difference is that school athletes don't get paid. Oh, and they're children who have been taught to accede to authority figures.
"We adults will always be promoting healthy lifestyles; as obese as our children are, it's important to stay active," says Hopkins. "But you can get that, running up and down the street, playing hide-and-seek, jogging with a friend, swimming at the beach. Summer is no different for our children than it is for school teachers. It is supposed to be a chance to decompress, to unwind and relax."
And yet, the idea of nixing summer training altogether is unrealistic, especially for the fall sports that begin as soon as school does, says Hopkins, who was a high-school and college football player, whose children are athletes and who has coached sports himself.
Controlled, summer training, spent developing a specific skill set, might be helpful for some students who think kicking a soccer ball for a few hours in July will qualify them for the team in September. It's important for all kids to stay active, summer or not, sport or not.
But even children only have so much energy. If five hours a day are devoted to boot-camp-like training and conditioning, what happens to other outdoor activities like swimming and tennis? What happens to the rest of the summer? What happens to family time and fun, also part of a healthy lifestyle?
As a parent who believes the pursuit of excellence should co-exist with the pursuit of balance, I wish summer practice was more carefully regulated, limited to no more than every other day, toward the end of the summer, and only for a couple of hours a day. At the very least, said Hopkins, athletes should be told not to touch a ball the first few weeks after school. That would give students a clearly defined, officially endorsed break. It would also give parents a definitive time to make vacation plans without fear that everybody else's child is at those "voluntary" practices, and theirs isn't.
"How many free throws can you shoot anyway?" says Hopkins. "Is a million free throws enough? Is 2,000 soccer goals kicked through the goal enough? There is a saturation point when enough is enough.
"Let's let kids be kids," says Hopkins.