Competition tends to plague the life of most young children nowadays. Parents’ goals are to turn their child into an athlete at a young age so they will grow and develop to be phenomenal sports star that shine on the field.
Today, parents pressure their children to achieve athletically, leading to disinterest in the sport and a general increase in stress.
Most children who receive scholarships at the high school level have already begun playing that sport as a child. At this young age, the parents and children only see the sport as recreational.
As years progress, however, parents become aware of the financial and social benefits that a high-performing athlete can reap.
Because of these advantages, students in today’s generation are heavily pressured by parents to obtain scholarships.
Recently, both parents and students have watched college tuition sky-rocket. The trends indicate that the prices will only continue to rise. In some cases, parents do not have the money to send their child to a nice university.
Because of this financial need, parents force athleticism on their child, adding pressure to him or her to succeed. Although, parents want their kid to be happy and attend a great college, they do not understand that the burden they are putting on their child causes him or her to become exasperated.
Student-athletes have the unique struggle of having to balance both schoolwork and practices along with personal responsibilities.
“It was difficult for me to balance AP classes and all the work that came with it, along with football. Our football season lasts until December and that’s almost a whole term of practices plus endless hours of homework,” said Ben Panther, MHS senior.
The culture that comes with being the parent of an over-achieving child can be addicting. Nowadays, “soccer moms” and the alike can be seen bragging on the sidelines of their children’s’ games about their kid’s accolades and accomplishments.
It’s not that parents are fully apathetic to their kids stress level and mental health, but the pride that comes with being a parent of an accomplished child can make parents blind to their kid’s suffering. This can lead to parents tending to have unrealistic expectations of their child in the athletic world and pressuring them into achieving more than their peers.
Being a college athlete is about being talented, maintaining a solid GPA and keeping up with schoolwork, having leadership skills, and always striving to be better.
A lot of the time parents want the scholarship more than the kid does and they will see past that. For parents it’s all about how good their child is and wanting to show their child off to other people. They need to sit back and realize what their kid actually wants.
By the time a kid is in the recruiting process to play collegiate sports they are a sophomore or junior in high school. They are old enough to make the decisions pertaining whether or not they want to continue playing the sport or just abandon the sport and become a full-time student.
MHS Florida State football commit Rick Leonard didn’t necessarily receive the pressure to obtain a scholarship from his parents, but he was pressured on other factors of the recruiting process.
“Parents can definitely pressure their kids about which schools to go to. My dad was pushing me towards Florida State University. However, my mom was trying to sway my opinion on attending Clemson,” said Rick Leonard, MHS senior FSU commit.
Parents try to influence their opinion because they think they know what’s best and they can benefit financially. Parents start kids in sport programs early because they want the kid to develop a passion for the sport and therefore keep the will to continue playing it in college.
“Parents, of course, are going to have their own opinions about where they want their kid to go and what they want their kid to do in college but in the end it’s ultimately up to the kid. They’re the one that will be spending the next four years there,” said Leonard.
