He plays lacrosse, right? That seems like a fun sport to watch. I'm quite excited to see what sport my little guy draws to.
I'm trying to guide him into hockey. We've gone ice skating the past few weeks. He fell a couple of times, cried (should've put on shin pads the first time!), dried off those tears, and said 'daddy, I want to go fast again!'.
I usually push him around in those plastic 'skating aids' at a moderate pace and pretend he's a hockey player. We throw checks @ imaginary players into the boards, we'll steal the puck, take it up ice, and score or get stone walled by the pretend goalie. I always do my best RJ impression while skating him around the ice. "he shoots, he scores! Where mama hides the cookies!". It's so much fun.
And yeah, I'm good to go with 6+ hours of sleep. 7-8 is ideal, but anything less than 6 hours, and I'm DRAGGING the next day. Hopefully, that caffeine does the job for you!
In my personal experience, let kids try as many sports as possible growing up and then see what they fall in love with.
Here is Nate's journey to being a goalie for his DIII lacrosse team:
Ice hockey and soccer were the first two sports he tried. I coached him in both and he only played at the house/rec level. He also played one season of town lacrosse when he was in kindergarten. It was boring, so he didn't go back the next year. The summer before he was to play Mite hockey, where games started, he said he didn't want to play because the learn to play stage was boring. He switched to floor hockey for a few years before wanting to get back on the ice.
When he was around 9, he switched from soccer to baseball. He also took up karate. He tried out for a travel baseball team once and didn't make it. But, that was likely a good thing because that travel coach killed the love for the game in kids we knew through hockey.
In 7th grade, he was playing rec baseball and hockey. In 8th grade, one of his friends talked him into playing modified football for school. Then he played house hockey. And in the spring, he had the modified baseball coach wanting him to play. But, his friend that got him to play football wanted him to play lacrosse. He opted to try out for lacrosse. I asked if he thought he'd make the team. His reply was classic Nate, "I went to the meeting and I was the only kid that was willing to play goalie."
So, that was the start of his lacrosse goalie journey. Nate was the only goalie on the team and had a lot of fun. He played rec baseball that year for the last time.
In 9th grade, he played JV football, rec hockey, and JV lacrosse. He started the year backing up a 10th grade goalie. But, around 1/3 of the way through the season, the 10th grader got a concussion. Nate was lights out in his first start on JV and that created some drama as some of his teammates said in the group chat that Nate should have been starting.
In 10th grade, he played JV football again, rec hockey, was talked into being the varsity hockey team's 3rd goalie even though he had never played hockey goalie before. Then, just as the JV lacrosse season was starting up (he was the only goalie on the team and he expected it to be a big development year), the COVID shutdown cost him that season. We spent a lot of time that spring and summer with me (who is not a lacrosse guy) shooting on him at the empty HS field. He also decided to try out for a club lacrosse team as this would be the last shot he would have and he wanted to see how far he could go with it.
Leading into his 11th grade year, he tried out for a local club lacrosse team and made the B team for his age group. It was a scaled back experience due to coming out of COVID, but he grew a ton through the experience.
In 11th grade, he opted not to play football because it was pushed to the "Fall 2" season between Winter (varsity hockey) and Spring (varsity lacrosse) seasons. He also had a short rec hockey season where he was the only goalie. He was the only goalie on varsity that year and played every minute of every game until he got taken out late in their sectional loss so that the JV goalie got some experience and he got a round of applause from the parents, coaches, and his teammates.
That June, an assistant at SUNY Morrisville reached out. It was the first college team to reach out and it was the perfect fit for him from an academics and lacrosse POV. So, he was all in on going there pretty quickly. Apparently a few other schools reached out to him later on, but he told him he was locked in to Morrisville. He told me about a few of them way after that happened.
His senior year, he played varsity hockey (he was a 4th line winger that year. Don't ask.), rec hockey (goalie and forward), and varsity lacrosse. He played a lot better his senior year and had fun with his guys. He had a huge emotions when his last game as a Spartan was over.
So far, his college experience has been good and challenging. As a freshman, he went in with no idea about where he stood talent-wise with college players. He ended the year as the backup goalie to the conference 1st team goalie. This year has been up and down for himself and the team. He started the year as the #1 and is the #2 right now. But, the starter has been pulled for Nate at halftime each of the past two games. But, he is having fun and has decided to switch from the 2 year program to the 4 year program and use all his lacrosse eligibility.
So, through this journey, here are the pieces of advice I would give to anyone getting started on this journey:
1) Keep it fun. I can't stress this one enough. Kids fall in love with sports because it's fun. When adults lose sight of that, bad stuff happens.
2) Let the kid make the decisions. Nate went to a skating clinic over break once where he said he thought he was the only kid there that wanted to be there and everyone else was there because their parents made them go because their coach was running it. I've also seen parents make kids try out for teams that the kid didn't want to play on. That stuff does not work out well in the long run the majority of the time.
3) Be the most positive, supportive parent you can be for your kid and the team, especially the coaches. It's easy to create drama when stuff isn't going well. Try to avoid that stuff as much as you can and just focus on supporting your kid and keeping it fun.
4) Don't be THAT PARENT. There is a dad with one of the SUNYAC MLAX teams that parents around the league know as an utter tool. Don't be that guy.
They start way too early..
