Sons Sporting Ambition Thwarted?

[GatheringAllTheMoss]

My son has dreamt of becoming an England player in his team sport (not football) for many years. He's reached county level which is fantastic but he's unlikely to go further. Not through lack of talent but more through the lack of opportunities and the advantages that others have. Out of 40 children at county level the overwhelming majority are at private schools. 10 from one school. You can count the number of state school boys on one hand and one is my son.

Private schools start this sport in year 3, state pupils are lucky to get the chance to play, those that do start in year 7. Private schools play at a higher level e.g. private school will field their B team against sons state school A team. The coaches and facilities are at a higher level too.

At club level my son plays with the men's team not with his age group and there is no development route. I can move him to another club but the chances are high that it will be dominated by the private school boys so my son won't be chosen for the team.

I always appreciated that talent would only take him so far and I was willing to do whatever was needed to get him to that point. Just devastated by the reality of what he faces to succeed and that I never really appreciated this.

Mom, Wed, Fri, Sat boxing after school, Tues, Thurs, Sun football, sometimes you wish they were not that good at sport

How do they get to and from activities?

I struggle getting my kids anywhere before 6.30 - and so much stuff is on at much earlier times 4,5,6pm.

Is that a genuine question? If they're serious wherever they can find them. Before school, evenings, weekends, holidays, lunch breaks at school. My daughter unlikely to reach elite level but plays academy football. All her spare minutes are spent doing skills and tricks

What do you mean by this? My daughter is a footballer and despite being at independent school and not getting home until 5.30pm, especially in the summer months she still puts in extra hours after school just playing football with friends/practicing tricks on her own in the garden/roping her siblings in to going in goal for her to shoot against them. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

Like the OP said, they had more opportunities than her son thanks to the wealth they were born into . Do you think it's fair?

FFS all this talk about fairness sounds more about jealousy. The fact that people choose to pay for things is not ‘unfair’ if someone can’t afford the same.
A has an unfair advantage because their parents pay for private school.
B has an unfair advantage because their parents have lived in the area for generations and have connections to the local sports club.
C has an advantage because their parents pay for coaching.
D has an advantage because their dad used to be a pro player.

In OP’s situation it sounds like her DC is not at a great club, doesn’t play with his age group but for some reason that is all on the private school kids.

I drive them, that was just the youngest, the oldest did drama and swimming. I spent my whole life waiting outside something. His dad did help as well and when they get to know people you share the driving, the worst was when he played for Bournemouth and we lived 35 miles away. Sometimes I resented it but now they are grown up I miss it especially the boxing. So I’ve volunteered to take my grandson to football. I must be mad.

That might depend on the sport. Where I am the school football teams are the best but the best basketballers is club based.

Yep privilege shows up in different forms, exactly as you have said.. someone might be naturally taller and stronger, some might be plagued with injury so no matter how hard they work they will never make it. I think we have really got to stop looking at this so black and white.

Honestly, if a child has any real hope of playing professional football they will be playing with a professional club youth team by the age of 8.
School football teams cannot begin to compete.

I said where I am, it’s a different football and there are regularly articles suggesting we have a problem in the grassroots sport because the new drafts come from private schools, that’s where the talent is developed.

Ah. I see. I am afraid that was lost in translation.

Or maybe god forbid not as good as they think he is.

I’m genuinely a bit confused by the hand-wringing about the “unfairness” of it all. Sporting excellence is, by its very definition, not a level playing field. I mean… of course it’s unfair. That’s sort of the whole point, right? That’s what “talent” is. It’s something that you were born with that I wasn’t. If you are an elite sportsperson, then the overwhelming likelihood is that on the day you were born, you had something a bit special that I didn’t. It might, for example, be more fast twitch muscle, if you’re a sprinter. It might be the right build, if you’re a gymnast. It might be long arms and legs, if you’re a rower. At that point, as a newborn, it was unearned. It was a privilege you had that I didn’t. That’s why it’s special. It’s not obvious to me why “being born to a family with great sporting genes and the right physique for your chosen sport” which contributes hugely to your likelihood of success is less unfair than “being born to a family that could afford to put you in a position where you had more exposure to that sport” or “being born to a family that had the time and willingness to drive you around to competitions and to practise with you”.

Of course you’ll have to work hard as well, that’s a given, and I’m certain that every single person on the starting line at the Olympics has worked their socks off, but some people were just created with something that they rest of us weren’t. At that point, it’s just chance. Good luck. Privilege.

If your son is genuinely that talented, then you might say he’s had more than his fair share of privilege in life’s / sporting lottery. Certainly more than my kids! And in these situations, there is often little hand wringing devoted to the kids who might have been excellent but whose family’s financial situation meant that they never got a look in in the first place. Cries of unfairness often tend to be directed upwards, rather than downwards. Perfectly normal - we’re all human – but just something to think about.

Where, not when.

We were contrasting public schools with facilities and coaches with state schools without. You can't just just magic up opportunities.

If the question is “where not when” (implying perhaps no back garden or local parks or no financial option to join a local gym or hire its cricket bowling machine at the weekend for £10 etc) then perhaps that’s a wider socioeconomic question. And I absolutely appreciate that it’s a valid one. But as I say, to consider that question would make us all confront the issue of whether there are other kids with more talent than ours who were unlucky enough to be born into a less supportive or less financially stable family who couldn’t afford equipment or petrol or club membership fees and who therefore never got the chance to do anything with it. And it’s often at that point that everyone strangely stops wanting to talk about it. The advantage their kids have received is completely fine. It’s only other people’s advantages which are unfair, obviously…

(Sorry OP - I’m not meaning to have a go. We all do it - probably I do too. It’s a very normal human reaction. But sometimes when I’m feeling really cross about something it can be useful to get a bit of perspective on the fact that I’m actually a good way up the privilege ladder myself, not languishing at the bottom, as my indignation would have me believe at 2am!)

Well we're talking football here. You literally need a ball and a couple of square feet of space or a local park.

Well we're talking football here. You literally need a ball and a couple of square feet of space or a local park. I think you're being obtuse just to make a point about one type of perceived privilege. It's quite odd.

That’s just not true. Footballers get great by coaching on footwork, it’s not all just intuitive (unless you’re Messi) to learn the rhythm and patterns of moving the ball, and they get good by match ups- playing against others, one on one, one on two, two on two, two on three, all the different patterns of play you run in an actual game. Both of these take other people of the right level of skill.

Yeah, that must be why Premier League academies sent their students out into the local park with no coaching or equipment...

I was being asked where kids find the "extra hours". Of course they need coaching too but this, especially in football, is nothing to do with state v private schools. What I do know is no child who has ever made it has spent their life complaining about unfair advantage. They have put in the hours and used it to fuel their fire.

Somewhat facetious. The point being you dont need access to specialist or expensive equipment to practise at a young age. Of course you will still need the guidance and expertise that coached sessions provide but in my experience many of kids who excelled at sports were also the ones out practicing and doing drills on their own long after everyone else had gone home.

Absolutely agree. My daughter at state primary had the same opportunities as anyone else… basically she played football for a local club one evening a week, and a match at the weekend. It was the hours she spent kicking a ball in the garden after school/at weekends, playing football with friends at the park and practising tricks on her own that got her to a standard where she was scouted for an academy and offered a sporting scholarship at an independent secondary school.

How many players in the premier league are ex public school? Given the international nature of players, how many finished full.time education up to age 17?
Boxing - I recall in the 1990s a promoter saying it's the only way out of the ghetto for most kids.

The op specifically said it’s not football. I can’t think of any other sport you can play with just a ball and a bit of grass.