SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Boys Varsity Soccer Academy Players Can't Play High School Soon?

There is a logic to it, indeed. And you're right in your analogy that high school kids aren't typically allowed to play two sports in the same season; if you're playing football, you can't play cross country which is also in the fall, but you can play soccer in the spring.

The analogy breaks down a little, though, when you take into account there are no high school sports that take up multiple sports seasons. We have fall, winter, and spring sports seasons, which allow players to take part in different things at different times, so it's easier to justify saying you can't take part in two sports in the same season when you can also say there are different seasons availabe to do different things.

Football is one of the most-followed and biggest moneymaking sports in the U.S. It offers many more opportunities for college scholarships and professional contracts than soccer. By the same logic, we could produce better football players if we required football training and competition in two seasons; keep the players involved on the gridiron year round rather than letting them digress into other activities that they may enjoy, but won't necessarily help them to become better football players. I mean, having them play other sports like baseball or tennis or soccer takes them even farther away from their football development than playing high school soccer takes them from Academy soccer, right? They're wandering off into a whole different sport, skill set, type of conditioning, etc. We could make better football players if we kept them in football year round.

Yet we don't do that. Why not?

My question, stated as clearly as I can put it, is this:

Can we provide the advantages that Academy training obviously gives to players during the fall season, without also REQUIRING that they commit to the spring season to the exclusion of all other opportunities as well? Or are we telling them they can't have a piece of what the Academy offers in the fall unless they are also willing to give up everything else in the spring?