>>[William Aiken] Some kids have been pampered and don't get the "star" treatment so they don't play. I blame weak parenting in part. Teach kids to be humble...and be humble yourself.<<
I actually agree with you: more kids need to be taught humility and more parents need to practice it. However...just so that we cover both sides...
I was recently talking to some folks about the recent NCAA Division I board ruling that stated that their varsity college teams couldn't play clubs anymore. What they told me was that it was high school athletic directors that pushed this (you can also see this in writing over at the Texas A&M web site.) The high school athletic directors said that they were tired of players opting not to play high school and instead playing elsewhere in the spring -- so I guess their thinking was "...we'll take away their other option." Not terribly long-term thinking of course -- by next spring there will almost certainly be other attractive options.
The problem with almost all of the kids I know who opted to play/train elsewhere in the spring (and I know of at least a half dozen future D1/D2 level players) wasn't rooted in a choice to "only play colleges", it was because they were convinced that they wouldn't become better players continuing to play for their high schools. I've heard a lot of talk from kids about scoring almost at will against these weaker opponents and it not helping them at all in terms of their objectives to move on to the next level.
In short, I think that in general there are two issues: (1) players and parents do need to be more humble and (2) high schools and high school leagues need to try to figure out ways to improve the quality of the experience.
