Randy Dickson: The season never ends for today's young athletes
This is the time of year I wish I could ask someone to wake me when the summer is over.
Spring football has ended and a variety of youth camps are on the horizon.
But the fact is, football remains the straw that stirs the drink in Florida prep sports.
There is a trickle-down effect in football, as in every other sport. The ideas that start in the National Football League move down the line to the college ranks and eventually find a home with high school programs.
It isn’t so much the offenses and defenses of the NFL that make it to the high school fields. I doubt seriously if too many kids could grasp the concepts used, much less do the things required physically, in the pro game.
The biggest idea that has taken hold is the year-round training that goes with football (or any other sport, for that matter).
When I was a kid only a handful of high school football players lifted weights and ran between the end of football season and spring ball.
Even fewer of us worked out during the summer. Most college athletes did do some sort of conditioning during the summer, but not to the extent they do today.
If you drive by Crestview, Baker or any other high school in Okaloosa County in the early morning hours during the next few months there’s a pretty good chance you will see a group of high school football players running or throwing passes.
That’s what teams have to do these days to keep up with the “Joneses” in prep sports.
Championship games might be played on Friday nights, but championships are won in June and July.
Many of the players will go from their morning workouts to a job where they will put in eight hours before heading home. They’ll turn around and do it again, day-after-day, until school starts with their only break possibly coming if their family takes a week of vacation.
If kids want to play, they have to pay the price during the offseason. That’s as it should be.
I wish it could be some other way though.
I’d love to see kids be able to take a summer away from the grind of football or getting ready for football.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, but I worry that the year-round training might be robbing some players of the joy that goes with playing the game.
I’ve been around long enough that I’ve seen several athletes in a variety of sports burn out from the never-ending drive that goes into trying to crack the starting lineup. And once a player arrives as a starter the pressure is there to keep their spot.
Nobody loves winning more than I do, but I do question if sometimes the price for winning might be too great.
Maybe it’s time that high school coaches agree to close up shop during the summer. If everyone did it, the playing field would be level in the fall.
Yet if just one team decided to have the summer workouts everyone else would follow.
I seriously doubt if any coach would be willing to give up the summer and lose the progress their players achieved in conditioning and in the weight program during the winter months.
That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be nice to give the kids a chance to be kids.
Randy Dickson is the News Bulletin Sports Editor. Contact him at 682-6524, or e-mail randyd@crestviewbulletin.com.
