When is there enough?

We certainly do live in a culture of excess, but do we have go over the top with our young developing high school athletes? Have we taken the focus away from interscholastic competition and shifted it to commercially sponsored elite all star games, “National Championships” and showcase camps? It seems that what we are doing is trying to find the best earlier instead of a more egalitarian approach of getting more kids involved and keeping them involved. There was a saying I remember my parents using when I was growing up, “How do you keep them down on the farm after they have seen Paris? A normal high school game has become mundane, it seems it must be televised and hyped to the max or it does not have worth, rubbish. Let’s let the kids be kids. Take all that money used to hype and promote all those all star games and camps and invest in getting more kids involved and raise the standard of coaching. It should not be about selling shoes, it should be about promoting sport and better coaching.

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Vern Gambetta

Director at Gambetta Sports Training Systems

Vern is the Director of Gambetta Sports Training Systems. He has been the a conditioning coach for several MLS teams as well as the conditioning consultant to the US Men's World Cup Soccer team. Vern is the former Director of Conditioning for the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets. He has lectured and conducted clinics in Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe and has authored six books and over one hundred articles related to coaching and sport performance in a variety of sports. He has a BA in teaching with a coaching minor and an MA in Education with an emphasis in physical education from Stanford University.