It could be a Maine thing. Drugs and alcohol are really popular up here after all. 25 percent might be an exaggeration, but there were always a handful of bat-shit crazy parents on every team. Scream at the refs, scream at the coaches, scream at the players. Just act terrible.
That particular incident was almost 10 years ago. The kids were at squirt level and her kid was clearly trying to take the ice several times before it was his turn. I saw it. It was nothing, but he went home and cried to her, she believed every embellishment he put on the story and became convinced that this coach inflicted some kind of serious trauma on her child.
Me and my GF at the time were able to talk her out of it.
there are a handful of sports my son wonāt participate in, based on age. Soccer at a very young age, in my opinion, is very dumb. Itās a concussion waiting to happen. The data supports this. There are ways to get a kid engaged in learning soccer fundamentals without actually participating in youth soccer leagues.
Football is tough in Texas. So many high schools are so dumb with football culture. If my son absolutely falls in love with football, Iāll end up letting him play, but you can bet Iāll be very involved in knowing everything that goes on with the team, both on and off the field. There are some really excellent programs out there, and there are some that are truly terrifying.
I canāt really address wrestling because itās not that popular around here. But I would think that wouldnāt be a bad option. Iām very data oriented with these things, so Iād have to look at serious injury/concussion rates in the sport as a youth.
I give zero shits about broken bones, bruises, etc. My son will get hurt, and thatās fine. My priority is managing mental health to the best of my ability, and that includes the cultural aspects of the chosen sport (which, again, can be problematic with Texas football). I think as long as youāve truly got your kidās best interests at heart, youāll be able to navigate this just fine.
Thatās always been my concern with hockey. Concussions are a very scary thing. There are real risks. One of our coachās kids had to stop hockey after his second. Iāve seen two kids get taken off the ice by paramedics. One was very, very bad. He just fell and slid into the boards head-first in about the worst way you can imagine and began convulsing on the ice.
yea i could have mentioned hockey too, but as you can imagine, the number of kids interested in hockey in Dallas Texas is probably less than zero. So it doesnāt cross my mind. Most of the Stars fans I know didnāt grow up here.
What is wrong with youth football culture in you opinion? Are the coaches a-holes? Hazing? Asking because my youngest loves everything about football and hitting (to a fault). We dont want him to play necessarily. But I wasnāt allowed to play even though I wanted to. That was a bummer.
He played football his freshman year and I was just thinking āgreat, TWO concussion sportsā. He didnāt take to that sport, which didnāt bother me at all. I think he had gotten so used to kicking ass at hockey that he had a hard time being one of the worst players all over again.
To be perfectly honest we would never have put him in hockey in the first place if he wasnāt completely obsessed with it. Itās super-expensive and higher risk than most other sports.
the sexual assault culture stuff is pretty real here. the hazing is real. some coaches are awful. All of it. Thatās why I said I Would need to have a good handle on the particular program. Itās not as bad in the urban areas of Texas (which Iām obviously in), but Iāve still heard some pretty terrible things. It only takes 1 or 2 coaches for a program to go by the wayside. Like, you could have 1 strength coach at the school who gives a favorite player a key to the field house, and tells him āif you need a place to take a girl or have drinks or whatever, just go here, itāll be safe. just keep it between us!ā. something like that. You can see how quickly that can get out of control. and it happens a lot.
Slightly different perspective here, coming from a student.
So I finish High School in exactly 3 weeks. Though I used to be involved in rugby and cricket, I can say with 100% certainty that my greatest regret is dropping a lot of the sport I did 3 years ago and not trying out any others. Aussie-Rules Football, gymnastics, wrestling, martial arts and athletics are all opportunities I wish I took up, and I miss the hell out of rugby.
Her and my sister trained it for like a decade. Sheās a 3rd degree I think. Itās not all gimmicky, but itās not jiu-jitsu either. Like @SkyzykS said, it depends on the dojo for sure.
Iāve trained jiu-jitsu and that shit will humble you.
That happened in our HS hockey program three years ago, and itās why the head coachās brother is no longer part of the coaching staff. A lot of us felt like the head coach should have been gone as well, but hey HOW ABOUT THAT CLASS A STATE CHAMPIONSHIP!?!?
This is where it gets weird. Iām not looking at it with rose colored glasses. Iāve run into a lot of former team mates that have had problems later in life, like drug abuse, alcoholism, etc and it seems like really high incidence of it. Like almost all.
Some of the messaging is pretty severe. Pain is temporary, pride is For Ever type stuff. Winning isnāt the only thing, its Everything and so on.
So Iām also trying to look at it on balance. I feel that I can help to keep his perspective good and healthy , but Iāll definitely have to meet up with the coaches and look somewhat critically at the direction of it.
Or, who knows? He might get bonked on the nose or something and walk off the mat crying never wanting to do it again!
@SkyzykS You might want to look into jiu jitsu. Itās not the end-all-to-be-all, but it is a sport and skillset with tremendous upside and very low injury rates. There might be some elements of stoner culture, depending on the gym, but Iāve helped coach kidās classes and none of that stuff makes its way onto the mats in those settings.
Thereās none of the toxic stuff weāve had to navigate with HS hockey where kids get preferential treatment and a pass on bad behaviors because they can skate fast and score goals. Like flip said, thatās a real part of many sports programs and it doesnāt do teenagers any good to give them the idea that theyāre better than their peers who donāt happen to play the most popular sport wherever you live.
Thatās part of the advantage of participating in an individual sport being coached and run by a club/gym that has a profit motive. It literally is all business on the mats.
It will vary by gym policy, but my instructor teaches kids as young as 5. The kids really have a blast. Itās pajama wrestling in a padded room. My instructor has been teaching kids for about 6 years and he just had his first serious injury to a kid earlier this year. It was more of a freak accident than jiu jitsu gone wrong. The kid fell and broke his wrist. Shit happens when you move.
I may. Its definitely an option. A good friend of mine has been involved in akido/akijutsu for a long time ( like Chushin, not Segal!) So we may end up mixing those into it. In previous discussion we already settled on 12 before teaching him anything that can really hurt someone.
Not for nothing, I actually know a guy (complete prick that he is) with half a brain from getting choked out. He was acting up at a place and taking things a little too far, as he was apt to do. In return a guy he was rolling with choked him out and left him there. Stroked out half of his brain.
I know that kids will be kids, and stuff happens. Even just dicking around I wouldnāt want him to have that ability, small as the risk may be.
Hereās the thing though. A basic rear-naked choke is easy to learn. Go watch a youtube video and try it on your wife. Iād argue that learning how to properly apply one is good for anyone who is not a psychopath. Any school teaching submissions will teach you when to let go and how to apply them in a controlled fashion. And a lot of, probably even most schools are very careful about how submissions are taught to adults, let alone children. Some are off the menu entirely, like knee-reaping or heel-hooks.
For your buddy to have suffered brain damage a blood choke would need to be kept in for a lot longer than when he initially passed out. Probably at least a minute. Anything under 20 seconds after they go limp and the risk is probably close to zero. People will come to on their own once the choke is left out. I highly, highly doubt that a blood choke in BJJ is the source of his condition.
That takes deliberate malice and no trained BJJ practitioner would ever do such a thing unless they wanted to be banned from every gym in the area and arrested for assault. Not to mention the immediate and direct in-house consequences thereād be if someone saw him holding on to a choked-out person that long.
Make no mistake about it, a good BJJ school will teach you to destroy joints, not just get someone to tap out. We learn how to put people out with blood chokes, which means for good if we so choose. You can learn a lot of really nasty stuff for sure.
You also learn it in a way that you could never do any of it by accident.