<p>I thought Marian made an excellent point in #53. One of my brothers deliberately smashed a finger to avoid his first piano recital. He was allowed to quit piano lessons. The finger healed.</p>
<p>It might be interesting to let him finish out next week, let THAT season become a memory and then start the talk of, "“so, if you decide not to play soccer, what else would you like to get involved in?” It might be something that would start between now and spring and during that time, he can give more thought to if he likes the new interest OR he can think more about if he gets the itch to back to soccer in the spring. Wouldn’t it be great to see him excited and happy about whatever his EC turns out to be?! </p>
<p>Can I ask a question? Why is it so important to you parents that this student continue a sport in the spring that he does NOT want to do?</p>
<p>I let mine quit because she didn’t want to be a goalie, she wanted to play soccer. She did play outside of school and did free up time, not having to practice in the summer to do other stuff. One of her friends who got into Caltech also quit soccer one year later.</p>
<p>My youngest quit her team very-time-consuming sport after 9th grade. But I insisted that she do SOMETHING athletic to stay in shape. She decided to try club fencing, and it worked out perfectly. She fenced twice a week (one evening and Saturday am) year around. They were super flexible – if she couldn’t come for some reason, we didn’t even need to call! She didn’t try competition until senior year – did pretty well when she did, but she didn’t really play it up in her applications. To us it was important that she get some physical activity. She did have other ECs (Quiz Bowl and Robotics were her top interests). It is his life – you may ask that he do SOMETHING athletic, but let him pick. We always made our kids finish out a given season if they wanted to quit something (and if the equipment is pricier, then we asked them to do at least 2 seasons). But it is his life, his ECs, give him some freedom to choose for himself.</p>
<p>@thumper1, it’s not important to us that he play soccer, per se, but it is important to us that he stop playing for valid reasons. We understand that he may have some anxiety related to “doing well” in whatever it is he’s doing–whether athletics or academics–and don’t want him to use that fear as an excuse. That said, he has switched soccer teams in the past when one didn’t suit him, and we were fine with that. We want him to be happy and fulfilled but also to carefully consider his choices. </p>
<p>Is the $1,400 non-refundable no matter what? It is still October and the spring soccer season doesn’t begin for another 4 to 6 months. I’m assuming that having a lawyer in the family means you have already checked into every possibility. Perhaps your son is anxious about you losing this sum of money because he isn’t playing?</p>
<p>I posted in the Parent Cafe today that my son decided not to play Varsity baseball in the 11th grade. Two seniors told him he should concentrate on his grades junior year. One day I get an email from the HS baseball coach asking me why my son is not playing baseball as rumors were going around the school and he was really counting on my son. So they met in school and my son stood his ground. He really didn’t believe the coach was being honest to him, and that he would get a lot of playing time. My son never could stand sitting on the bench, a trait he gets from me.</p>
<p>So the end result was my son got good grades and was accepted into a top LAC. He tried out as a 12th grader and started on the baseball team. He would have started on the team in 11th grade too as the first baseman decided not to play baseball in his senior year. I reminded him of that a few times as a good parent should. But his coach held a grudge and their relationship was strained, and he never backed my son for all-league consideration.</p>
<p>Three years from now you will look back at this crisis and will realize it’s merely one tiny bump in the road and not a major detour. </p>
<p>OP, </p>
<p>It appears that you have resolved this, at least for the time being. I wanted to point out to your husband that, as someone whose kids made similar decisions (albeit in ice hockey), stopping after 6 years is not “quitting.”</p>
<p>The suggestions to see if you re-characterize the $1400 are good. I wanted to see what I could get on eBay for ~$5000 of goalie equipment, but my daughter wants to keep it for the occasional outdoor game at the club. Easy come, easy go :(( </p>
<p>Not all clubs collect the money up front. For my son’s club, in elementary/middle school, when soccer is year round, the bulk of fees are due in Aug./Sept. In HS the payment schedule is $250 non-refundable due after tryouts and the balance split between payments in Jan./Feb. If someone gets injured in the fall or loses interest midyear, the financial hit is not so large. </p>
<p>He says he wants to NOT play spring soccer so he can concentrate on academics. That sounds like a good reason to me. He isn’t saying he wants to quit sports altogether…just that he doesn’t want to play in the spring.</p>
<p>Let him do this.</p>
<p>OP, </p>
<p>I think I understand your concern about your son not playing spring soccer. At least where we are, club teams are a year long commitment, not just for the fall season. It can be difficult to leave a team in the middle of the soccer “year” without hard feelings between parents, coaches, and teammates. Also, there is the lesson of finishing what one starts, especially once family funds have been committed to it. It sounds like many here have never experienced the club world and do not understand the bridges that may be burned. Your plan to let it sit for a month or do and then revisit the decision is a good one. This will allow time for your son to adjust to HS, truly understand the impact of the decision, and simply rest. During that time I would suggest you find out, as discreetly as possible, if switching to the B team or even another team within the club is a possibility. We are blessed that in our state club soccer cannot occur during the HS season. This allows a break from the travel, teammates, and coaches. It also allows each athlete to gain another program’s perspective on their talents. My son was in a similar position and did not have the option to move to another club team so he walked away, plays HS soccer in the fall, HS baseball in the spring and loves both. He is thriving. When his fellow students chant his name from the stands, there is no doubt he made the right decision. I wish you the best in sorting all of this out. Hang in there. </p>
<p>OP - I’d have no problem with him quitting if his heart is not in it. BUT…it’s important that he still finds a way to keep moving. It’s important for all students, but especially students dealing with anxiety, depression, ADHD etc. </p>
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<p>When my son was in 8th grade, he did not want to go on the end-of-the-year field trip to an amusement park because he did not like to go on rides and would have been embarrassed to admit it in front of his classmates. So what he planned to do was to go up to his favorite teacher on the day before the trip, apologize in advance, say some forbidden four-letter words to her, and accept the automatic suspension that would have resulted. Being suspended would have meant that he couldn’t go on the trip. I found out about this a few weeks ahead of time, and a little negotiation with the Guidance Department provided an alternative way for him to miss the trip.</p>
<p>Kids will sometimes do things that seem odd to adults – like smashing fingers or swearing at teachers – to avoid something they really don’t want to do because they aren’t aware of options that would be obvious to us parents.</p>
<p>Club soccer always sounds like a club for parent’s egos.</p>
<p>My S quit h.s. football after two years of playing JV. He was a starter and team capt. but wanted to go in a different direction. He got a part-time job and worked his way up from bag boy to the customer service clerk. He became a gym rat/body builder in his spare time. </p>
<p>He was in the top ten of his graduating class and received NROTC scholarship in addition to two merit scholarships to our big state u. That was nine years ago. Now he’s a Spec Ops officer in the US Navy and still works out at the gym and runs daily while lots of the h.s. football stars are sitting on the couch.</p>
<p>^ ^ ^ ^</p>
<p>gouf78: Sometimes it is. Other times it can be the only decent alternative for kids who live in certain areas. </p>
<p>We had two club/travel teams in our area. My son was either “not good enough” to play on one team or we weren’t in the inner circle of the coach’s friends, take your pick. So he played on the lower team that was coached by a former college goalkeeper (my son was a goalie). He thrived on that team. Later on the other team disbanded once soccer fell by the wayside, and lacrosse became the sport of choice in our community. It turned out that some of their “elite” players didn’t want to run very much so the parents moved them to lacrosse club teams. 
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<p>We paid no club dues and the annual cost to play in BOTH a winter indoor and an summer outdoor league was around $100 per player. Our coaches received no payments. These players were clearly the better HS Varsity players by the time they played in high school. I wished we could have convinced a few other HS Varsity players and their families to join our club/travel team but I suppose they assumed the same thing that you did. </p>
<p>I would have never paid $1,400 so my son could play on a soccer travel team, but that is my decision and I understand in some areas that would be the wisest decision.</p>
<p>The teams I’ve heard about (and probably WHY I hear about them) have so much politics mixed in that it really isn’t about the kids in the least. And I find it hard to believe any kid really wants to spend every weekend kicking a ball around and going to tournaments. I’d rather go on a family picnic and play frisbee or go to the beach. There are just too many sports/fun stuff to pursue and just try out that to spend all your time doing one thing seems foolish to me. And to tie up endless nights and weekends is even more foolish in my eyes. But each to his own.</p>
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This is what my daughter did after her travel soccer team got to be too much, and it was a good decision. She played for several more years, had fun, got some exercise, and didn’t devote too much time to it. And her college applications still listed “soccer” for those years. If you’re not recruitable, I suspect that it doesn’t matter too much whether you are spending 4 or 40 hours on soccer each week (to the colleges, anyway).</p>
<p>Believe it or not gouf78, our son not only wanted to spend every weekend kicking a ball around and going to tournaments - in additon he would actively go out and look for pick-up games and used his own money to play at an indoor league and to pay for private coaching- all of this after practicing with his club team 3 or 4 days per week and playing 1-2 games per week year round. We (even now) rarely saw him without a soccer ball on his foot- he even went up and down our stairs with the ball and slept with it at the foot of his bed under the covers. He was playing rec ball and we refused to let him look at club teams until it became apparent at age 12 that he was no longer being challenged. He was able to balance everything and even ran cross country for 2 years in high school until it became too much. He was our last one at home and driving him to practices and tournaments was a great way to spend time with him. I have to say that everyone on his club team was there for the right reason- I don’t think there was any parent there who wasn’t doing it for the kid. We did see those parents but were lucky not to have any on his team. Over the years, there were a few kids who decided they did not want to continue and as far as I know none of those parents had an issue with their kid quitting. So yes, like every competitive EC, there are kids and parents who are not there for the right reasons, but I don’t think club soccer is any worse than many other activities. We feel that every kid should be able to control how they spend their free time and to pick their own EC’s, especially as high school has become more and more competitive.</p>
<p>The only time I made my daughter do something ( to my knowledge) that she didn’t want to do was when she was in high school and wanted to stay home summer instead of being a junior camp counselor for a few weeks on an island in Puget sound.
I was totally overwhelmed with taking care of her high need sister, and having her( oldest) at camp for a month, gave me a little break. ( she wasn’t old enough to drive herself, and even if she was, we didn’t have a car she could use anyway)
( H had moved out & I was on the edge of a breakdown. Unfortunately, this is still being held against me as evidence I am a bad parent, over 15 years later)</p>
<p>Otherwise, I let them choose their activities and amount of participation, although once they had signed up, I did try to encourage them to finish the season/ year, which didn’t always happen, sometimes the right thing to do was let them drop.
( or the only option, as when youngest dearly wanted to play soccer when she was 7, but refused to wear shin guards! She learned to tolerate them when she was 11, then wore the same ones till she was 19)</p>