<p>Linda - since you're fishing for ideas, here are my $0.02 cents worth.</p>
<p>It is easy to dismiss athletics or other ec's as being of secondary importance to academics. I'm not so sure. A combination of things goes into keeping a well-rounded child happy and challenged. I know families who send their kids to specialty athletic schools (read: ski academies) as early as 7th and 8th grade. We opted against that route, as the specialization too early leads to burn out in all but the most single-minded and motivated kid. </p>
<p>If your child is unhappy with the athletic aptitude of her current peers and is expressing this unhappiness to you, it's unlikely that academic challenge will be enough to sustain her. Going to a PS would not be the worse thing that could happen to her. Having a year or two of that experience before heading to BS could be beneficial. And although you're concerned about the shock of the sudden transfer, my experience has been that stellar athletes make the transfer to PS very easily because, from the first day of practice, they have friends and admirers. Middle school is a social experiment anyway, so she might as well be socially happy as well as athletically challenged. If you find after a year or two that the PS is too easy and doesn't challenge her academically, why, that's a perfect seque into the BS application process - and you'll be back here in the fall of 2010 asking opinions of a whole new group of people!</p>
<p>
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and you'll be back here in the fall of 2010 asking opinions of a whole new group of people!
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NO!!!!! You guys are my BFF'S!!! I don't want new ones... LOL </p>
<p>Great thoughts laxtaxi and goaliedad. She also races motocross in the summer. She would love rock climbing - I think our Y has a wall, she could give that a try.
Yes, she is tall for her age and I do expect she has grown "early." The social part of it all is hard for her. Middle school in general and right now and it was nice to see her walking back from practice yesterday with a couple of the older girls - she had been saying it's hard because there are only a few 6th graders on the team and I think it's hard for her to practice with them. </p>
<p>We agree that athletics are important and have already said that when the time comes for secondary school that it would be a priority. And yes, she is unhappy with the athletic apptitute of her current peers. She calls them "wimps" and "woosies." (She also needs to learn the art of tact!). Her lacrosse coach seems to "get her" but I fear she is leaving. </p>
<p>Thanks! Middle school is such a hard age...</p>
<p>*And yes, she is unhappy with the athletic apptitute of her current peers. She calls them "wimps" and "woosies." *</p>
<p>Been there! That's what my D did all through middle school, and now we're off to BS! It's all in the cards for you...you might as well accept it.</p>
<p>LindaS....You say the club sports in your area are mediocre. How far are you willing to travel? My son excelled at soccer from a young age. He outgrew the local club team and I travelled an hour each way for him to play on a better team. He outgrew that, too, and we now drive 1 1/2 hours each way for him to play on our state's best team. It has been worth it. He continues to excel and love his sport. Without the increased challenge, and excellent coaching, he would not be the player he is.
Also, you asked how you get invited to preseason Varsity tryouts. We filled out the prospective athlete questionnaire with all of my son's stats and the team he plays for (which pretty much speaks for itself). We then visited the school and coach the fall of his 8th grade year. We just showed up at a game and introduced ourselves to the coach afterwards. He was recruited from that point on.</p>
<p>We have also had to do a lot of driving to keep up with my son's lacrosse. That is part of the motivation for BS. Hopefully it will simplify things.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! I don't know...we just got our FA at the day school...BLAHHH!!! less than ever and our EFC went down. I think they know that with my son gone that we'll be paying less for him at BS (which is true) so we can pay THEM more. NOT. </p>
<p>Anyway, she has her first lacrosse game this afternoon so we'll see how that goes. </p>
<p>She's funny about the "tough" thing. Last spring she was running and slipped in the mud and fell. Her knee hit the edge of the track and "dragged" you can imagine how the skin got ripped off. It kind of looked like a claw. I got a call to pick her up at the health center. No hurry, just go there instead of school (not even right away, just whenever). So I get there and they unwrap her knee and I almost fall over it was horrible. I was more surprised cuz she was just sitting there "hi mom, I fell..." We had to bring her to the ER to get it cleaned more (with numbing) and 10 stitches. The PE teacher was "glad" it was her because she hardly cried and anyone else would have been out of control. Another teacher said he'd never seen a cut so bad and couldn't believe how calm she was.<br>
So a girl the other day got a little scrape - not even any blood - and she wanted a bandaid. My D had NO patience for THAT. I think that was the day she was calling them wimps. LOL</p>
<p>I'll have to check out what is available semi-locally for clubs. Hopefully with games starting it will be better for the spring. Maybe we can set up a visit at the public school (that would certainly solve the FA problem!)</p>
<p>Linda...My daughter is the "tough guy" in our family. She is a gymnast and has had numerous injuries. It just drives her nuts to see someone take a fall in a game (think soccer and her brother) and whine about it. She personally has had times when she has taken horrific falls on beam and bars (slammed into the bars with her face once) and stood up and hopped right back on the equipment. She also dislikes cheerleaders. My husband often says "I have two boys and a girl; my daughter is the only man out of the three."</p>
<p>Our daughters out to get together for an exchange of war stories... LOL</p>
<p>Goalie girl had someone skate across her hand this season after her catcher got knocked off her had by a passing skater and she covered the puck with her blocker. One of those cuts (like your typical knife cut) that doesn't start bleeding until about 20 seconds later. Unfortunately, by the time she figured out it was bleeding (looking at it carefully), the ref had already dropped the puck, so she jammed the glove back on and played the rest of the game. The glove was a bloody mess afterwards. </p>
<p>I told her next time take off your helmet. The refs are required to blow a whistle when a player doesn't have their head covered.</p>
<p>And I'm still rolling on the floor about Keylyme's husband's comment...</p>
<p>I have to hijack this thread a little and ask you other parents how your kids got so interested in sports? None of my 3 girls are interested even slightly in playing team sports, although they like dance. I am not a sporty type, but I have given the girls options to join teams or try things out and they never have wanted to. THeir schools have not had any sports available, so most kids do things through the Y or clubs.</p>
<p>Did you push your kids in the beginning? Were they always good at it? Did the schools require participation? Does your family have a sports ethic?</p>
<p>My children inherited their athletic talent from my husband and their over-achieverness from me. While they all participate/d on their school teams, club sports always took priority and the school team was usually at a lower or more recreational level (particularly the public school teams). They very much wanted to participate. We put my daughter in gymnastics when she was only three because she was climbing on everything at home. She had a short stint with dance and begged to go back to gym. My boys got into baseball and soccer by default as they were the two organized programs in our area (and my husband is a big baseball guy, president of our local league and longtime coach). It was just the natural thing to do, I guess. My own family and my husband's family has many athletes of all levels in many different sports. I couldn't imagine athletics not being a part of my children's lives. My older son is the least athletic of my trio; he is more of my "renaissance" man and is also a talented pianist. He did not play sports at the higher levels that my younger two did, but he still earned a spot on his D3 college team in baseball. My daughter competes at a D1 school and my younger son will probably be able to that as well. And, yes, my daughter did show talent in gym at that young age and my son was very good at soccer as a youngster, to the point where coaches noticed him and invited him to try out for higher and higher levels. Our public schools do not require participation, the bs requires one team sport/year. My son would play soccer year round if he could (and he has for many years), but he can't do it as consistently because of bs (a "concession" he was willing to make). He still manages to fit in quite a bit of soccer as his club team has been supportive and flexible, allowing him to remain rostered with them even though he can't make practices because of school.</p>
<p>Cheerleaders...you mean those "girly girls?" I laugh because we sometimes watch the competitve cheerleaders and they are quite athletic, but my D isn't too impressed with them either. I like that - your daughter is the only man! </p>
<p>I'm krindging goaliedad just thinking about that cut! </p>
<p>Last year one of the boys at school challenged her to a bicycle race. She beat him and then challenged another boy who said "no, I'm honest, I don't want to get beat by a girl." Won't be long before they all grow and are kicking her butt, and while part of her is enjoying it now, it is hard for her at times.</p>
<p>No inherited athletic talent (unless the milkman...) here. I think for the most part, girls like mine (and I think the same for keylyme and LindaS) are just born to want to compete.</p>
<p>I know goaliegirl has never played with a doll as long as I remember. We gave away several Barbies that were never used. Never had the interest. </p>
<p>I remember the weekend after her first week in kindergarten. We asked her if she wanted to invite any kids over and the entire list she gave were the boys in her class. When asked if there were any girls she would like to have over, she said the girls didn't play anything that was any fun.</p>
<p>The way she got into hockey, was that my wife and I took them to the local skating rink to find skating lessons - something to fill in the winter. There was a boys hockey game going on at the time which she watched and when approached, she pointed at the goalie and said "That's what I want to do". An unintended consequence, not by design.</p>
<p>My son, OTOH, has never had the least bit of athletic interest or talent. Did one session of skating lessons with his sister and decided it wasn't for him. So from this I can say it is definitely more the individual child than anything I or we did. We've just run with it and let it lead where it would.</p>
<p>So if your daughters seem to have no sports interest, you aren't doing anything wrong. It is just who they are.</p>
<p>My daughter has always been "competitve." When she first started racing motocross - which she did at first because her brother did and it was convienent for her to as well - she was in a group that was called "participation" and they did not get scored. We had a saying "rule #1 have fun." She is 6 years old at the time and one day, after she had had a "bad" (in her mind) moto, she is on the line waiting to start the second one and another little girl says "it's ok, we just do this for fun." My daugher looks at her with complete seriousness and says "YOU might do this for fun, but I do it to WIN." I about fell over. She was 6 and didn't get scored but she was doing it to win. </p>
<p>She did dance for a couple of years but was board with it so we tried gymnastics as well starting at around 7. She competed for 5 years until this year when the school sports schedule didn't allow her to. The school in grades 6-9 requires a sport although they do have non-competitive options (not that she would pick one!). </p>
<p>We always did serach out some options, the local Y, a summer rec program, and now school, but I think for her, it comes naturally. Last year in PE her long jump was the longest in lower school history. My son has had to work harder in order to be successful athletically. With her it just happens. </p>
<p>I agree with goaliedad - she was born to compete. Nothing we did, it's just her.</p>
<p>Thanks for these responses. They are so interesting to me - and couldn't sound more different than my three. They hate the idea of any ball sports or anything with competition. If there is one thing about BS this fall that is irking my oldest, its the sports requirement. She has no experience with any of the sports they have and loathes the idea. I'm hoping she'll learn to like it, or find value in it some way.</p>
<p>All three of them do like to draw, paint, dance, sing, animate, photoshop, sew, act... They are very industrious, just not sporty.</p>
<p>The good thing about a sports requirement is that there will be others, like your oldest, who are competing with the same experience level and, in many cases, the same reluctance. It actually makes it bearable if only in a "misery loves company" kind of way. More likely, though, being on a team with novice teammates who share a laissez-faire attitude will have your oldest discovering that sports can be really fun when they're on her terms and the hyper-competitive atmosphere and talent-gap are eliminated (or seriously ratcheted down).</p>
<p>The other good thing Grejuni is that most schools - don't know about the one your D is attending - allow dance or theater to be the "sport" for at least one or two of the seasons. And many have club sports that count. Even at Avon (with the rep of being the ultra sports school) you can skip a season of competitive sports and do something else. </p>
<p>Isn't it amazing how kids can be so different? </p>
<p>D's first lacrosse game was fun. She played most of it (although didn't start as we thought she would - all 8th and 9th graders did). We could see her get more comfortable as the game went on - one coach mentioned it to us even - and she scored a goal. She was pumped. They lost, but it was a successful afternoon. They have another game today which they have a better chance of winning.</p>
<p>We picked schools that had a great dance program for our list of schools and then narrowed it down to top 4. My daughter loves dance and does not do much sport (except some soccer) - she runs like Johnny Depp :)</p>
<p>However, one thing I noted (perhaps too late) is that some schools require a trial of various sports the first year. Retrospectivly, I think that would be good as we have never even seen some sports such as lacrosse.</p>
<p>This is the only place I could think to vent...</p>
<p>My son has a science teacher that he doesn't get along with. I don't tink my son is an innocent in all of this.. anyway, he got sent out of the class today to the interem director of the MS (1st time ever). She is also the admissions and fa director.</p>
<p>So dring their little chat, she brought up the fact that he was going to BS about 8 times. When you visited ..., I bet you didn't act like this, ...isn't going to work with you like we will, and the comments continued. </p>
<p>It's a good thing that the year is almost over. I am avoiding getting into it with anyone because I have a younger son that has his heart set on going to this school....</p>