{"id":4472,"date":"2011-07-21T08:02:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T14:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nsr-inc.com\/\/?p=4472"},"modified":"2011-07-21T08:02:52","modified_gmt":"2011-07-21T14:02:52","slug":"7-on-7-travel-tournaments-proving-to-be-thorn-in-the-side-of-high-school-coaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/7-on-7-travel-tournaments-proving-to-be-thorn-in-the-side-of-high-school-coaches\/","title":{"rendered":"7-on-7 Travel Tournaments Proving to Be Thorn in the Side of High School Coaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

Travel Football Has Arrived and Prep Coaches Don’t Like It<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/a>A story published by USA Today this week describes how the recent National Federation of State High School Associations<\/a>\u00a0annual meeting\u00a0spent a good deal of time discussing and worrying over the growth\u00a0of 7-on-7 All-Star football tournaments.\u00a0 Seems the\u00a0coaches are concerned they are being left out while interlopers are stepping in as key figures for players.\u00a0 Well, guys, welcome to everybody else’s world.<\/p>\n

For decades\u00a0football\u00a0and its coaches have\u00a0reveled in the fact that they were in essence the only one-season sport left in high school athletics.\u00a0 This was\u00a0due\u00a0to a simple fact — there was no such thing as travel football.\u00a0 This\u00a0put high school coaches in, some would say,\u00a0the admirable position of being able to control their players 12 months a year while all around them travel and club\u00a0teams in practically every other sport were\u00a0operating outside of the high school coaches’ control.\u00a0\u00a0The phenomenal growth of All-Star, travel 7-on-7 tournaments has put the shoe on the other foot, as it were, and\u00a0prep coaches\u00a0don’t like being pushed aside\u00a0so that other\u00a0people can handle their athletes.<\/p>\n

It’s not an uncommon argument.\u00a0 For years, many high school coaches in basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, swimming, soccer, et. al, complained about the same thing.\u00a0 They viewed travel and club sports as\u00a0the evil twin which was attracting their\u00a0athletes to\u00a0a sinister world where all their coaching and\u00a0training gets undone by others.\u00a0\u00a0It’s taken\u00a0years for most of them to come to the realization that travel and club sports can actually improve their\u00a0athletes’ performances as they get exposure to tougher-than-high-school competition.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So,\u00a0the day has come.\u00a0 Football coaches\u00a0are now\u00a0privileged to feel their peers’ pain.\u00a0 Loss of control is a blindsided smack in the face to many high school football coaches.\u00a0 They don’t want intruders and they don’t yet see the advantages of the added\u00a0experience their athletes can potentially absorb from these highly competitive events.\u00a0 Moreover, it means that in some cases, the high school coaches will be circumvented by college coaches in the recruiting process and that scares them to death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another argument is that the time athletes spend on 7-on-7 tournaments takes away from their high school team and teammates.\u00a0 It’s the rehashing of an old story told by other prep sports coaches in years past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that schedules can be worked out and allowing young athletes to experience heightened competition and added exposure can only be good for the athlete and for the coach and team he rejoins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We suggest that high school football coaches chill a bit.\u00a0 Use the evolution of the relationship between club and travel sports with their high school counterpart coaches as an example of how to avoid unnecessary\u00a0problems.\u00a0 Travel ball is not all bad and like it or not, it\u2019s here to stay in one form or the other.\u00a0 Look for the good and build off that platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Travel Football Has Arrived and Prep Coaches Don’t Like It A story published by USA Today this week describes how the recent National Federation of State High School Associations\u00a0annual meeting\u00a0spent a good deal of time discussing and worrying over the growth\u00a0of 7-on-7 All-Star football tournaments.\u00a0 Seems the\u00a0coaches are concerned they are being left out while … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}