In order to truly reach success, athletes must focus close to all of their attention on one thing at a time. I remember seeing this idea all the time as a young athlete in elementary school and middle school. Kids around me would play two, three or even four or more sports all throughout the year. These students would be very good all around athletes, but they would never be at the top of any of their sports.
While others were switching sports every season, playing football, then basketball and then moving onto baseball, the elite athletes in every sport were focusing on only one sport throughout the entire year.
In order to be the best of the best, athletes in high school should focus all of their attention on the one sport that they can be most successful in, not into multiple sports that they play just to play.
Some people would disagree with this idea, saying that athletes should play as many sports as possible to become the best athlete that they can be. But, I truly believe that people can still reach their full potential in a single sport by simply putting in the work. If an athlete puts in their full effort and focuses on one sport, I think they would be better off than someone who spends half their time on one sport and the other half on another.
I think it is also important to note that this is only crucial for athletes who are trying to become part of the elite. For some kids, sports are something fun to do after school where they get a chance to be a part of a team. In this instance, it is very appropriate to play multiple sports.
For athletes whose goals are to be the very best, which most athletes are from my experience, then instead of spending time focusing on multiple things during the year, they would be better suited to spend the offseason training for just one sport.
I can say from my personal experience, I would be nowhere as good of a wrestler had I decided to try out another sport and entertain the idea of being a multi-sport athlete. From a young age, my dad and I dedicated all of our attention to wrestling, and it has certainly paid off.
For athletes that want to play two sports in college, it is certainly not impossible, just extremely improbable.
According to NorthCentralCollege, not only is it extremely rare to participate in college athletics, it is even more uncommon to wind up doing multiple sports in college. In order to do this, one must not only be a good enough athlete in two sports, but also have the time management and the physical capacity to pursue both sports full time.
The fact is that it is so rare to play multiple sports in college, and if someone does manage to play multiple sports in high school, and succeed in them they will still end up choosing just one to pursue. This means that high school athletes would be better off staying focused and providing all attention to one sport and one goal.
I understand that the reason that younger athletes rotate sports is in order to find the sport they truly enjoy the most, and that is completely reasonable. The issue I have seen is in high school athletes who compete in multiple sports.
These athletes are very solid all around and are usually pretty good at their respective sports. However, they do not ever reach their full potential due to missing time during the year.
I would love to see athletes not waste their potential on sports that they will never compete in after high school when they could instead be training for one main sport, especially when they could see real success in said sport.