That may depend on who you ask, but a recent picture from @ohiovarsity, that has been circulating the web, tells us that at least one very successful college football coach is looking for multi-sport athletes.
In this article on the value of multi-sport athletes, the author mentions one other successful coach who looks for multi-sport athletes:
“The first questions I’ll ask about a kid are, “What other sports does he play? What does he do? What are his positions? Is he a big hitter in baseball? Is he a pitcher? Does he play hoops?” All of those things are important to me. I hate that kids don’t play three sports in high school. I think that they should play year-round and get every bit of it that they can through that experience. I really, really don’t favor kids having to specialize in one sport. Even here, I want to be the biggest proponent for two-sport athletes on the college level. I want guys that are so special athletically, and so competitive, that they can compete in more than one sport.” – Pete Carroll, USC football coach at the time of the quote, now head coach for the Seattle Seahawks
In today’s sports crazed world of travel in youth sports, we don’t often hear the value of multi-sport participation. Rather, we are told to focus our children on one sport at earlier and earlier ages.
Here are two coaches who would say otherwise. There are many more.
