Recruitment Of Junior High Athletes Should Stop

If you will indulge me just a bit, and if you are actually capable of doing this, let your mind drift back in time to your 8th grade year in high school. Yes, I know that is a challenging proposition for some of us who can barely remember what we were doing a couple of days ago, no less trying to remember what life was like for us some 30 or more years ago.  For yours truly, taking the mental time machine back to the 8th grade is a particularly painful exercise as that level of schooling represents a time of great struggle in my life. 

 
I realize that I am not alone with that admission, as the 8th grade is somewhat of a tricky rung on the high school ladder, both academically and personally. It is the sandwich grade that constitutes the end of the relative safety and innocence of the junior high school years and the introductory year to what can sometimes be the harsh and cruel high school years to come. Many young people struggle with this transition and the changes that are occurring with their own bodies and minds. This can translate into huge problems both academically and socially.

I know this painfully well. 

I was one of those unfortunate kids who did not handle the 8th grade transition stage well at all, and for that reason I actually had to repeat this grade. Some people  are surprised when I make that confession to them and I guess it leads some to naturally wonder if I had some type of learning disability or just didn't care about my grades. 

 

It really was not that case at all, however. I was simply not one of the popular kids at school, and of course this did lead to a lot of social problems, being picked on a lot by the jocks and cool kids and very poor grades when you combine the fact that I basically did not apply myself academically at all due to my general unhappiness relative to a lot of school-related issues. Ofcourse repeating a grade is embarrassing and it definitely raised my attention, and I was able to do much better in school my final four years of high school although I was still never what you would call a brilliantly gifted student.  I did become the first member of my family to graduate from college, however.

 

I did not intend to use this piece as my own personal therapy class, but I did want to emphasize the challenges that come with being an eighth grader for some people. 

 

Despite this widely-known fact of life, however, some college football coaches nevertheless feel that once a young student-athlete enters his or her 8th grade year (or even the 7th grade on certain occasions), it is an appropriate time to begin subjecting these athletes to the sometimes-overwhelming pressures of recruiting wars. 

 

I know that a lot of my mental energy in the 8th grade was reserved for hanging around the mall, and deciding which KISS albums and Atari games I wanted to buy next, but for 8th grade Louisiana football standout Dylan Moses, his world recently got a bit more complicated, and he finds himself with a lot more on his mind than girls, hanging with his buddies on Friday nights and trying to make decent grades while staying out of trouble. 

 

Thanks to coaches such as Alabama's Nick Saban and LSU's Les Miles, who both have recently extended scholarship offers,  the 14-year-old Moses (yes, 14-years-old) now finds himself already considering where he may attend college and continue his football career on the next level. 

 

Of course scholarship offers to junior-high youngsters is not exactly anything new, but Saban's offer to Moses created huge waves simply because Alabama, with its three national titles in the last four years, is the highest profile college football program at the current time, and is also led by the nation's highest profile coach. 

The University of Washington last year received a commitment from 14-year-old quarterback Tate Martell, while Southern Cal received a commitment from 7th grade quarterback David Sills in 2010. 

 

There have been several other cases too involving students ranging anywhere from 13 to 15-years old committing to schools such as Tennessee and Kentucky (for the Wildcat basketball program). 

 

Whether it be Saban, Miles or whoever the coach may be, however, the recruitment of a youngster before his 9th grade year (I would personally make it 10th grade) is ridiculously unfair and possibly damaging to that boy or girl, and it should be outlawed by both the high schools and by the NCAA. 

 

As  I already mentioned, the 7th and 8th grades years are the years when a lot of changes are starting to occur within a student's body and mind, and it's simply impossible to predict what all could occur in a young person's life before he or she even reaches the 9th grade, not to mention their senior year. 

 

Those are the years when a young person begins to ponder on numerous occasions what they want to do for their first jobs, who they want to date the next school year or where they want to take their trips to during the summer. College, and life after college, is usually not in the equation at that point for many. 

 

These are also the years where many kids begin to rebel a little against their parents and separate from longtime friends, while experimenting with partying and other high-risk escapades. Some, sadly do not even make it to see their senior years and we are reading and hearing more about certain tragedies all the time. Some are simply gone way too soon. 

 

I don't mean to sound overly grim and certainly I would not want to forecast gloom and doom for any junior high or high school kid, but there are just a lot of things that tell us it is hard to predict what can occur with a boy or girl in the 14-18-age range even a year down the road, and yet college football coaches are trying to make them part of their "process," and subjecting them to the pressure of big-time college athletic recruiting, pressure that has often proven to be too overwhelming or daunting for many high-school seniors. 

 

In this age of round-the-clock Signing Day coverage on networks such as ESPN, and countless websites devoted to the millions of grown men (and women) who religiously follow the athletic feats and the decisions of high school kids, I know that the demands for coaches such as Saban and Miles to accumulate Top 10 classes increase each and every year as recruiting titles often lead to conference and national titles on the field. 

 

But when those demands, and the desire to attract the nation's most coveted prospects, lead big-name coaches such as Saban to sway and gently pressure still-impressionable junior high kids to commit to their programs during this very critical developmental stage of their lives is getting just a bit excessive. Coaches like Saban and Miles should know better and perhaps it is time for them to regain some sense of perspective. 

 

If they elect not to do so, then it is time for the respective high schools, or the NCAA, to step in and do it for them.