How many parents feel this way?

Dexter's kids play hockey?

Put your money where your mouth is... Start a program where only multi sport athletes are allowed on the team. Where's the college coaches and all you "don't specialize" advisers and recruiters telling families of the top players who yes, specialized, to fuck off? Hypocrites.

This has become the norm in all sports. So many school sports don’t want you on the varsity team if you don’t do travel sports.

We do a lot of extra hockey skills for our 2nd year squirt in Iowa. I don’t feel obligated or like we are “keeping up with the Jones’s”. We check ourselves and try to do it for the right reasons. Hard work, grit, character, etc. Our kid also wants to go. He loves seeing his friends and has fun in the drills.

You know it's a scam. Most of MLB players come from rural South America. Poor kids that are given nothing

If you want to be good, you have to play, not just train, play. The more you play the more you learn. This is where you as a parent have to balance. Playing is training, because your learning, not just about you, but also about your environment.

What’s missing is actually asking the kid what he or she wants to do. Parents have to be honest with their kids and themselves.

I think hockey, as a global sport, has adopted a similar model to euro football academies ⚽. Where top prospects are recruited to the academy around age 10 and then live and exist in that ecosystem until they make it, or don't. This happened to me when I was 12 yr. When you compare the success of English football relative to say, US soccer, there's no comparison. I think the current notion of more is better in hockey 🏒 parallels the academy model of professional football in euro.

How long have you been in each country?

100%!!!

He's 100% correct: the feeling is that there's no other alternative.