During his weekly interview with WEEI's Dennis and Callahan Show, Tom Brady was asked about a topic that doesn't often come up in his conversations with the media: Youth sports.
The Patriots quarterback was posed a question about "participation trophies" that have in certain places become the norm, where children all children all rewarded. Brady admitted that he hadn't thought much about it and he admitted that adults should've expect that kind of treatment. But he did take a few moments to offer his take on what he's seen in the world of youth sports and how it differs from what he experiences as a child.
"What I remember from being in youth sports, everything was really localized," Brady explained. "There was no travel teams. Well, there was a couple, but you really had to be the top, top kid to go on those teams. My parents always exposed us to different things, different sports. It was basketball when it was basketball season, it was baseball when it was baseball season. I didn’t play football ’til I was a freshman in high school. A lot of soccer. And there were just some camps. But I just played in the neighborhood in our street with all the kids that we grew up with."
Brady now has three children of his own and has started to see firsthand just how different things are than they were 30 years ago.
“It’s just different now, experiencing it with my own kids," Brady said. "All the organized activities that you put them in. I made a comment for a while now, I hope my kids are late bloomers in whatever they do because they’re going to be exposed to so much at such an early time that, yeah, you do worry about what their motivation may be as they get older or if they feel like they’ve been in something for so long and it’s been hyper-intense and hyper-focused for so long, I think that can wear out a young individual, a young teenager.
"It’s just hard, because all the parents are doing it, it seems. The competition, it feels like it starts so early for these kids, whether it’s to get into college, or to get into the right high school, or the right elementary school."
Though specialization at an early age has become the norm for many, Brady -- someone who played multiple sports growing up -- believes there is a benefit to participating in myriad activities early on.
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"I don’t know how it’s taken a turn, but sometimes it’s nice just for kids to be kids," Brady said. "At least that’s just from what I remember when I was growing up. I think that was a great opportunity for the kids to develop lots of parts of their personality. And certainly for me that’s what I found, ultimately I found something that I loved to do at a young age. The more you’re exposed to, I think the better opportunity is for all kids to figure out what they really want to do in life."