They're Only in Sixth Grade, But Ready for College Football?
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Rivals.com, the largest website dedicated to recruiting college athletes, announced on Friday that it will start tracking two sixth graders, the first time the site has actively monitored college prospects that young.
Rivals, which is owned by Yahoo, added running back Tyson Thornton and quarterback Daron Bryden to the site’s database last week after the two competed at NextGen Boston, a training camp for middle schoolers. “Thornton is a 5-foot-11, 167-pound running back with great explosiveness and surprisingly good body control for a kid his size and age,” writes Brent Williams in the announcement. “Bryden, a small quarterback with a big arm, is incredibly composed and very polished — and he can make every throw. And with a father standing nearly 6-foot-7, he may soon have the body to match his arm. Both of these young players were so impressive they were moved up to compete against the eighth grade prospects.”
While these athletes’ talent is impressive, Janis Meredith, sports parenting expert and author of a series of Sports Parenting Survival Guides, calls sixth grade “ridiculously young” to be watched that closely. “At that age kids should be having fun, learning fundamentals of the game,” Meredith tells Yahoo Parenting. “If they want to play in college that’s a good goal to shoot for, but knowing they are already being monitored, they’re going to be very conscious of their stats and put too much pressure on themselves.”
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Not to mention that college is still six years out for Thornton and Bryden, Meredith says. “My children played with some kids in middle school who were excelling because they were bigger, but then they got to high school and evened out,” she says. “There’s still a lot of growth that will happen throughout middle school and high school, so it’s a lot to expect of these boys to keep up their game for six years. It’s just too much to put on a young kid.”
Rivals.com provided the following statement to Yahoo Parenting: “Rivals.com works with players who are interested in sharing their stories publicly for the purpose of recruitment. We require parental consent in order to share statistical information of a player under 13 years of age.”
Dr. Jordan Metzl, a sports medicine physician and author of The Young Athlete: A Sports Doctor’s Complete Guide for Parents, says he isn’t surprised that scouts have started paying attention to younger and younger athletes. “That’s the trend these days. The sports climate has changed as there is an increasing push towards sports specialization,” Metzl tells Yahoo Parenting. “That leads to more injuries, and more pressure. I don’t think it’s healthy.”
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Metzl says participating in sports is great for kids, as long as they’re enjoying themselves. “Whether or not your children become professional or even college athletes — and most of them will not — sports are a great way to develop healthy lifestyle behaviors that will have long-term positive effects,” he says. “But the focus should be on making sure your kid is having fun, not that he or she becomes a professional athlete. The parents’ job is to keep a healthy perspective while still encouraging kids to be active.”
Ensuring sure your kid is having fun should be rather simple, Metzl says. “Watch them and make sure they’re smiling,” he says. “It sounds so rudimentary but that’s the key.”
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