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Ten thousand hours to mastery? According to Malcolm Gladwell, he theorized in his book, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” that achieving greatness is easy, if you are willing to work extremely hard. His claim is that anyone can attain mastery of a craft with about 10 years or 10,000 hours of practice.
This has come to be commonly known as the 10,000-hour rule and when I first heard about it I wondered how much time did I waste in high school playing multiple sports instead of honing in on a single sport?
Granted high school doesn’t last 10 years, but if true mastery of a practice like sport takes a ridiculous amount of practice then why are so many athletes wasting time playing three, or even four sports? Every athlete would benefit at the opportunity to make it to the next level if they focused on the one sport they love.
In high schools around the Portage Lakes many student-athletes are playing multiple sports like baseball, softball, track, cross country, football, wrestling and basketball. I ask why?
Tiger Woods didn’t become Tiger Woods by putting his focus on golf only in the summer and fall. He worked hard at golf year round, and still does.
Okay, before you cry foul because you think Tiger is an unfair comparison considering his immense talent then take someone like senior Malone University golfer, and Northwest High School graduate, Justin Lower, who became NAIA National Champion in 2010 and shot 64 in a tournament in 2010.
For Lower, he said he enjoyed playing sports as a kid but made the decision at age 12 to choose golf as his primary sport. He explained to me that he would have loved to play basketball, his second favorite sport, yes, but by choosing golf he was able to improve himself as a golfer at a higher level and believes other athletes could too.
“I personally think that if a high school athlete wants to continue their athletic career then they should focus on that particular sport,” Lower said. “I think it will pay off for them in the long run.”
According to the NCAA, focusing on a single sport seems wise for making it to the next level as well when you consider, for instance, that only approximately 3.1 percent of high school senior boys go to NCAA institutions for basketball or 6.0 percent for football or 6.4 percent for baseball or 3.5 percent of girls for women’s basketball.
Ten thousand hours to mastery? According to Malcolm Gladwell, he theorized in his book, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” that achieving greatness is easy, if you are willing to work extremely hard. His claim is that anyone can attain mastery of a craft with about 10 years or 10,000 hours of practice.
This has come to be commonly known as the 10,000-hour rule and when I first heard about it I wondered how much time did I waste in high school playing multiple sports instead of honing in on a single sport?
Granted high school doesn’t last 10 years, but if true mastery of a practice like sport takes a ridiculous amount of practice then why are so many athletes wasting time playing three, or even four sports? Every athlete would benefit at the opportunity to make it to the next level if they focused on the one sport they love.
In high schools around the Portage Lakes many student-athletes are playing multiple sports like baseball, softball, track, cross country, football, wrestling and basketball. I ask why?
Tiger Woods didn’t become Tiger Woods by putting his focus on golf only in the summer and fall. He worked hard at golf year round, and still does.
Okay, before you cry foul because you think Tiger is an unfair comparison considering his immense talent then take someone like senior Malone University golfer, and Northwest High School graduate, Justin Lower, who became NAIA National Champion in 2010 and shot 64 in a tournament in 2010.
For Lower, he said he enjoyed playing sports as a kid but made the decision at age 12 to choose golf as his primary sport. He explained to me that he would have loved to play basketball, his second favorite sport, yes, but by choosing golf he was able to improve himself as a golfer at a higher level and believes other athletes could too.
“I personally think that if a high school athlete wants to continue their athletic career then they should focus on that particular sport,” Lower said. “I think it will pay off for them in the long run.”
According to the NCAA, focusing on a single sport seems wise for making it to the next level as well when you consider, for instance, that only approximately 3.1 percent of high school senior boys go to NCAA institutions for basketball or 6.0 percent for football or 6.4 percent for baseball or 3.5 percent of girls for women’s basketball.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not endorsing for youths to quit sports and start their road to 10,000 hours of mastery at 10, but I am for high school athletes. Every kid should be introduced to a multitude of sports and if they want to continue to play sports in high school I believe they should choose one by either their freshman or sophomore year.
Playing multiple sports just doesn’t make sense if someone wants to go to the next level or achieve greatness. I believe there are too many cases where high school student-athletes are wasting their time and talents by playing multiple sports when they should choose their favorite one and master it.
Maybe the perfect example of someone doing this could be Coventry’s volleyball head coach Kristen Cox, who played volleyball, basketball and softball in high school.
Entering high school, she said she loved basketball and wanted to go to college for that, but after her freshman year she realized she dreaded basketball and actually loved volleyball.
She lettered in all three sports as a freshman and because of this felt as if she would be letting her team down if she didn’t play all four years in each sport, so she continued on.
A problem she said she ran into when being recruited was that scouts said they worried about her committing to one sport. It wasn’t until her senior year, spring semester that she finally decided to pursue volleyball in college.
She was never recruited but ended up at Mount Union University where she started as a freshman and played all four years. In retrospect, however, she is still wondering what might have been if she focused on volleyball.
“In hindsight, if I had been pushed to focus on volleyball, attend Div. I camps, and play junior Olympic volleyball I may have had chances to attend schools on scholarships,” Cox said.
Instead, she is still paying off loans for college and is left wondering if maybe she should’ve focused solely on volleyball.
I understand there are disadvantages to playing only one sport such as risk of getting “burnt out” or not being able to have those athletic experiences with some of your friends in high school.
I was a cross country runner and baseball player in high school, so I understand what playing multiple sports is like, and I am here to say I think I made a mistake.
Sure I would’ve risked the possibility of being burnt out or missing out on something, but I did myself no favors in becoming the best runner or baseball player I could be.
I always had trouble juggling workouts specific to running or to baseball because they would contradict each other. In retrospect, I think I would still be running for Malone’s cross country team as a sophomore in college had I committed and chosen running over baseball or vice versa.
As it is, I am left with a lot of great memories from my experiences in those sports but also a lot of regret for time wasted.
So while playing multiple sports may be fun, it is not beneficial to becoming the best volleyball player, football player, runner, baseball player, softball player, golfer, or athlete in a particular sport.
If greatness and getting to the next level is the goal then athletes need to choose one sport in high school and accelerate the completion of the road to 10,000 hours of practice.
