As for a specific age, I don't know. But it is widely recognized that athletic ability is identifiable in pre-pubescent children, since the neuromuscular characteristics are genetic.
Member
Predictive Value of the Vertical Jump
At what age do you think the VJ becomes a good predictor of athletic ability?
The reason I ask is because my wife directs a youth (ages 5-14) basketball organization. Before each season she has evaluations in an effort to even out the talent across all teams. She is in her second season with this and has continued to use the same evaluations of the past which include a variety of timed dribbling drills and shooting drills. She's relies on volunteers to collect the data and she said that the majority of the time they screw up either timing or setting up the drill consistently.
I've suggested using the VJ as an efficient and reliable way to predict basketball playing potential. I know there's a lot of skill in basketball, but my thought is that the skill will be developed during subsequent practices. I'm just not sure if the VJ is useful for evaluating younger kids. Is there a neuromuscular development issue at play here?
Thanks,
Mike
TMPHBITEU
As for a specific age, I don't know. But it is widely recognized that athletic ability is identifiable in pre-pubescent children, since the neuromuscular characteristics are genetic.
Member
Is that athletic ability completely indentifiable as measured by the svj despite that person having not yet reached complete physical maturity?Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
Member
Has she considered peer evaluations? Nothing too formal, but even as kids we all knew who was athletic and who wasn't.
TMPHBITEU
I don't know.
Starting Strength Coach
I've coached little league baseball for a number of years and we basically just do a randomized lottery selection for teams and it evens out pretty well. Every team has a few kids that play well and every team has a few kids that are terrible, and every team has a few kids that sit down in the outfield and make sandcastles while the game is going on.
Not telling you how to run your league, but I think stuff like this is unnecessary for kids this age. Just let them have fun and teach them the game. 95% of them won't be playing in HS anyways and likely less than 1% will ever play in college. Just keep it fun. Plenty of time in life to test and evaluate.
Member
Should have figured it out by re-reading the posts above. Thanks for kindly answering my redundant question.
Member
Thanks for your input. She and I both agree with your mindset. Unfortunately, the parents get in the way of keeping it fun! There's a lot of conflicting expectations when it comes to youth sports.
On a side note, I've noticed that parents of low-skilled kids would rather see the high-skilled kids removed from the team rather than encourage their child to practice more to get better. The "equality of results" mindset is very present in our culture.
✓ Member
Word ^^
I think almost all sports that is ruined, is ruined by bonehead coaches/parents who think everything is life or death regardless of the level. When I coached HS football, I would beg the jr high coaches to not worry about the W/L column, and instead make sure to keep kids involved so they would continue to play at the HS level. It would never fail, you would have some kid labeled "non athletic" or whatever, and by the time they got to HS they had grown 6" and became a nice sized HS athlete, only they quit playing after 7th or 8th grade. I have seen it with lifting as well, a parent pushing a kid to lift and "get swole" when they are still a jr high kid, only to see them quit lifting all together and become a tub of goo after they graduate, probably never to lift or exercise again because some bonehead pushed them into something they eventually came to hate. I think Rip had one of the best lines about kids, "they should be throwing mud balls at each other, let 'em be kids."
Starting Strength Coach
Understood. I have a 5-10 minute talk with all my parents at the beginning of every year. I find that giving them a brief overview of my philosophy on youth sports as well as my expectations for their behavior etc pretty much eliminates all problems from the get go. My main point of emphasis is that unless you are going to volunteer your time to help coach, then you are surrendering your right to tell me how to run practices or games. Parents are much more interested in telling you all the things you are doing wrong rather than getting their hands dirty with the kids in a 1-2 hour practice.
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