If my kids are in a position to play pro for a few years after college, I will encourage it. You only get that chance when young and what an experience. My first 4 years after college were (i) year 1: work to save money to travel for a few months, followed by work to save money followed by (ii) years 2, 3 and 4 as a public school teacher (emergency credential while taking night classes for my multi subject) followed by (iii) a summer as a volunteer for the 94 World Cup. Then grad school for 3 years and then my career. My guess is that many of you have similar stories of doing a lot of interesting things that did not pay well but helped frame the person you are today.
Sub those 4 years with a chance to be a pro athlete while my body is young and my mind is open ... seems pretty great. Would I expect one of my kids - daughters (my son is past this phase) - to make a living/career doing this? No. But that’s not the point because those first years can be years for the purpose of trying something or somewhere interesting before setting in for a life path. Would I want them to do that at 15 or 16? No because I think they give up a lot of what the sport can provide (elite athletes already give up a lot of what other kids experience) - helping to get an education (whether because of the scholarship or merely the access to resources), be on a college campus for those critical wonderful heartbreaking in-love-falling intellectually curious years, travel the country and maybe the world while the tab is picked up, make friends from a collective of other young adults in that 18-22 age group (how much is a 15 year old hanging out with a 28 year old pro? Should she be?). Sure, some kids could be pros as teens and get their higher education. But how many minor league baseball players who signed out of HS (i) don’t make the majors (most) and (ii) never go to college (many if not most)?
I acknowledge that other parents and kids may feel differently (though it really is incumbent on us as parents to help kids see a broad view, something that even the smartest most mature 15yo can struggle with (how can they project 10 years out when 10 years back was when they were 5? I mean, I’m 53. 10 yrs out is not that hard because 10 years ago I was 43 and pretty damn grown. Kids don’t have perspective because they can’t)). And this generation of girls may have more financial rewards than the current women and certainly more than in the past (thanks to the hard work by those very women!). But other than for the elite, will the system approximate the men’s system? Where a nice living can be carved out playing 2d division? And what about the many, MANY men who went to elite academies (not talking US) as boys who experience a peak as a 16yo? How many Freddy Adu type players are there playing in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, England, etc? How many just a cut below whom we will never see? Do they have an education to fall back on? Unless the European education system has radically changed since I studied there a million years ago, the answer is “no”.
