Curious to know how the parents and kids handle playing travel hockey and football.

My son wants to play football next year and play travel hockey. I know there are kids who do this but wondering if it's just too much of a headache to do. (He is a mite)

Concerns are
1. Missing hockey and football games/practices and effecting playing time for both sports

2. Too much at one time and causing strain for the entire family

Thanks for any insight in advance

Dont expect any applause on this idea. If he intends on playing "travel" hockey he simply will not be able to make a real commitment to the team as games and practice will certainly overlap. Talk him into either a rec football or in house hockey team. One of these is gonna suffer , so let it be the one that isn't as serious of a commitment.

Give the travel hockey team the respect it deserves and dont make 1/2 of a commitment
just to keep Johnny happy. Where would you
find a travel team that would allow such a
thing anyway?

My son's squirt team the last two years had 6 - 7 football and soccer players on it. We held hockey practices on Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons to accommodate the players of other sports on the team. We skewed our schedule with more home games early in the season, until football and soccer was over about the 3rd week of October. We did participate in tournaments in late September both seasons, and that forced parents to make a decision regarding what sport their son was playing that particular weekend. Most elected to play hockey. A couple of families made trips back and forth to make a football game during the tournament weekend. They may have missed one of the four hockey games in doing so. Was it perfect? No. Did our hockey coach like it? No. But, we're not in a "hockey town" like Detroit or Chicago. With good communication between all of the parents and coaches involved BEFORE both seasons began, problems and conflicts were minimized to a workable level. It will get tougher as the kids get older, however. The physical demands from both sports will become increasingly more difficult as the hitting becomes more fierce in both. We'll be crossing that bridge soon.

Please understand what I am saying. I am aware its a doable situation. However, at the higher level travel team it is very far from ideal and frankly if I were paying $3500 a season as a committed hockey family and got saddles with 7 families trying on hockey and fitting it in between football or whatever I would most certainly look for a different team. You see (and you havent mentioned) it simply is not fair to the other families that are 100% hockey.

I agree with the last post. It really is'nt fair when a group of 14-17 players agree to committ to a travel hockey team in April, only to start finding out in August that there are several kids playing fall sports. And these soccer and football seasons usually do not end until late October or early November. That's a lot of ice time missed and games played shorthanded. And how about the kids that have been at every practice playing a position to be possibly knocked out by the dual sport kid once he/she decides to come back?

There are kids who are dedicated to hockey, and yes, play other sports in their SEASON, such as baseball, tennis, lacrosse. And there are rec leagues or house teams that do not start until mid-october which makes it doable to do both soccer/football and hockey in the Fall.

I just wonder how these kids running from one practice to another do in school? How is the family effected?

Yes, the more sports played, the better the athlete will be, and the better the hockey player will be, but there is a season for everything, and like someone else wrote, the physical demands of contact/hitting in football and hockey during the same season, practice night after night, take their toll, some doing 2 practices a night.

It's a hard choice, and I bet letting the child choose is easier than the parents trying to choose for them.

After last year's less than complete committment to our travel team on the part of a handful of players, we as a team made a decision with the coach that any player that missed ANY hockey activity with the team would be benched the next two games. The team stunk because we never knew which line would be complete and who was going to show up.

Our new coach flat told everyone at tryouts that the players could play other sports, but this team came first and he did not care if we missed every soccer game that year - not his problem. There are a lot of families that spend a lot of money on this and it's not just "hanging out and playing for fun" anymore. Those players all deserve full committment from their teammates, otherwise, go play house.

quote:

Our new coach flat told everyone at tryouts that the players could play other sports, but this team came first and he did not care if we missed every soccer game that year - not his problem. There are a lot of families that spend a lot of money on this and it's not just "hanging out and playing for fun" anymore. Those players all deserve full committment from their teammates, otherwise, go play house.

Right or wrong...... I agree with this.

Just wanted to add the experience we had when combining the two sports. My older son is 18 now and played both football and travel hockey from 3rd thru 9th grade (at that point he had to choose and chose hockey). Over the years we had a couple conflicts where one tournament or game had to be chosen over another, but there wasn't much conflict just lots of running. I can tell you once we hit PeeWee hockey age, I was very thankful for football. The hitting and physical nature of football were an extreme benefit in learning to check and be checked. He was a pro at checking right from the start.

As for the team committment, he didn't miss anymore than a normal family that misses occassionally for illness, homework, a vacation, family function, school play, or something. Things definitely get more extreme with football once you reach middle school, but then their schedules shift to afterschool practice which doesn't conflict with hockey evening practices.

We just thought it was important to let the kids experience whatever sports they wanted to try. My son was able to get his varsity letter in football, but then chose hockey and is now playing juniors. Once it turned to high school football, the coaches are fanatics about kids focusing only on football. He even threatened if he caught boys playing basketball in their driveways, that he would bench them (and he did).