My son insisted on joining a soccer club. He accidentally tried out for the team 2 years up and made it in. Then they shifted him to his "proper" age group. He just could not gel with the kids there. To him they were babies who could not follow instructions. He LOVED the drills - learning what to do. He hated the matches. he would get sidetracked by working out random things like the rate of scoring per side, the number of floodlights on and therefore the percentage of the off lights. And since in a team sport it matches that count, he just could not "do well" anyway - despite being technically brilliant.
As suggested, I am waiting for my boys to turn 10 so that they can start rowing. It's incredible as a sport and really does seem to generally draw a significantly high percentage of "doers" - you need a serious amount of determination and grit to see it through - even the training sessions are intense!
My oldest son also wants to do a team sport - he says he wants to feel a part of a team, but seriously between his Visual Discrimination and his need to always be knowledgable, I'm not at all sure how any other sport would work for him in a team setting. He despised soccer when he was younger (again could be the Visual stuff).
At the end of the day, they need to embrace what they are good at, and accept that either they will work on the stuff they want to be better at or acknowledge that its just not them.
Good luck for managing this (and the maths thing!)
