Thanks everyone for your thoughtful replies! I really appreciate hearing other parents thoughts as they go through the same for their kids.
elh0706- agree with you that it is hard to pull it away, as long as they are achieving the grades. In my older case, it is the swimming, fencing, Math Contest Club and violin � wish she could do the science more in lieu of these, since that�s her real interest, but, perhaps next year with the science olympiad. Mon, kcab, intparent, Polly, ABQmom � you all bring up good points about finding a better balance with the chosen sport - either through high school team sports, or choosing another sport that may be more seasonal or less time-consuming � I am indeed interested to see what other athletic opportunities may arise as they reach high school (for instance, track & field � my older one really likes running the local 5k races). Wren and JaneSmith, you bring up good insights about how to balance school and chosen EC if you truly become highly competitive at a national or international level. And Polly, you are right that I probably shouldn�t stress too much about how she spends her summers, I suppose she will decide her priorities as she grow older, she will realize her potential, what�s more important as college looms, and there is no �script� for success.
In our case, our high school choice may very well determine where sports and ECs fit in to all of this. Locally, we only have 2 choices, both public, one is a very demanding IB program (with very little emphasis on sports), and the other is a very typical high school, not great, but enough AP classes. The pros and cons are numerous for both, but I�m told it is very rare for the swimmers from our team to attend the IB program, just because both would be too demanding. My girls are attending an IB middle school now, so the IB high school would be the natural progression (and socially, probably a better fit too). That will be a very tough decision for us when the time comes as I�ve heard horror stories about the amount of group projects and other time consuming assignments that our local IB high school program seems to assign their students and many have to quit their EC s, while for others it seems to work. (I admit, I like what I saw with their curriculum though). I have looked into EPGY OHS and it looks great -- tabling the idea as a possibility. The �regular� high school would also be a solution too, although, we would really have to push the school for acceleration since they�ve always been an accelerated track, and that school doesn�t offer advanced math courses beyond Calculus BC.
Back to the swimming, I personally know only one or two ex-collegiate swimmers (at Brown and Stanford), who went on to medical schools for graduate work (ie. So they were successful in their academics, both before and during college). One was our swim coach for one summer (in between his undergrad and grad school), when the girls used to swim summer league, and he was extremely positive about his collegiate swim experience at Brown (he was even the Team Captain). So I guess I had a rather positive (albiet na�ve view) of what collegiate swim was about. Scholarship was not necessarily something I was thinking about, since that is so hard (and the chance of getting one small), but I always thought it would be great for the kids to keep up what they love, if they still do love swimming beyond high school. I also agree the physical training they are getting now, will help them establish a very healthy lifestyle when they become adults, and that I think is important....
