Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Team Sports and GT?

My son likes the team practice sessions better than the game. This was his second year in soccer. He had one year in t-ball. He has asked to sign up for a couple of teams this year. He's just finished soccer this year, and has signed up for basketball and t-ball. He told me it's important. I asked him why it's important, he said, "It's because I'm on the team."
The first year I saw a lot more of that digging in the dirt and staring into space. This year it was like he knew a little more about what was going on. This year the bigger problem was the team running around in the bleachers too much before the game so they'd mostly run out of steam before the end of the game.

There was a funny, last year, one of the kids moms told me her son only liked the practice, not the game, "because they keep taking the ball from me." lol., that's the point of the game.

I just think you have to find your "thing" whether it is typical team sport with a ball or something outside the box like dance, gymnastics, swim, fencing, cross country/track. My oldest never ever liked ball sports. So we just kept trying things until we found his sport.

Could be. My friend's husband (possibly MG), who is an extrovert (no wait, I meant E.X.T.R.O.V.E.R.T ;p) loved football when he was younger.

My D (now 17) tried some team sports, but never liked them. I think she did not like the pressure of feeling judged (even if they weren't judging) when she messed up. I insisted that she do something athletic, and she eventually found fencing. She happily fenced just in practice with a club team for two years before trying her first tournament (individually, not as a team) last month. And to her amazement, she finished high enough to get a medal. I think she was just hoping not to finish last, so it was pretty exciting. She is also pretty introverted, so that may also have been a factor with the team sports. Never likes being in a crowd. But the intellectual aspect of fencing also appeals to her, and the kids are more like her (some GT kids).

I will preface this with the statement that my older two play team sports, both in HS and travel, and DH and I both played team sports. My eldest DD, DH and I have independently observed that the average IQ of teams that are more individual effort sports (swimming, wrestling, tennis, etc.) seems to be higher than the average IQ of true team sports (football, baseball, basketball, etc.)

This is not a slam against team sports; our family prefers the team sports. There are clearly individuals on certain teams that are very bright; my middle kid has a clearly gifted friend on her travel softball team. We have joked about getting a grant to study this, but I think there is likely a link with the gifted and control of the outcome (as others have mentioned). When my kids were younger, it did frustrate them that often the athletic kids didn't know where the play was (softball); the fielders hadn't thought about it before the batter came up to the plate. My kids are not that athletic, but they knew where the next play was and how each fielder should move.

I would probably have played baseball in high school if I felt that I was any good.

As it was, I ran track; however I was worse at track than I was at baseball. Go figure.

I swam, fenced, ran, and skied in high school. All four were on teams, so I enjoyed the camaraderie of my friends while I also found fulfillment in the psychology of beating my own records as an individual athlete. It's a lovely balance for extroverted perfectionists.

ETA: Even now, my favourite sport is weight lifting. I can do it in a team setting, as I enjoy helping others achieve their goals and being encouraged, but I have to be able to set my own agenda and pace.

I don't know about the correlation, but the dislike of team sports certainly runs in my family.

I do think team sports (baseball, football, etc.) certainly require a different sort of smarts that is not necessarily academic. As CCN pointed out, there is so much to be kept track of in every moment of a ball game, and my brain simply doesn't function that way. I have never understood how people can just automatically know, inside the game, whether they need to throw the ball to this base or another base or tag the runner instead, or who even has the football and how far it has to go for a first down, and so on. (which is not to say that I don't understand it from outside) I always lived in fear that somebody would hit the ball near me and I'd have to do something with it, because I never had any idea what that something would be (except for wrong). The only basket I ever made was in the wrong goal. I nearly got beaten up for pointing out that my questionable goalie skills in soccer would be less tested if the rest of the team would keep the ball at the other end of the field where it belonged. PE was a nightmare for me, and I'm cautiously amazed each year that my son gets along decently with it. Of course, middle school and high school PE are yet to come.

DD is quite fired up about her soccer league's second season starting up this week. I always enjoyed team sports, myself. We're both extroverts, FWIW.

DD is not the kind of kid whose attention wanders when she gets bored. She holds herself to a pretty high behavioral standard, so she's the one getting annoyed when some of the other kids are wandering, and holding up the practice. She's not the fastest, and she's certainly not the most aggressive (she's actually quite careful defensively, because she doesn't want to hurt anyone), but she has outstanding ball control, and the one thing that makes her stand out is her ability to see all the players around her, and make good decisions. It's sad that her ability to integrate her teammates is so far above that of the rest of her teammates, but she deals with it well. In fact, she recently started calling out to them, her teammates have started picking up on that, and so now she's basically teaching them to communicate with each other on the field.

I've always enjoyed how team sports work my physical and mental powers at the same time. The mental part of it is where there are many people all flowing around in chaos, and I'm processing where they're at, where they're going, how they're going to change based on what's happening, so slow down just a bit, and drag a bit over to this side, and in just a quarter second a space is going to open... THERE! You don't have to be faster than the other person, because if you're both the same speed, but you can think half a step faster, you win.

Side note: I've found that the same skills that I developed on the sports field have helped me safely avoid disaster on the interstate on more than one occasion.

DD11 (HG) is a shy extrovert - she *needs* to be around people but can be slow to warm up. She really enjoys team sports, although she can get frustrated with people goofing around. It helps that she's on a team with a group of slightly older girls who are bright/MG.

DD9 (MGish) is very much an introvert and could happily spend days with almost no human contact. She likes some team sports, but not in the same way that DD11 does.