This is a column on teen sports, but it’s not about concussions, balancing practice with homework, or the importance of teamwork. It’s about emotion. Because, for many kids — and their parents — this season will also mark the first time they’ve been cut from a team. And all positive spins about resilience aside, it really burns. It can upend your social life, your identity, your confidence. I see you.
And it stings for parents, too. There’s the stress of wondering if you’re doing enough: Does your kid need club sports to be competitive? Why didn’t you sign up earlier? (And why didn’t some well-meaning elder parent tell you about these clubs sooner? Why is this all on a need-to-know basis?)
There’s the heartbreak of seeing your kid cut from a sport they’ve played since childhood, while their friends stay on the team. Then there’s the difficulty of explaining to your child something that even adults have a tough time swallowing: Sometimes, you can try your hardest and it really just doesn’t matter.
“This is also one of the first times, especially when they get to high school, that they are kind of putting themselves out there and risking rejection,’’ says Emily Gordon, a parent and Natick-based clinical psychologist who works with teens.
Parents feel rejection, too: Being an adult doesn’t make you above it all. The sidelines social structure you’ve kept up for years might suddenly be gone, or different. Your routine changes. You suddenly have alarming swaths of free time. Maybe your identity — hockey parent, soccer parent, baseball parent — does, too, as much as you feel embarrassed to admit it.
Meanwhile, sports can feel more high-stakes than ever. While more than 60 million children and adolescents participate in organized sports, 70 percent of youth athletes drop out of these sports by age 13. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, this is in large part because of the “professionalization’’ of kids’ sports, where athletes focus on one high-pressure sport to the exclusion of others, leading to burnout.
Professionalization of youth sports “is widely considered responsible for the high volumes of training and the pressure to specialize in a single sport that may lead to overuse injury, overtraining, and burnout in young athletes,’’ the AAP’s 2024 clinical report states.
Oh, I see you, commenters: Not every kid gets a ribbon. Not everyone deserves a trophy. Sports can be brutal. Boo hoo. Sure, OK. But getting cut from a team is often about so much more than that mere skill, because it raises questions of money, access, inter-town dynamics, favoritism. When writing this column, I heard it all.
There’s the kid who doesn’t have the competitive edge because their parents couldn’t afford to enroll them in club teams — now par for the course in so many sports — during the offseason. Or maybe their parents were unable to shuttle them to tournaments from Norwell to Newburyport every weekend because, you know, they had to work. Meanwhile, the club team kids who played year-round had better coaching and more opportunities to train.
There’s the kid who didn’t make the select soccer team in third grade, which seemed to set the course for high school, because those elite team rosters just didn’t move despite new tryouts held every year.
There’s the kid who sat on the bench most of the basketball season due to a coach who seemed to play their own kids’ and their kids’ friends instead of giving every player a fair shot. Sports can be wonderful; they can also be a kid’s first exposure to the fact that sometimes life is just plain unfair and, yes, even adults are petty.
Consider Anna. (I promised everyone who talked to me for this story anonymity. The hurt lingers and, in some places, the repercussions do, too.) Anna is now a 40-something foundation officer with, by all accounts, a happy life. And yet one of her “core memories,’’ as she puts it, is being one of the very few seniors cut from the field hockey team in the mid-1990s.
“It was so deeply traumatic to my identity. And, to this day, one of my biggest regrets was not just showing up anyway for the final day of tryouts to try to convince the coach I should still make it. I doubt I’d have made it, but at least I’d know I tried everything,’’ she says.
The team went on to win the state championships. Anna joined the more inclusive cross-country team instead. But she still remembers, decades later, how much that cut shaped her self-perception.
“It was a life-defining moment,’’ she says, 30 years later. “It was really soul-crushing: I remember walking in the door and just sobbing in my mom’s arms. Now, I think how heartbreaking it must have been for her, and there was nothing she could do about it. I think it changed me in that I realized not everything will always go my way. That was a lesson I had clearly already learned in different ways before then for sure — but this hurt in a way that was new.’’
Declan had played soccer since childhood. When COVID hit during middle school, he stopped, and his endurance dwindled. He didn’t make the freshman team. The coach announced the cuts individually during the second day of tryouts; Declan remembers walking back to his friends to tell them the news.
“It stung. It was very defeating. And then you walk back to the rest of the kids: ‘Did you make it? Did you make it?’’’ he remembers. His friends were supportive, but it was embarrassing. Plus, there was a sense that this was basically the end of his playing career. The scene was set.
“It’s so hard to break through,’’ says his mom.
Instead, he took up rowing and ultimate frisbee, going on to win various championships. Now he’s a senior in high school, with a different perspective.
“You have to be super open to new ideas and new sports. A lot of communities are super welcoming: track, cross country. They might be abstract or uncool, but they’re great: There’s always enough space on the track,’’ he says.
And, now, he coaches a town middle-school team, because he still loves soccer.
“It’s about finding your place in the sport, even if you’re not playing it. Maybe you’re reporting on it or coaching it,’’ says his mom.
Then there’s Kiera, who got cut from her school’s volleyball team, even while her sister made it. She tried out two years in a row. She was persistent. Didn’t matter.
“Her persistence surprised me. I feel like I should put a hashtag — #shepersisted’’ — on it. Because we were like: ‘Do you want to do this again, after they already told you no? It’s admirable. And, I guess, if you love a sport that much, you find a way. There’s a way to make it happen,’’ says her mom.
Kiera plays club volleyball instead, which her mother has mixed feelings about: It’s expensive. It’s a time commitment.
“Club sports aren’t cheap. It’s an opportunity that probably not everyone has. That’s the hard part, right? It’s something that I’m not sure everyone is lucky enough to be able to do, but it seems to be the norm in a lot of ways,’’ she says.
Sports are different in the Boston suburbs than in her rural town a generation ago.
“Sports weren’t so central to a person’s identity. That’s what gets really hard for kids at that age: Your friend group kind of splintered because of a sports team … You have to play in a club in order to keep playing. It just seems like it’s a very high bar. My goal with my kids was just to have them enjoy exercise and moving, because it’s good for your body. That should be enough,’’ she says.
But it’s often not enough.
As Gordon, the clinical psychologist, says: “It can impact identity. Sports provide a social structure, a life structure. For these kids, now they have to create or reinvent one. There’s this gaping hole in their time, their identity, their relationships. They can feel left out. They can feel not good enough, and it can really be hurtful,’’ she says. A cut can feel like an indictment on self, character, or belonging.
And it hurts for parents, too, for a host of reasons that might be unsavory to admit: Maybe you sunk a ton of money or social capital into a sport. Maybe you played sports (or definitely did not!), and your kid’s athleticism speaks to your identity, too, even though you know it’s unhealthy. Maybe you love sidelines culture and made friends over travel mugs and cold bleachers.
“It gives you a social structure and a sense of status and belonging and connection that parents are looking for. And we want our kids to be successful and happy, and we’re really afraid. When something like this happens, it sets off this fear in us: My kid isn’t going to be OK. My kid isn’t going to get into college. It just takes over,’’ Gordon says.
In this situation, she says, validate the sadness for your kid. Now isn’t the time for cliches about everything happening for a reason or how Michael Jordan was cut from the basketball team. Being eliminated hurts, and no mental calculus or rationalization can change that. We don’t have to insulate our kids from that hurt, but we can acknowledge and legitimize it for them.
“What’s so important is validation, recognizing what they are feeling: ‘This is really hard, and I’m sorry. Or, ‘I know this feels like the end of the world.’ If you can put into words what you think they are feeling, that’s so important, both for their own process — we need to teach them to identify and express their own feelings — and also, research shows: Kids want to talk to their parents. They want their parents to understand. You have to show that you can connect, have empathy, and validate,’’ Gordon says.
And life does go on. Declan is now coaching soccer, and he also plays on a pickup team with friends. Kiera still enjoys volleyball and has even gotten some offers to play at the college level, despite not being on her school team. Anna went on to play field hockey in college (and sent her high school coach a note saying so, which felt damn good). But, even three decades later, she remembers how much that first cut stung.
And so, this season, as we scroll through photos of student-athletes winning championships, posing with teammates, announcing their college sports plans: a moment for all the kids who got cut and kept trying, who found their place elsewhere, and who learned one of life’s toughest lessons maybe a bit earlier than some: Sometimes, a spot goes to someone with better connections, more preparation, or an in with a coach. And, other times, some people are just plain better, stronger, or faster.
“I think the advice is to do your best and be prepared. Take nothing for granted and leave everything on the field. But in the end, there are things beyond your control. It’s OK to grieve. Let yourself feel the sadness and anger about it for a time,’’ Anna says.
“Honestly, in the end, 99.99 percent of the kids who make it will eventually come to the end of their career or get cut from another team. Everyone will feel this heartbreak one way or another. But some things are just [awful]. And there’s not much else to say about it.’’