Does it HURT or HELP playing multiple sports with recruiting?

Hey, how you doing Alex here. Thanks for joining me. And in today's video we're going to be talking about the multi sport athlete. Should you be focused on multiple sports, two sports, or should you just be focused on one sport? Does it make you more appealing to a college coach and through this recruiting process if you are a multi sport athlete or does it come off to the coach that you're not that committed to that sport? Okay, we're going to be talking about that. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division 1 college baseball coach, scout and recruiter. And now what I do is I help high school athletes and their parents go through this recruiting process and really help them find the best college fit, help them find schools that are actually targeting their position and et cetera. So I am here for you and hopefully you get something from this video and if you do, please smash that thumbs up that like button down here and subscribe to my channel. I put out a weekly video on recruiting and just how to help you on and off this field. All right, let's dive in. So I have a pretty strong opinion on this and there are definitely situations where I'll go the other side. Whether it's a multi sport, being a multi sport athlete or focusing just on baseball or whatever sport it is that you want to play at the next level, I can sway a little bit, but for the majority of the time. And Coach Corbin, the head coach of Vanderbilt University and I'll show you what he says on this, actually shares the same, the same opinion as me, which is great because he's one of the best coaches in the last decade or two decades in college baseball and has one of the best programs out there and they bring these type of players in and that is being a multi sport athlete. I there's so many positives of being a multi sport athlete and not just focus on baseball or again whatever that sport is, even if that's what you're trying to at the next level. So what are these benefits? Alright, whether you play football or basketball or hockey or whatever sport it may be. And by the way, thank you Sarah for reaching out to me with this question. Made me jump on it. I love hearing questions from you all so I can answer them because if I get and I've had this question before, I just, honestly I just haven't gotten around to make this video but it was time for me to make this video video because I've heard this question before and by the way, please comment down any questions that you have. I will get to it eventually. All right, and so I wanted to talk about this. So what are the benefits of being a multi sport athlete? One for me, I think it gives you a break. It gives your son a break of baseball or whatever sport is. They need to take breaks again. In my opinion, it's almost recharging the batteries. It. If you play a game through 12 months out of the year, doesn't mean you're necessarily going to get better through those 12 months, especially month 11 and month 12. You could be burnt out. You could be just physically drained. Okay. And a big other benefit is these other sports, they can help your overall game of baseball and whatever it is their sports like basketball, the quick twistness, the footwork, either you can bring that over into baseball in whatever sport it usually help with the game of baseball, or again, whatever translates. Because a lot of this stuff is athletic movements. Again, basketball, football, hockey, wrestling, a lot of this stuff helps you in the game of baseball. Or again, whatever sport you're playing, it just. And it is a better package. I remember recruiting players that were either football players or hockey players up north or wrestlers or basketball players. And I'm like, oh man, they're that athletic and I love that they play those other sports. Okay? So it is a huge, huge positive. So if you're on the fence of like, should I do this, Should I play multiple sports? Now, if you're not enjoying whatever that other sport is, maybe you should stop. All right? But if you enjoy it 100% play it, that's just another benefit of you actually enjoy the game. And it doesn't mean that you're going to try to pursue and play at the next level, but you just enjoy it with your teammates. That's huge. All right, Stick with that. Again, give yourself a break. It doesn't mean that you can stop the recruiting process with baseball or whatever sport it is. And it doesn't mean that you can't play catch or hit every once in a while. It doesn't mean you have to completely shut it down, although it can be beneficial to shut it down for a little bit. All right, now, what are the instances that maybe you should focus on just one sport? One. If it is no doubt the sport that you absolutely love and you want to try to pursue play at the next level and. Okay. And you know, you need to improve a lot in one area, it might be beneficial for you to focus on a sport for a year. Okay, for me, one of my years Sophomore years actually just focused on, on baseball. I knew I needed to improve certain areas of my game. Then junior year and senior year I played, I wrestled and I played football. So that was my focus. I just knew that I really need to improve some areas in my game and that's what I focused on. But then I eventually missed the game and I knew I could find my time management of playing multiple sports and I needed a little bit of a break. But so the instance is if you need to have more focused training on your skillset at your position and have maybe more personalized with a personal coach and a trainer or whatever it may be, then that might benefit you to focus on. It's totally okay to like hey, go on and go off as far as hey, play multiple sports. Maybe play one sports in an instance like me. You can do that. Alright. There aren't any rules to this. Okay. You can do what you want to do and, and what you think is best for you. I just generally think that for the best, it's usually best for the athletes to take a little bit of a break. Allow the other sports to help enhance their game as they go and it is attractive to other college coaches now. It's not unattractive. If you only focus on baseball and you become a great baseball player. That's great. You know, you put in a lot of work. That's fine too. That's absolutely fine. But I usually have seen in the past that I know in recruiting players, multiple sources like oh, he's a wrestler, there's a toughness there. The football players, there's a toughness there. There's basketball. Oh, it's agility and hand eye coordination and really team environments. Those football and basketball, very team environment is good. And then wrestling is just like one of those things. It's just one on one man. Those guys have to be super physical and they're different breeds. I want to pull up Coach Corbin's of kind comments on this and let me go on and pull this up. And this came from the New England Baseball Journal. Really cool article. This was recent here in 2022 and it goes on to explain. I'll show this here. Corbin explained why playing multiple sports in high school can make a recruit more appealing during the recruiting process. Goes on to say it's a way for the kids to decompress from the game. Okay, this is what I mentioned. Corbin said I think if you play 12 months out of the year doesn't necessarily mean that you're growing from it. So he continues to talk about that also, he says, I do think there's something to be said about football players, hockey players, basketball players who engage in frequent competition that is very team oriented. Again, all this is attractive and also it helps their skills that grow inside these sports that you can't get on a baseball field. So again, this is coming from one of the best coaches, coaches in this day and age right now to reconfirm if your son or if you are the athlete now that you're not sure what to do. Hey, trust your gut. If you're really enjoying the game, this is a big, this is the big thing, right? This kind of can easily make your decision. If you really enjoy that sport and you look forward to playing that season and practicing that team oriented and it's not the main sport you're going after, AKA baseball, in most instances the mind audience play that sport, that's totally fine. Absolutely play. Now, if you do not like it and you're not so sure about it, then don't play it and focus on baseball. Okay, so I want to make sure that I'm clear that you don't have to play multiple sports. Especially if you don't like the other sport or you're drained out of it or you don't think it's helping you at all, then don't play it. But if you enjoy it, absolutely it's not going to hurt you. It's probably going to benefit you, you. So hopefully you got something from this video. Guys, please. Any questions on the recruiting what you want to hear more of, please comment down below. This helps me a lot create content for you all to help go through this process. All right, I'll see you in the next video.