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The Benefits of Being a Multi-Sport Athlete and Avoiding Specialization at a Young Age

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PITTSBURGH — Monday afternoon, after the Pirates returned from a whirlwind trip to Williamsport, Pa. for their Little League Classic game against the St. Louis Cardinals, relief pitchers Dovydas Neverauskas and Felipe Rivero were keeping the youthful spirit of the weekend going by kicking a soccer ball around the clubhouse.

Neverauskas, a Lithuanian, comes from a country where soccer has a significant cultural history. He played as a competitively as a youth and still does in the offseason for cardio training.

After 15 minutes or so, the ball was put away as the players attended to the serious business of being a major leaguer once again for the remained of the 2017 season.

It was back to work for the Little League players, as well. Their championship will take place today, one week after the Little League Classic. It’s a long season for the 12-year-old players, who started playing back in April. But it won’t end when someone leaves Williamsport as the champs.

Fall baseball is prevalent in most of the country now, as are indoor practice facilities that allow young players to work on skills regardless of the weather. With more and more opportunities for organized activities year-round, more and more athletes are specializing in one sport at an earlier age.

Multi-sport collegiate athletes were fairly common at one time. Now, they’re a notable exception. In high school, players that are being scouted for a collegiate or professional future are pressured into attending as many camps, showcases and the like to give them the best chance of future success.

Even at the young age of Little League, full participation is seen as a must, with players that train full-time with AAU or travel teams being provided opportunities that a young athlete with multiple sports interested would not.

But is that wise? The Pirates don’t seem to think so.

The Pirates drafted RHP Steven Jennings in the second-round this year out of DeKalb County High School in Tennessee, where Jennings was the quarterback on the football team in addition to playing baseball.

Max Moroff was a point guard. Jordy Mercer played forward on his high school’s basketball team. Andrew McCutchen played football and ran track. There are many more examples throughout the clubhouse and around the minors.

There’s a reason that despite two-sport athletes through the high school level being an exception amongst current professionals that the Pirates have stockpiled so many. Trainer Todd Tomczyk explains:

“If you’re doing nothing but throwing a baseball, your body is going to adapt to that stress and those demands. So, when it has to do other things, it doesn’t remember how to do it, because we train the body how to do things.”

The players involved feel like there’s a pretty strong benefit beyond the physiological advantage of being a more well-rounded athlete.

“My dad always told me to play basketball,” Mercer said. “He told me to put the glove and the bag away. I think it was pretty good for the most part because I didn’t get burnt out about it. There’s so many games over the course of the summer and we had fall baseball and spring ball, too. He just told me to put the stuff away and not pick it up until basketball is over.

“Luckily enough, we were pretty good at basketball, too. We made it to our state tournament in my senior year, which was really neat. For the most part, I enjoyed it.”

Moroff got his basketball career cut short when the demands of being scouted started to kick in. After he committed to play at the University of Central Florida and finished that process, pro scouts started coming around. Moroff ended up getting drafted out of high school by the Pirates and signing a $300,000 signing bonus, so the decision paid off. But he wishes there had been a better way to get there.

“I think I missed out,” Moroff said. “If the seasons wouldn’t overlap so much, I would have played basketball. I love basketball. I think it would have been fun to play throughout high school and play baseball, too.”

So, if there are physical benefits to playing multiple sports and the players seem to want to do it, why don’t more of them? For many, it comes down to the coaches involved. Mercer was lucky enough to have the same coach for baseball and basketball in his small town of Taloga, Oklahoma.

McCutchen was such a phenomenal athlete at Fort Meade High School that pretty much any coach would have taken him. But for other players, it’s not that simple. Coaches want their players focusing on their sport and not spending valuable offseason time worried about something else.

That’s something Joe Jordano knows a thing or two about. The University of Pittsburgh’s varsity baseball coach has helped groom a number of two-sport athletes over the years, most recently Chicago White Sox catcher Kevan Smith. Pitt also has a two-sport athlete committed in the Class of 2018. Paramus, New Jersey native Matt Alaimo is expected to play tight end and first base for the Panthers. But it takes the right circumstances to make that happen.

“I think it’s more about the coaches,” Jordano said. “When we had Kevan Smith, he was a quarterback. There were questions about whether he could afford to miss an entire spring of (football) practices in order to play baseball. The coaches have to be willing to make it work. He’s having a very productive year at the major-league level. I think it worked out best for him and that’s awesome.”

Not only does Jordano readily acknowledge the benefits of playing multiple sports, the doesn’t think there’s anything on the other side of the ledger to balance the decision. Of the players he’s getting that have been year-round baseball players, he’s still not getting polished, finished products, even at the Division I level.

“When you go see summer ball, for instance, you’ll see a pitcher that throws hard but doesn’t know how to pitch,” Jordano said. “You see kids that are fast, but doesn’t know how to run the bases. You see a kid that has a strong arm from the outfield, but he never hits the cutoff man. Situational hitting — you see a guy hit BP and he’s hitting 10, 12 balls out of the ballpark, but when there’s a man on second, nobody out, he doesn’t know how to go the opposite way. That’s what happens when you’re trying to showcase yourself within a team sport.”

What can be done about the issue? Tomcyzk said that he feels the trend is starting to reverse itself, particularly at youth levels. In the meantime, it’s up to kids and parents to come up with a way to navigate the situation. They can expect certain teams — Pitt and the Pirates among them — to continue to seek out two-sport athletes.

Mercer, a former beneficiary of the process as an athlete, now finds himself going through it from the other end. His son, Maverick just turned five. He can frequently be seen in the clubhouse throwing a baseball around and sporting catcher’s gear. But this fall, he’s playing soccer on dad’s orders.

“Kids are playing like 365 now, it seems like,” Mercer said. “In my opinion, that’s just way too much. You want to get your kid exposed. You want to give your kid the best teaching possible, you want him to be the best possible player he can be, but you have to let him live a little, as well, let him play some other sports and do some other things. We’re going to play soccer in the fall. It’s just something to get away, something to reconnect his mind to other sports and maybe, who knows, he might enjoy it and take off with it.”

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