There has been a decline across Catholic schools of the multi-sport athlete. General consensus seems to be that playing more than one sport can cause athletes to not excel as much or to miss an opportunity to play at a higher level. The problem is, most athletic directors don’t agree.
“It’s very difficult at a private Catholic high school to keep a multi-sport athlete from just going to one sport,” says Todd Borowski. “The parents and the kids think they are falling behind the other players while they are playing the other sport. As the athletic director, I think they are mistaken and that playing two sports can only help you.”
John Mulkerrins from St. Ignatius says he sees the biggest decline at the varsity level. He cites two main reasons—the belief that focusing on one sport increases your chances of making a college team, and pressure from club sport coaches.
“We used to have students playing two to three sports frequently. Now many are only playing one sport. Some sports are more prone to this than others. Specifically the correlation between club sports and single sport athletes is very high,” says Adam Callan from Marin Catholic.
Club sports are a positive experience for student athletes, however, the decline of the multi-sport athlete over the past 10 years does seem to coincide with the rise in popularity of club sports.
Mulkerrins, Borowski and Callan are in agreeance that students actually benefit from playing more than one sport. Mulkerrins adds, “especially at the Frosh and JV levels.”
Playing more than one sport offers students a chance to excel in their main sport through cross training. High school is a good time to explore multiple sports, too because kids have the time to put into multiple sports. It’s also a good opportunity to expand your social circle, benefit from different instruction styles from various coaches and expand your role in the school community.
“Mental, physical, emotional, and social benefits abound by moving on to another challenge, doing different movements, going through different experiences and being around different people after a period of time,” Callan says.
It’s important for parents to understand the benefits of the multi-sport athlete, too. Sometimes it is their influence that deters students from pursuing more than one sport. It’s easy to say that the sport you are better at should be the only one you pursue, but that’s not always the case.
“In today’s society if you are not a starter in the second sport then the parents think the kids are wasting their time and could be practicing and getting better in the sport they are better at so they go to one sport only,” Borowski observes.
Keep this in mind. In the NFL 2018 Draft, 29 of 32 draft picks were multi-sport athletes in high school.
It’s important to remember that multi-sport athletes can avoid burnout sometimes associated with playing more than one sport. Because of busy summer training schedules, how demanding each sport becomes over time, the busy travel schedules, potential overlap between seasons and no break in between sports, burnout is possible for multi-sport athletes. However, some would argue that single-sport athletes are actually more likely to burn out due to training so hard for one thing.
The good news is that athletic directors, coaches and other administrative staff can help ease the burden for multi-sport athletes.
Try instituting some of these policies at your school to encourage multi-sport athletes:

1.  Ask coaches to communicate efficiently about athletes they share including schedule, strengths, areas of improvement, injuries, opportunities, etc.
2. Get parents in on the conversation about schedule and expectations.
3.    Recognize and celebrate multi-sport athletes in the school     community.
4.  Share stories about multi-sport athletes making it to the college and the pro level.
5. Spread information about colleges who recruit two-sport athletes to encourage more athletes to play a second sport.
6. Ask coaches to encourage two-sport play with their athletes.
7. Promote the benefits to students, parents and staff.

“At St. Ignatius, after each season, a senior athlete gets a pin—a single sport athlete gets a red colored pin, a two-sport athletes get a both red and blue colored pins, and a three-sport athlete gets red, blue and gold colored pins. These are usually attached to the graduation gown as a symbol of their athletic prowess at SI,” Mulkerrins shares.