The problem of innate talent and competitive youth sports as a ticket

INNATE TALENTS: REALITY OR MYTH?
http://cogprints.org/656/1/innate.htm

“[O]ver the years we’ve run into parents who really push their kids. They love their kids but they want to ensure that their kids are going to be successful. And they somehow get bought into, “sports is a ticket.” There’re studies that have shown that it’s very hard to try to predict athletic talent. There’s just a study done in Europe like with 4- or 5,000 tennis players and judo players at the junior level. And there wasn’t a very good correlation between being a junior-ranked player and being a senior-ranked player.”
– Only a Game on NPR
Dr. Dan Gould, the Director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University, spoke with Bill Littlefield about the implications of recruiting kids.
https://onlyagame.wbur.org/2015/02/28/lebron-james-son-recruit-gould

Ice trumps movie

The word from SVS is that the movie-filming schedule took a hit today due to a variety of not-completely-understood-by-me factors but one of them being the fact that that the pond is finally skateable for the first time this winter.

The boys brought their skates today and Ansel announced that “I skated pretty much all day. Best day ever! Except the picnic.” (Except the picnic, which I glean is awesome because it involves unlimited yummy food and ultimate/frisbee pretty much all day)

Sudbury Valley School for the win.

Here’s a great ice day from winter 2014:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.647983288581622.1073741854.493359334044019&type=3