It's all about Pick-Up Ball

Running my errands today I caught a little bit of an interview on the radio about the waning of unstructured play for kids, specifically the loss of sandlot style baseball. This is a subject I've thought a lot on and (ask Mike) have my own opinions about.  When I was a kid in Castle Rock, Colorado (oh my goodness, that sounds like my grandma) my siblings and I spent our summer days from sun-up till mom called us in, with each other and our gang of friends exploring the bluffs above our cul-de-sac, or in at the vacant fields down the road, building jumps for our bikes and challenging each other to death defying stunts. We rode all day on beater bikes, my brother had a battery powered radio duct taped to his handle bars, providing music for the pack of kids.

More than once I've bemoaned the fact that our children have no such creative universe to explore. When I was 13 in South Jordan every kid on the block got together every day for pick-up baseball, basketball, water fights, or other craziness. In the winter we pulled each other on tubes at breakneck speed behind motorcycles, 4-wheelers or whatever motorized vehicle we could get our hands on. I'm not going to say that we all became geniuses because of the freedom we had - but seriously, can you duplicate that kind of imaginative enterprise? The creativity and social development that comes from making it up as you go TOGETHER with other kids. The possibilities were infinite.

I try not to get too involved in overly competitive and specialized sports training for young kids. Which may cost my kids a starting spot on the high school team...but I don't care. Maybe I'm all about mediocrity - but I don't think so.
To me there is something vital about kid-invented play...and variety to make a healthy and correctly-prioritized kid. I'm totally going on gut instinct and common sense here, I'm no expert - except that I was a kid myself and I have about 80 of my own. I don't have anything against a little organized sport for kids...just when it becomes really competitive and driven by the motivator: "If you don't train hard now you'll never be good enough for high school/college - or have a professional athletic career (heaven forbid)."
My parental objective is to provide as much of that freedom and variety as possible in the world we live in now. I guess that's why we've gravitated toward less demanding extra-curricular (county rec karate, baby!) - or less popular (4H). But we encourage stuff like neighborhood night-games, or driveway basketball (by the way, thanks again Jacque and Howard for the sweet hoop!), fort building, sledding, skateboarding, animals, garage bands, art...with the hope that the kids will make up some of that creative and social magic themselves. I'm not quite the hippie mama who doesn't require certain standards in education, music & behavior. Don't get me wrong, structure is good. Too much is stifling.
Read the Sandlot article in the SL Tribune (subject of the radio program). I've thought about starting up a movement...but then that might defeat the spontaneous purpose, right?