Tony Romo on Early Specialization

In this week’s newsletters, I wrote about the skill development advantage of LATE specialization as opposed to the current trend of early specialization. Of course, there are also benefits such as fun and overall athletic development that parents and young athletes should weigh before committing to one sport year-round.NFL quarterback Tony Romo agrees:

“People sometimes today are predominantly putting their kids into one sport,” said Romo..

“Age 10, they’re going to do one thing the rest of their life. I have a hard time with that because, shoot, I was like a basketball player as a kid. I would have just concentrated on one sport, soccer or something,” he told reporters after shooting a 3-under-par 69 on Friday.

“I never would have been able to do what I’m lucky enough to do — play football,” he said.

Romo even sites the mental advantages of moving between sports:

“I use the tools that you get mentally on the (golf) course for football,” Romo said.

“Anytime you’re in a pressure situation or something happens where you have to rely on your mental strength or discipline or all of a sudden you get nervous, blood starts racing, heart starts going, the more you’re in those situations the better off you’re going to be,” he said.

“I think that is exciting to be in those situations on the golf course because then all of a sudden when you’re at the end of a football game, you felt your blood pressure rise, you felt this stuff go through your brain and you have to rely on your fundamentals. … I think my fundamentals are probably a little better at football, but I think that it’s a neat thing to kind of use that in something else.”