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riversedge

(69,721 posts)
Mon Oct 19, 2020, 09:51 AM Oct 2020

The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League-Obsessed Parents Where the desperation of late-

Last edited Mon Oct 19, 2020, 10:23 AM - Edit history (1)


It was almost too late before these parents came to their senses!!



The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League–Obsessed Parents

Where the desperation of late-stage meritocracy is so strong, you can smell it


https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/squash-lacrosse-niche-sports-ivy-league-admissions/616474/?utm_source=pocket-newtab


photo illustration of overcrowded women's lacrosse field

Story by Ruth S. Barrett November 2020 Issue Culture

A new guide to living through climate change. Our climate reporter, Robinson Meyer, brings you the biggest ideas and most vital information to help you flourish on a changing planet.

Photo illustrations by Pelle Cass

To make the images that appear in this story, the photographer Pelle Cass locked his camera onto a tripod for the duration of an event, capturing up to 1,000 photographs from one spot. The images were then layered and compiled into a single digital file to create a kind of time-lapse still photo.

Image above: Cornell versus Dartmouth, women’s lacrosse, October 2019

On paper, Sloane, a buoyant, chatty, stay-at-home mom from Fairfield County, Connecticut, seems almost unbelievably well prepared to shepherd her three daughters through the roiling world of competitive youth sports. She played tennis and ran track in high school and has an advanced degree in behavioral medicine. She wrote her master’s thesis on the connection between increased aerobic activity and attention span. She is also versed in statistics, which comes in handy when she’s analyzing her eldest daughter’s junior-squash rating—and whiteboarding the consequences if she doesn’t step up her game. “She needs at least a 5.0 rating, or she’s going to Ohio State,” Sloane told me.

She laughed: “I don’t mean to throw Ohio State under the bus. It’s an amazing school with amazing school spirit.”

But a little over a year ago, during the Fourth of July weekend, Sloane began to think that maybe it was time to call it quits. She was crouched in the vestibule of the Bay Club in Redwood City, strategizing on the phone with her husband about a “malicious refereeing” dispute that had victimized her daughter at the California Summer Gold tournament. He had his own problem. In Columbus, Ohio, at the junior-fencing nationals with the couple’s two younger girls and son, he reported that their middle daughter, a 12-year-old saber fencer, had been stabbed in the jugular during her first bout. The wound was right next to the carotid artery, and he was withdrawing her from the tournament and flying home.


She’d been hurt before while fencing—on one occasion gashed so deeply in the thigh that blood seeped through her pants—but this was the first time a blade had jabbed her in the throat. It was a Fourth of July massacre.


“I thought, What are we doing??” said Sloane, who asked to be identified by her middle name to protect her daughters’ privacy and college-recruitment chances. “It’s the Fourth of July. You’re in Ohio; I’m in California. What are we doing to our family? We’re torturing our kids ridiculously. They’re not succeeding. We’re using all our resources and emotional bandwidth for a fool’s folly.”........................................




The 9 most chilling words you will ever encounter: "determined lacrosse families from New Canaan, Greenwich, and Darien..."

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The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League-Obsessed Parents Where the desperation of late- (Original Post) riversedge Oct 2020 OP
What does the tweet have to do with the article? brooklynite Oct 2020 #1
eeks. I posted the wrong tweet. Thanks for heads up. I will try to find my intended tweet. riversedge Oct 2020 #2
Replaced tweet with intended tweet. riversedge Oct 2020 #3
That is a fascinating article genxlib Oct 2020 #4
A deeper look at that story on niche sports in The Atlantic by Ruth Shalit Barrett: mahatmakanejeeves Oct 2020 #5
A correction for the ages -- it even has a dramatic reveal. mahatmakanejeeves Nov 2020 #6

mahatmakanejeeves

(56,893 posts)
5. A deeper look at that story on niche sports in The Atlantic by Ruth Shalit Barrett:
Sat Oct 31, 2020, 03:11 PM
Oct 2020

Full disclosure: I started a thread about that article on another forum.

David Fahrenthold Retweeted

A deeper look at that story on niche sports in The Atlantic by Ruth Shalit Barrett:



Opinions

The Atlantic’s troubled niche-sports story

Opinion by Erik Wemple
Media critic
Oct. 30, 2020 at 3:04 p.m. EDT

Readers of the Atlantic may well believe that fencing is the goriest of sports. Over a couple of paragraphs in a recent story on niche sports and college athletics, Ruth S. Barrett writes of two injuries sustained last year by a girl from Fairfield County, Conn.:

In Columbus, Ohio, at the junior-fencing nationals with the couple’s two younger girls and son, [the father] reported that their middle daughter, a 12-year-old saber fencer, had been stabbed in the jugular during her first bout. The wound was right next to the carotid artery, and he was withdrawing her from the tournament and flying home.

She’d been hurt before while fencing—on one occasion gashed so deeply in the thigh that blood seeped through her pants—but this was the first time a blade had jabbed her in the throat. It was a Fourth of July massacre.

The Erik Wemple Blog wrote last week that these counted as freakish events in one of the world’s safest sports. The Atlantic has already issued one correction on the story — a claim about Olympic-size backyard hockey rinks — prompted by this blog’s questions. Now there appear to be yet more problems.

{snip}

Erik Wemple

Erik Wemple, The Washington Post's media critic, focuses on the cable-news industry. Before joining The Post, he ran a short-lived and much publicized local online news operation, and for eight years served as editor of Washington City Paper. Follow https://twitter.com/ErikWemple

I have written two pieces on this episode, one about the reemergence of Ruth Shalit Barrett: https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/24/ruth-shalit-just-wrote-atlantic-would-readers-know-it-byline/ And another about a number of problems with the story:


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