Better late than never

When he left Hilton Head Island for the IMG Academies in Bradenton, Fla., last summer, Ian Anderson had every intention of chasing the dream of playing professional baseball.

When he returned from Florida and sprouted to 6-foot-7 and 285 pounds, Anderson quickly realized he wasn't a baseball player, but a football player.

Luckily for Anderson, it wasn't too late for him to switch his focus to football, and after two years playing on the offensive and defensive lines for Hilton Head Preparatory School, he's drawing interest from several BCS-conference schools. But cases like this one are one reason why experts believe the move toward early sport specialization is an alarming trend in youth sports.

"Athletic performance at one age in childhood does not accurately predict performance at a later age," according to an article published by the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University.

It's a lesson Anderson had to learn the hard way. He spent the bulk of his youth preparing for a career as a pitcher -- in college, at least, he figured. He played baseball year-round for about three years, playing on Amateur Athletic Union squads and other travel teams, until a torn ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow of his throwing arm at age 14 brought an end to the year-round training.

But he still viewed himself as a baseball player, even spending last summer in Florida, where he spent two to three hours a day in the gym and about four hours a day on the baseball field. When he returned home, though, he had bulked up, and his fastball had topped out in the low-80s.

Anderson had a change of heart, and he needed a change of sport.

"That shoots a hole in specialization," said Ian's father, David. "In Ian's case, I was grooming him to go pitch in the major leagues, and now, if he plays at the next level, he'll probably play football. So, you can't tell."

That's one reason why David Anderson says parents should proceed with caution when considering whether their children should specialize in one sport or train year-round. Especially after seeing his son blossom as a football player -- he was a first-team pick for The Island Packet/Beaufort Gazette All-Area football team last season and is drawing recruiting interest from Boston College, South Carolina and Kentucky, among other schools -- David Anderson can't help but wonder what might have happened if his oldest son, Tosh, had played multiple sports.

Tosh Anderson, who spent a year training at IMG Academies between stints playing baseball for Hilton Head Island High School and Hilton Head Prep, landed a baseball scholarship to the University of Rhode Island, but his father now wishes he had a more balanced athletic background.

"I just think the kids who specialize don't develop fully as athletes," David Anderson says in retrospect. "They become like veal, bred for one particular purpose."

Ian Anderson now sees the value of multi-sport participation. He played football and baseball at Prep as a junior, though he continues to specialize in another way -- a good hitter as a youngster, Anderson is strictly a pitcher for the Dolphins' baseball team. He used that arrangement to continue working out in his pursuit of a football scholarship.

"(Baseball) coach (Nathan) Stevens was very generous," Anderson said. "He would let me go to about an hour of practice and get my pitching drills in, and then I would go to a personal trainer for the second hour. I was still getting both workouts in, which was very difficult to maintain, but it was worth it."

It's yet to be seen how far Anderson can go as a football player, but there's no shortage of success stories among his fellow late bloomers on Hilton Head Island alone.

When his kids were growing up, Stan Smith encouraged them to follow the same path he did. It seems before Smith was the world's No. 1 tennis player, winning U.S. Open and Wimbledon singles titles and four U.S. Open doubles crowns, he was a three-sport athlete -- and none of them were tennis.

"My background was to play multiple sports," Smith said. "I played football, baseball, basketball, and I started playing tennis a little bit late."

Although all four of his children eventually played collegiate tennis, Smith encouraged them to follow the same multi-sport route. His philosophy is to develop the "full athletic ability," and he says playing multiple sports is a good way to do so.

The irony is that Smith, along with renowned instructor Billy Stearns, in 2002 founded the Smith-Stearns Tennis Academy, where students devote as much as 20 to 25 hours per week to tennis instruction. But Smith said he still prefers to see younger athletes participate in more than one sport.

Hilton Head Christian Academy athletics director Tommy Lewis contends it's difficult for an athlete to know what his or her best sport will be even through high school, and he offers his own background as a cautionary tale.

Although he was a three-sport athlete in high school, Lewis said his favorite sport was basketball, and he always figured that would be his ticket to college. It was only when the only offers came from NCAA Division III schools that he realized otherwise, and he ended up playing football on a scholarship at William and Mary.

"When I think back on it," Lewis said, "if I had been specializing, I never would have had the opportunity to get my college education through football."