In high school, students often fall under pressure to perform in the classroom, making the honor roll, and preparing for college. This reality is more evident for students preparing to become college athletes. Let’s think about a high school golfer as an example. What happens to many is that they become convinced by a coach, parent, or other peer to focus on golf and quit other activities and sports to focus solely on their primary sport.  Here are 3 reasons why you should be a multi-sport athlete while in high school.

Involvement in other sports and activities helps a high school student become more well rounded, keeps them in better physical and mental shape, and keeps them from getting too burnt out on a single sport.

Helps avoid overuse injuries: Repetitive motion injuries can happen easily at a young age if you are not consistently working different parts of your body (i.e. a pitcher in baseball who plays no other sports is likely to burn out his arm much faster then a pitcher who balances his body by also running track).

Multiple sports help develop different skills: Enhance your balance, strength, agility, stamina, and hand-eye coordination by participating in sports other than golf. All of these skills are important for good golfers to have, and cannot be fully developed by playing golf alone.

College coaches specifically look for multi-sport athletes: When coaches recruit, one of the first questions they will ask is what other sports you play. In fact, Coach Urban Meyer of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team says that he only recruits multi-sport athletes. Especially in golf, a sport that takes less strenuous activity and stamina than most, it is important to show a coach that you have the athletic skills and mindset to compete in other sports. This could be the question that gets you on the team or turns a coach in the other direction.

So the next time a swing coach or anyone else tries to get you to quit other sports and focus on golf, really think about whether or not that is in your best interest in the long run.