I think one of the challenges we have as a society is that our kids are overscheduled. All of their activities are on the family planner. They do soccer twice a week for an hour and they do hockey twice a week for an hour, and parents are unpaid chauffeurs shuffling them from one activity to another. Kids don't go outside and play anymore. I have that with my own children. I have a daughter who's 10 years old and a son who's 7. I asked my wife the other day why our kids never go outside and just play, just pick up a stick or a ball or something and play. I think it's because we also become very protective of our children as society changes. Technology has also played a big role in that.
I've been asked many times about the 10,000-hour rule. If you do any research into the development of elite athletes or elite specialists in anything, whether it's music or piano or whatnot, they talk about the 10,000-hour rule: you need 10,000 hours of concentrated training in order to become an elite anything. Someone asked me once if I had 10,000 hours of soccer practice as a kid growing up, and I did the math in my head and said, no, of course not. I didn't. But then I thought more about it and I thought about my childhood. I would get up in the morning, go to school, come home, stuff my face, do my homework, and then I was told, “Go outside and play with your brother”. That's what we did until it was dark. It was hockey, basketball, throwing a football, throwing a baseball, kicking a soccer ball. I look back on it and I tracked it back and I probably did have 10,000 hours because I was always refining my athletic abilities.
To back up what Shane said, I am very, very supportive of kids playing multiple sports for as long as they possibly can. I turned pro at the age of 16. I still played high school basketball, volleyball, and badminton until I graduated from high school because it helped me in terms of my athleticism as an overall athlete. I don't think kids do that enough anymore. They're too overspecialized and overscheduled.