I find myself wondering when these kids ever have time to just be kids. I see how worn out they are all the time, and I see the coaches yelling at them and them not paying a bit of attention to it.
As a single mother I just didn't have the energy to push something on my son if he wasn't interested so he wasn't as involved in sports. One day one of his exhausted young friends made the heart-wrenching comment that my son was lucky not to have a dad around because then he didn't have to participate in all the sports all the time.
This is sad, and fascinating, at the same time.
I have a friend who is Chinese but moved to the US as a kid. He LOVED sports. His parents HATED sports. Never let him play, but he was a darned good violinist.
His 3 kids are 2-3 sport athletes.
I tried a bunch of things but nothing stuck until 9th grade for me. Husband is similar - he was in 12th grade. So we like to PLAY but aren't really sports people. And our kids are the same. So we are fine putting them into soccer or baseball or whatever here and there...but the minute they don't want to do it anymore, they aren't doing it anymore.
I have a friend with 3 kids, and each kid is in 2-3 activities, like she doesn't want them MISSING OUT and well, everyone has to play 2 sports, and she's the team mom and her husband coaches and umps and .... She complains a lot about not having any time, and follows it with "I bring this on myself." And I say YES. I do not allow two sports per kid, even if they wanted it - I'm not a chauffer. I was fine with one sport and one music thing with kid #1, but when kid #2 added swim and soccer - that only lasted 2 months before I said "nope" (and that's with spouse taking on some of it too). Right now my older kid is in once/ week music, and the younger one is in nothing. But he loves swimming so we go to the pool on weekends.
So for my friend, kid 1 is in soccer and baseball and piano, and kid 2 is in soccer and karate and piano, and kid 3 is in soccer and dance and piano. And two of them are only 5 years old, WTAF? "I want them to do music, when is it normal to start??" 4th or 5th grade man.
My neighbor goes the whole other direction and actively discourages any sport that doesn't come with transportation. So her kids will play soccer at school, but that's it.