My experience coaching a perennial championship youth league team is that there are players I will label "the obvious talent" that coaches tend to fall in love with. This is the player that looks great in practice, sometimes does it in the games, receives a lot of premature praise, doesn't reach his potential and is done with football by the time he gets to high school.
The failure to reach potential happens for a lot of reasons, parents, peers, desire, physical development. I've seen these kids get surpassed by the kid that's not the early hero but works hard to improve, loves the game and the competition, chooses his closest friends wisely, and eventually grows into his size/skill level.
Yeah, some of these youngsters will reveal themselves to be superior at an early age and continue to excel at each level, but we can all remember the HS superstar that turned out to be a dud in college, not to mention the Heisman winners that bombed in the pros. The best we can do for them as parents, coaches, teachers and fans is to not allow their heads to get so big that it burdens their ability to grow, else little Billy grows up to be an early has-been or never-was.
Some of us remember these local legends.
