The College Planning Center

Last Tuesday I stood on the sideline of a U10 scrimmage and watched one of my players stop dead in the middle of a fast break to ask me if the offside rule counted at his age. It didn’t. It never had. But somebody’s dad had mentioned at practice that “the rules were changing this year,” and n...

A mom texted me Saturday afternoon in a mild panic. Her son had just opened an envelope from a university she'd never heard of, congratulating him on his acceptance into next fall's class with $24,000 in scholarship money attached. He hadn't applied. He hadn't even toured the campus. "Did we miss something?" she asked. "I...

A few weeks ago, one of my nine-year-olds — not one of my own, one of the kids on my rec-league team — came up to me at the start of practice and asked if he could switch from defense to forward. He’d watched the World Cup all summer, decided he was a striker now, and wanted to make it official on the spot.