My brother recently retired after a career (~18-38ish) as a professional basketball player. It worked for him and there were opportunities to leverage contacts for employment after sport. But that was a 15+ year career. Anything too far short of that is a risk, IMO. Watching many of his peers defer tertiary study, or forgo jobs for training roles, or be out of the league after a few underpaid years while contemporaries were getting promoted with years of study or work under their belt - I figured you want your children to be very good or hobbyists playing social sport or to keep fit. Anything in the middle might just be distraction or disappointment.

Awesome for him. Parents dont want to hear what .000001 % actually have a chance to go pro? Every year after the season we always asked if they were still having fun. To us it was good skill building. Social,fitness, how to lose etc.

That sounds like the right attitude to me. Less of a "future Olympian" gamble and more of a method to achieve other things.

Exactly that. Good life skills. And guess what. They still play casual and have a blast are fit healthy and pretty mentally strong. (Proud dad eeking out). We have life long friends whos kids went more music or arts but with the same kind of attitude. Guess what. They are happy too. To us it was just helping them find stuff they liked doing.

The biggest rule was if you start a season you finish it. (There were exceptions for sure) it wasnt all roses but they learned from that too

It has. Everyone’s kid now is a future pro millionaire. Our family has a decent few pro football (american) and baseball players and we have always played high level sports. My deal with the kids was always you play what you want at the level you want. If its not fun pick something else. I think sports are important. 2 of my kids did very well with soccer (college scholarship level) my youngest said nah. She danced and worked at the pet shelter :)