At age 10, David Castleton joined a basketball team that traveled the country. By 12, he could name the amino acids needed to perfect his physique. By 14, he was seeing separate trainers for conditioning, basketball shooting, football passing, speed and mental toughness.
He repeated eighth grade, not because he failed his classes, he says, but to give him an extra year of drills and discipline, allowing him to dominate as a freshman quarterback at powerhouse Mater Dei High in Santa Ana.
A childhood forged in athletics left Castleton, now 21, an elite athlete and earned him a scholarship to Brigham Young University, a storied football program that has ushered a series of quarterbacks into the NFL.
It also left him physically battered--by his senior year at Mater Dei, he had dislocated his shoulder five times and undergone two surgeries--and emotionally spent, without a taste for a "normal" adolescence. His back wrenched, his spirit trampled, Castleton quit before playing a game at BYU.
He's now playing for Orange Coast College, again pursuing a scholarship although his father could afford to send him to any school in the country.
"I was a big shot in high school," says Castleton, who routinely jetted from summer tournaments in Arizona to scrimmages in Southern California while at Mater Dei. "I thought I would go to college and be the man. I was completely wrong. Things got totally turned upside down."
From the plush soccer fields of San Diego to the polished basketball courts of Santa Barbara, the quest for profit and the demands of ambition have ratcheted youth athletics to new heights. Many fear this must-win mania is spiraling out of control, damaging the games and, in some cases, the kids who play them.
Soccer fields are sprinkled with kids who have shiny surgery scars burrowed along their knees. Parents ask surgeons to make their daughters' pelvises more flexible, a crucial advantage for elite gymnasts. Pitchers destroy their arms by seventh grade, while their parents shun doctors' recommendations for surgery because it could tarnish their son's athletic resume.
And 80-pound fourth-grade football players diet before "weigh day" so they can make lower divisions, ensuring themselves stardom among younger kids.
"You see ones that are skinny as a rail," says Warren Ferguson, a Pop Warner Football commissioner in Los Angeles and Orange counties. "It's hard to watch."
