> The amount of informal play that athletes do may also be a predictor of who goes on to become elite. A study comparing soccer players who were offered schola

> The amount of informal play that athletes do may also be a predictor of who goes on to become elite. A study comparing soccer players who were offered scholarships from Premier League academies at age 16 with players who were released found that the two groups had accumulated a nearly identical number of hours in practice at their academies. But players offered scholarships had spent more than twice as much time per year on informal soccer play — games with family and friends in local streets and parks — than the players who were released. The NBA has also noted that informal play exposes children to more variables — like different roles and positions, court sizes and numbers of players — which can accelerate skill development, creating “smarter learners” used to adapting. This seems like such a strange thing to conclude. It seems like this could be driven entirely by there being a much larger variation in the number of hours of informal practice than the number of hours in formal practice.