which activity is best for your aspie?

As many of you are aware from previous postings David is not the greatest baseball player and this year was a little different being on a new team with a new coaching staff.  The coaching staff that he had at Lordstown was great and was more about having fun rather than winning and David enjoyed being on that team a lot better because there was less pressure and more fun being on the team however that was not the case this past season and midway through the season he started to lose interest in the game thusfore making his performance worse.  I'm not sure if that is because of the  coaching or the change in atmosphere but at this time I am thinking it was the  coaching.  Midway through the baseball season they had soccer sign-ups in which David requested that we sign him up for so we immediately did so as he generally doesn't make requests like that however he always had more fun playing soccer than baseball.  Since the end of the baseball season David took a liking to two different sports in which he has been excelling in which include soccer and archery.  This year during summer fun days at Lordstown they offered a course in archery and this was David's first try at it, he immediately took a liking to it that during the second half of fun days he begged to drop the course that replaced archery to get back into it.  During the Trumbull County fair this year they had a station set up with targets and people set up with bows and arrows to teach the kids how to shoot and David spent a good 45 minutes there shooting at the targets until he got tired, and even once he was tired he kept wanting to go on however we made him take a break.  He was explaining to us all the parts of the bow and how to shoot and we were very surprised at how much he enjoyed this sport so we told grandma and grandpa about it.  Of course, with grandpa having everything you can think of, he went out to the barn and pulled out and old re-curve bow and an old compound bow and all we had to do was clean them up and wax the strings and buy a few arrows and some targets and David has been practicing ever since, however he is very particular about who he lets touch his re-curve and watching you like a hawk to make sure you are handling it properly when he lets you touch it.  That's about it for the archery, now at this time we are three weeks into the soccer season having only conducted practices so far and one scrimmage game with the season starting on Monday.  The coach seems a lot more fun and very kid oriented and quite helpful and David has taken a great liking to him so far and loves playing soccer.  He is a lot more team focused and participating a lot better than he ever did playing baseball and this could either be due to the coach making fun of the game or the fact that there is a lot less surprises when he's playing soccer.  In baseball there is a lot of guess work as to where the pitcher is going to put the ball, where a hitter is going to hit the ball and how the runners are moving on each play, in soccer there is a lot less guess work and more of going after the ball and getting the job done and I think that is more relaxing for David and makes it that much easier to get into the game.  So far David has been complimented many times on his defensive blocks and ball movement and that is something that never happened in baseball and that positive reinforcement helps him achieve more and keep getting better.  As for now David said he wants to stick to soccer and archery and doesn't want to do baseball anymore and we are fine with that as long as he is doing one sport to keep him busy it might as well be something that he enjoys doing however we will also let him make the final decision about playing baseball next year whether he wants to play or not.  The hardest choice for him is that he likes to be on a team and wants to hang out with friends however he doesn't want to play the sport anymore because he doesn't think he is that good and a lot of that was in part on how his coach treated him in the post season.  In closing what I am trying to say is if your aspie is not good, or just doesn't like one sport don't push him and force him to play it because that will not do them any good as they will not try if they are not interested or don't want to be there however don't let them give up on sports all together, just have them try out new sports or activities.  Even if there are no sports they want to participate in it is always good to have them focus on something they enjoy or love, in our case with David he loves archery so we will let him stick with that.  Maybe sports aren't something good for your aspie because of developmental levels they still may be good at art or music, and it is good to encourage them to strive in their strong suit because they need that outlet.  The more outlets they have the better off they are but don't choose their outlets for them as they are the only ones that know what they want to do so when they say "I want to do archery" or "I want to play soccer" or "I don't really want to play baseball or football I would rather be in the band" just listen to them and let them make that decision.  Thank you everyone for reading and I hope you have enjoyed the rest of my postings.