Hey Google, you should invent this

Much has been made during this Olympics how Michael Phelps body is uniquely suited for success in swimming. His legs are the length of a 6’0” man which makes them more powerful for kicking and pushing off the wall. His torso is outsize for his actual height which helps his upper body pull him through the water. His size 14 feet function like flippers. His wing span makes his strokes extra powerful.

There are all kinds of career tests where kids answer a bunch of questions, and out pops guidance of what they would be good at as a career. It’s amazing how accurate they are and how well they match ability and interests. It’s also thought-provoking to see all the different suggestions of possible careers one might not have considered otherwise.

Google, or some company in that field, should create an application where parents and children could enter their children’s age, height and limb measurements, possibly their Presidential Fitness test numbers (or the international equivalent of various sport measurements like running speed and throwing ability) and out pops suggested sports given a child’s body type.

Then the whole application could be tied to Google Earth and the next thing that comes up is the sports clubs in a fifty mile radius that a child could avail themselves of if interested in a particular sport.

This could help people who’s level of sport selection sophistication is at the level of “gee, we’re tall, we should play basketball or volleyball.” There’s more to matching oneself or one’s children to the sport than that. The perfect match between body type and sports program availability is why countries dominate one sport over another year after year.

In America, we have every possible size and shape. There are sports out there that are not offered in schools but exist with club teams. An easy way to consider every possibility out there could be to enter all one’s data in this application and see what’s suggested.

World champion gymnast and very petite person Shawn Johnson just happened to walk into her native Chinese coach’s new American gym club in West Des Moines, Iowa and the rest is history. A software application like this could make that matching process less driven by chance and more methodical.

Email me for my address so you know where to send the check(s).