In a story titled Younger Athletes Are Going High-tech To Gain An Edge, today’s St. Louis Post Dispatch featured a front-page piece about NutriFormance, in Chesterfield, Missouri — a proud member of the Athletic Republic.

From a photo of a nine-year-old skating on Athletic Republic’s patented Hockey Treadmill, to the comments of a high school athletic director about the trend of specialized sports training for athletes ages 8-18, the Post Dispatch story advanced the positive point of view that a young athlete and his or her parents’ investment of time, hard work and money are often worthwhile.

According to Nancy Milward, athletic director at Nerinx Hall High School in Webster Groves, Missouri:

It started with soccer players doing Acceleration training to increase their speed. Now it’s worked into the basketball program, volleyball, field hockey. In a way, it’s no different than a kid going and taking voice lessons. Most of them are high-performance athletes to begin with, and they’re motivated to do more anyway.