… it can be expensive.
https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27356477/kids-playing-enough-sports-culprit-cost
https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/national-youth-sport-survey-1
Average spending per sport per kid was $692.53, though with a large range of $0 to $34,900. There is lower participation by lower income families.
Yes! I just saw this story in the news last week.
Last night I was at my son’s summer high school hockey league game and I was speaking to a parent of a recent H.S. graduate. We were commenting on how the hockey numbers in the next few years are low and so is the talent pool. I was sharing that I think it’s because the kids coming up would have been youngsters during the recession. Gas was $4 a gallon (expensive for travel), hockey is expensive as are the additional skating lessons and camps/clinics/leagues needed to become a strong player. I really think parents just passed on this and now we are seeing the effect.
Sad! Relatively inexpensive Baseball / Softball Little Leagues are disappearing or gravely thinning due to the massive push to expensive travel clubs. Used to be you actually had to be a very good player to be considered for a travel club. They were like the All-Star teams. At least this is happening in suburbia.
I agree with @rickle1. Our local in-town soccer league ($100/child including uniforms with scholarships available) pretty much disappears by 4th grade as everyone, regardless of skills, shifts to travel. The town travel teams ($165/child) have a cadre of strong volunteer coaches but parents think they have to put their kids into club soccer to get the “best”. Unfortunately the cost of club is $2,250 plus $350 for uniforms for the beginning level. It gets much pricier as the kids advance and start doing out of state tournaments. That’s not including additional training and camps.
From the same article,
6-12? In our area people are putting kids into organized sports at age 3! (there is actually organized Rugby for preschoolers!). It’s all part of the insanity of believing that your child is THE sports superstar. It has escalated to the point that where I live unless your child is “good enough” for travel baseball at age 12, it’s over. No recreational teams exist. If you can’t afford travel league or your child isn’t “good enough”, too bad.
Personally I would START organized sports at age 10 (“but, but, but my 2 year old loves kicking a soccer ball and he’s SO talented”). I can’t make that statement publicly.
Ugh, this is so sad. I never hesitate to tell parents of young kids that their little prodigies probably won’t get a sports scholarship. I tell them my son’s running stats and then explain that the best he could have gotten was to get his books paid for.
Kids are so “over programmed”. Around here, families sign their kids up for sports, dance, music lessons, swimming, gymnastics, art lessons…yep, all of these things. It’s a miracle they have time to eat and sleep.
Our town and school sports do have funds for kids who otherwise might not be able to pay for these. All the families need to do is ask.
3 years old? Sadly I can beat that. There’s an organized professionally run soccer clinic ($215) at my local multi-use town field that starts at 12 months. Yes, 12 months, an age at which a lot of kids don’t yet walk.
I actually heard a dad tell his crying toddler that he wasn’t going to be allowed to play at the playground (crammed with happy kids and within clear sight of the clinic) if he didn’t return to soccer practice. Way to go parent. That’ll instill a lifelong love of the game.
Another parent sheepishly confessed that she thought she was being a bad mother by letting her toddler run around chasing a couple of dogs (one mine) instead of finishing soccer. I told her that her child was developing the same foot and spatial skills as were being worked on in the class but was actually spending more time active and was having way more fun. When I told her my husband was a HS coach and that I was sure he’d agree that seemed to ease her mind.
The challenge here is that parents are afraid to just let their kids be kids. In today’s society, kids aren’t really allowed to just roam the neighborhoods, and figure out how to keep themselves entertained. They need to be “safe” and “protected” which often means a structured environment. For example, growing up we road our bikes everywhere. Now kids are getting rides from mommy (or worse: uber) everywhere.
the sports that require indoor practice space are the most pricey I think - like cheer, dance, gymnastics, swimming, hockey etc. In our town there are some budget-type clubs/leagues for football and basketball and soccer that are producing some good players; but they can practice all over during the warm outside months.
In the back of my mind I think of encouraging my own kids to live in small towns that don’t have all of these pressuresonce they have kids. But then I just heard of a family driving 70 miles several times a week to play a club sport; and I know its happening all over! If I were an entrepreneur - I’d get into club sports ownership and market to young families. OP is right; It’s a huge market right now; and we do know a family who is paying $30K + for their HS kid to play hockey.
I was surprised to see field hockey listed in the article as one of the more expensive sports. Perhaps because it’s not commonly played in much of the country so players don’t have cheap rec leagues and have to go club?
The over professionalization of sports manifests itself here in HS coaches telling kids to not even try out for the HS team if they did not play club. So sad that kids cannot proudly represent their school unless they could spend a lot of money for 5 or more years before they reached HS. This seems especially damaging in our area in girls sports.
@sue22 probably because of areas where you can’t play year round without renting indoor space. My son loved sports; we were “stupid” and let him play all/any he wanted. By 6th grade he was one of very few not specializing. We’re lucky that we had a decent rec baseball program that he could continue to play for fun until 10th grade (despite be good enough for travel, he wouldn’t give up fall football to play).
I remember his one season of indoor baseball at the big academy in town (NJ). He had teammates from CT, NY and PA who had their kids up at 3/4am to make the trip to NJ for practice!!! He was about 9, I think. It was about $10k to play there year round, not counting travel expenses and the private lessons that almost everyone did. No thanks!
@fallgirl fwiw, I started sports and dance at 3. Not because either of my parents wanted a superstar but because I had too much energy and this was an outlet. I went on to dance for about 10 years and to this day am still involved in sports (though on an organizational level, not player).
I’ve been coaching since high school and the parents have gotten more and more insane about sports over the years. I used to coach 4/5 year olds in basketball and the parents would come yell at me about how we’re not keeping score. It’s literally one of the rules of the rec league. My dad is an empire for YMCA sports and he’s had to break up more than one fist fight between parents and coaches. It’s disgusting.
My husband has taken multiple soccer teams cobbled together from local, travel and club teams to Europe for international youth tournaments. The price has always included a slush fund for players who couldn’t afford the trip. Sometimes the kids who need financial support are the ones you’d expect (blue collar families with modest homes) sometimes they’re not (former executives whom no one realized had lost a job).
I know it was a typo, but I’m liking the image of @romanigypsyeyes’ father with a crown and scepter as Emperor of YMCA Sports!
Our high school, in an effort to combat the varsity coaches telling people not to try out if they are not on certain clubs (not just clubs but the right clubs), has created additional teams. Freshman year there are A and B teams. The A team is the kids from the right clubs and the B team is everyone else. They then move to a JV team, a JV 2 team, and a varsity team. When you are a sophomore, and from the right club you are either on JV or varsity. Once you have been assigned to the JV2 team you know you will never be on another team, it is the landing spot for those without the right club background.
The good side of this is everyone has the opportunity to play for the school. The bad side is a lot of kids quit after sophomore year tryouts because they know they will never have a chance at playing in front of anyone but parents. Most of the coaches do have a bit of a heart and give seniors that have been on JV2 the option to be on the varsity roster with the knowledge they will never touch the field (but they are on varsity) or staying on JV2 and starting/playing.
One of the saddest aspects of the push to travel clubs is that most kids start focusing on a single sport at very early ages. Sure there are still multisport athletes but they’re becoming rare. S played baseball, soccer, hoop and a lot of pick up football. Then specialization started. The ones that play a single sport 10-12 months develop their talent faster (most of the time), so the ones who aren’t superstars start falling behind unless they focus too. There’s always a kid around who just picks up a ball and is gifted in sports. That’s natural ability. However, the rest almost need to lock in on a sport to be competitive in HS. I live in FL. Unless you’re a superstar or were blessed with a lightning bolt of an arm (even better yet - a lefty), you fall way behind if you’re not playing fall league, regular HS spring, and summer league. That’s 75 games and a ton of practice. Forget about being recruited, I’m just talking about being a competitive HS player. I’d argue it’s no longer safe to be out there unless you have those reps (with the missiles coming at you at the plate and in the field.)
Hard for a kid who just likes the game to find a venue.
And the ultimate irony; after all the money and time spent, only 1%-5% actually play in college. We had 6 kids on our HS team think they were playing at the next level. 5 of them flamed out in a CC and are now trying to figure out life. The other one has a shot at getting drafted (and then the real work begins!)
I miss the old days when sandlot was a blast and you stayed on the court until you lost.
I have a gymnast and a dancer, both started in their teens. My gymnast competed against girls who started gym before they could even walk or were potty trained, that’s just the nature of that beast. My dancer started when most girls had already been doing pointe work for years. They’re both happy with their respective paths, but they’ll never get to the level of the kids who started early- that’s why everyone starts early! Ha. That said, their numbers are so far off on gymnastics that it is laughable- they need to add a zero to make it more realistic for upper competitive levels. The listed yearly cost wouldn’t even cover competition fees. Dance isn’t even listed as a sport, but it’s been even more expensive for us than gym. I’m glad my kids started late if only because I couldn’t have afforded more years of this.