Maybe we’re wrong about this. Maybe millenials are saying “no” to organized sports for their own kids… sports they grew up with. Maybe they don’t want to schlep their kids to practice 2-3 times a week and then devote their weekends to various sporting activities. Maybe they learned the hard way, that this sort of competitive, helicoptered athletics don’t really make great athletes or great parents.*
We were the “mean parents”. We asked a couple of things of our kids…
Kid one and kid two did dance until grade 3, then children’s choir, then precollege orchestra. We just couldn’t be in a lot of places at once. Children’s choir involved a lot of driving and two rehearsals a week…plus performances. And not near home. Precollege orchestra was about a 40 minute drive from home. Totally worth it for our kids…but we were so happy when they could drive themselves.
Costs? Probably the same as some sports…
The article says youth aren’t playing enough sports because they are too expensive and then goes on to show that there are a lot of opportunities to not only play, but to play for free. I know that the hockey leagues have free options all the time (but of course to continue may cost money) and same with lax. My brother runs a lax league and there are a lot of opportunities to play for free (dad coaches, kid plays free).
I think the survey should have asked what the kids are doing instead of playing soccer or baseball. If they are running because it is free? Fine. If they are going to computer coding classes? Maybe there should be some physical activity too.
I just don’t buy the premise of the article that there are no affordable youth sports offered. Kids might be choosing something else, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities.
Helicopter parenting being the norm now may make play time more costly. A generation or two ago, many kids were free range kids after school, playing pickup games of basketball, touch football, etc. with their friends after school, without the parents needing to spend time or money. Now, a kid’s play date with friends requires parental supervision, as does any activity. Since parental time is now involved, parents may have motivation to make sure that the kid’s activity is working toward some goal, rather than just playing with their friends.
@Darcy123 Our school has always had a similar non-cut position with CC and swimming however that is changing. I coach diving as a volunteer assistant coach at the school and this year is challenging. Yesterday was the first day of practice for the girls season and our swim team had 68 girls show up and the divers had 21. We do not honestly know what we are going to do, almost 90 girls is just too many.
We have the luxury of a 12 lane pool but 3 of those lanes are taken up by the diving boards so there are 9 lanes open for swim practice. This puts 7+ swimmers in each lane which is just too crowded. By the same token trying to keep the divers engaged (and warm) when they are waiting over 5 minutes between dives is not good for anyone. We may have no choice but to cut, the last thing we want to do. Running multiple practices is not an option as the district has leased out the pool to swim clubs, water polo clubs, and kayaking clubs so there are no more hours in the day.
Some of this will take care of itself which based on what I am hearing right now which is sad. I have a family friend that has a daughter that is on the spectrum. Her older brothers both swam for the school and she has been a swimmer her whole life. She loves it but is not very good. She showed up yesterday, was overwhelmed and over powered in the pool and it sounds like she will not be back, it is heartbreaking. I am hoping I can convince her to be a manager and stay involved but I am sure she is not alone.
Our kids decided at young age they didn’t want to do soccer headers and possibly lose brain cells. The travel coach said he wouldn’t choose then to join his team, which they were fine with, though both were otherwise quite good for their age level.
Chronic illness severely restricted any stamina they had for sports by the time they were teens anyway. We never spent much besides reasonable double digit registration fees plus some snacks for them to play, and all the driving to and from events.
Practice 2-3 times a week?? That would have been nice. 
The article isn’t about playing pick up games with friends but that there are no affordable rec or club options for 6-12 year olds. That’s what I don’t agree with. I think there are plenty, and the article featured two families who make it work with no money and no transportation. They may not get the kids to the Olympics, but they serve the purpose of teaching the rules and keeping the kids in shape.
In our family S1 was a late bloomer. He was good at every sport but his size and demeanor always resulted in a coin toss for him between the A and B team. We encouraged him to play anything and everything, hoping to find his niche. We spent a bunch of money to help him find his way. He eventually decided to pursue two very different sports, and did quite well, but he always participated because he found them fun, it was never about the competition. As a college student he’s become a fitness freak. When he runs into his old coaches at the gym they can’t believe how he’s transformed his body. Again, everything he does is motivated by the joy he gets from the activity.
S2 is four years younger than S1. He got dragged to every practice. Coaches loved him so they would let him participate. He was an early bloomer and hyper-competitive. By the time he was ten he had no trouble keeping up with the fourteen year olds on his brother’s B team. That’s when the coaches started to take notice. It’s also when pay-to-play kicked in, just like the article reports. He quickly transitioned from town, to travel and then club. He chose to specialize early but all of his coaches continued to challenge him to play every position in practice. As he climbed the pyramid everything expanded exponentially. The time, money and travel dedicated to his sport at this point is borderline clinically insane. My wife and I are simply along for the ride now. He loves the sport but he’s driven by the competition, unlike his older brother.
Club teams in our area, regardless of the sport, are very competitive and expensive. The high school is large and most teams make the playoffs each year. Even with specialization and club sports from an early age there are no guarantees that your child will make a varsity team. It’s basically a pay-to-play arms race the generates a great deal of income for clubs. The high school coaches love it.
@Sue22 I never got that notification lol.
And also now I can’t get that image out of my head.
My state has high school fishing leagues. I like the idea of getting out on the water with your friends against an opponent (the fish) that may or may not show up.
So, both articles reach conclusions about why kids don’t participate and/or drop out of organized team sports…without including any families who don’t participate and/or dropped out of sports. The only rationale I can see from the Aspen Inst. survey for the conclusion that cost is the primary factor is this: the median income of the families surveyed (those involved in sports) is higher than the national median income; therefore cost is a barrier. One could probably reach a similar conclusion regarding proximity to a local Starbucks: the people surveyed were closer to a local Starbucks than the national median; therefore, lack of proximity to a Starbucks is a factor driving down youth participation in organized team sports.
In my area, opportunities for participation are more plentiful now than they were 10 years ago and there are ample opportunities for recreational play in almost every sport at very low cost. That includes strong financial aid opportunities even at the most competitive level. Far easier for low income families to find cheap sports options than, say, cheap music lessons. Participation levels may be an issue in some areas and sports, but this survey doesn’t get us closer to understanding why.
I think rec teams should be for everyone, but they aren’t. In our area sports start at 5 or 6. They’re the training ground for travel teams and travel teams are the pathway to the high school teams. It took me a while, and involvement in other youth activities, to understand that a lot of the parents knew each other and teams were handpicked from the beginning. It wasn’t an accident that a majority of the kids my children knew from another youth activity ended up on the same teams. They all moved up to travel teams together then onto the high school teams. It wasn’t skill that got them on their teams at 5, it was who they knew. They developed skills because they had the coaches who knew what they were doing.
By middle school our area doesn’t have enough kids left to hold a rec league. The majority are doing travel and if you can’t pay you can’t compete. If your kid was on the regular rec team and not groomed for the travel teams they aren’t going to make the cut either. The parents who can afford it pay for less expensive activities, but the only sports you can get are usually individual sports. Unless your kid is a natural you can pretty much tell who’s destined for the high school team and who’s not based on which rec team they end up on.
My kids play or have played sports, throughout their childhood. I’m a big believer in all the benefits accrued by playing with and against others. The “thrill of victory and agony of defeat” an all. Lots of valuable lessons were taught over the years. And lots of exercise too! I also made a lot of friends that I have to this day.
Austin - I completely agree with you – the hand-picking, the skill sets learned, the destination of the teams; we saw so much of that with club soccer and competition dance with our younger two. We learned that it was necessary if they wanted to play in HS; our older two didn’t do much club sports and we changed our tune with the younger two.
So at our lowish SES school, we do have kids (new to the country) who come in and can play and are amazing athletes. I rarely see that upset in neighboring districts which aren’t considered low SES; I think there the sports pipeline is more prevalent. I appreciate how our athletic director at HS says The Best Kids Will Play. It’s not too political.
One cool thing that’s happened lately in our largish city – high school Y sports have become a “thing” – for fun; mainly basketball. The kids who don’t make their HS teams have been playing Y Ball; there were over 40 11th/12th grd. teams playing through just one Y last year. Boys loved it. It reminded me of intramural sports in college.
I don’t know now and I didn’t know when my kids were in school how sports were organized either in school or outside of school. I don’t remember any of my kids’ friends being in organized sports. My daughter did get the experience of team play on National Academic League. I’m guessing since we live in an inner city school district that there wasn’t and isn’t much pay to play going on among the public school kids. We do, however, have a new MLB Urban Youth Academy so that should enhance opportunities for kids to play.
Our kids never did club sports…they didn’t have the interest and it probably wasn’t in our budget anyway. S did a couple of school sports in high school, but he wasn’t going for a college scholarship. D did dance both at school and for a while outside of school. She was also in school plays and did piano lessons at school. Most of these activities were fairly affordable and they didn’t take up a ton of time…
Some of my kid’s friends did so many activities, they were busy all the time! Literally had very little free time!
"One cool thing that’s happened lately in our largish city – high school Y sports have become a “thing” – for fun; mainly basketball. The kids who don’t make their HS teams have been playing Y Ball; there were over 40 11th/12th grd. teams playing through just one Y last year. "
Love to hear this!! We had some terrific park district programs, but they all end in 8th grade. If you don’t play 20 hours a week in high school and/or for an expensive club, there is no place for high schoolers to play.
My family passed on organized sports during the early years not due to cost but due to time/travel. Everything in our area requires a SAHM or you can forget it. Now my three are in High School it’s still an issue getting to/from practice and competitions.
My kids did area sports through the time they were about 12. It rarely cost more than $60 plus maybe another $140 max for equipment. They didn’t have much stamina once chronic conditions kicked in, so only did inexpensive school sports thereafter.