Article says that youth sports participation is declining overall, but increasing among the richest families, who can get their kids into expensive travel teams.
It also says that richer families not only spend more on their kids, but also spend a higher percentage of the income on their kids.
Among other things, that skews the students who can get recruited for college sports higher in SES background.
This is not news.
I think you’d also find that more innercity kids play basketball than tennis golf
A lot of these rich parents are kidding themselves if they think all those years of expensive club teams is going to get their kid recruited to play lacrosse or soccer at an Ivy League school. Training will only take you so far. Past a certain point, only drive and god-given talent will suffice. I also think money comes into play in some sports more than others. Watching the LSU-Alabama football game last weekend, I didn’t get the sense that there were a lot of rich kids running around the field.
There is a lot wrong with sports these days IMO. This is just one thing.
For example, at DD’s high school there are no recreational sports. You’re either on a team practicing six days a week or there is nothing for you. When I asked about it, they explained that there is not enough room - the facilities are always in use by one team or another. We have a great park district but they don’t really cater to high schoolers because, well, the high school facilities are better than theirs, so high schoolers can just exercise at their school. Therefore there’s hardly any programs at all geared between 8th grade and adults.
Colleges have themselves to blame as well. Recruiters attend club team tournaments because it is less time-consuming to spend one weekend looking at top talent than it is to drive all over the place to attend individual high school games hoping to luck out and spot a great player. That is understandably more efficient, but by default in hanging out with travel teams, that college’s recruiter will never get to watch lower socio-economic players.
I know plenty of rich lacrosse players who had 6 years of elite travel teams and it did get them into top lacrosse schools - Duke, Hopkins, Virginia. One who is a top, top player didn’t have the grades for an Ivy but had his choice among other schools. His parents aren’t wealthy, but his grandparents are. His younger brother is on the same track, but has more learning disabilities so I think his college choices will be limited.
I also know kids from an inner city lacrosse program who did get college scholarships, but at local schools.
Last year during the NCAA tournament, I read an article about Catholic schools like Villanova, Dayton, Scranton and why they developed basketball teams over football. It was mostly money because all you needed for basketball was a gym, but some of it was they wanted to serve their neighborhoods and get locals involved. That was easier to do with basketball.
Yes, you need talent to reach recruitable levels in a sport. However, among those with talent, those with rich parents who can put them in the best position to develop the talent (e.g. better coaching) and put it on the radar of recruiters (e.g. playing in higher profile club team events than high school games between otherwise mediocre teams) have a substantial advantage compared to those who do not.
Looking at the first several players listed on Alabama’s football roster, it did seem that private high schools (including a sports-oriented one) and magnet schools were overrepresented among the players compared to the overall high school enrollment in the US.
I got done having to deal with travel sports last March after being around it for 8-9 years with two kids in different sports. My youngest D who is in 8th grade is playing BB for her school this year, but no more travel. D19 was out last year. When I got to go to a few games for BB recently I realized that I don’t miss it at all. I can’t stand all the comments from the parents. Also I loved having my weekends back this past Summer. Don’t get me wrong I liked watching my kids play, but between the time and money it got to be too much.
I played sports as kid in the 80s. I just feel the youth sports these days have been put on steroids. Gone are the neighborhood leagues that didn’t require us to drive up to an hour for 2-3 games. And then do it all over again the next day oftentimes.
I get it that parents want to give their kids a leg up, but overall it has become too much.
I know a couple of HS swimmers that when they aren’t swimming for the HS team, which is 3/4 of a year that their door to door practice time with commute is 4 hours. Those kids can barely get homework done especially if they are in multiple AP classes. Of course doing other ECs is almost out of the question.
About 5 years ago I was in the city and saw a girl about 14-16 walking in uniform to a softball game. I stopped and thought wow I haven’t seen that in years. Kids walking to practice or riding their bike. Things are just too spread out these days.
Sports is suppose to be about having fun and getting exercise. Not life or death about making it to the next level.
And before you get too worried that your child didn’t make the right team at 10 or 11 I will leave you with two quick stories about kids from our HS. One boy only made the B team as a freshman for BB. Things weren’t going great. Almost quit sophomore year, but then grew. He was a late bloomer and not many schools were looking at him. He went Juco. After one season he got a DI offer. He is now in the NBA. Another boy barely made the B team as a freshman for baseball. Fast forward he eventually was drafted in the 8th round as a pitcher after a few years in college. My point is it is never the end of the world if your kid doesn’t follow the normal path. Many don’t.
Lastly being around swimming for a time I have seen plenty of kids quit the sport at least a season before the parent let them. Meaning it took at least a full season of no improvement or getting worse before the parent would let the kid quit. If you watch your kid he/she will tell you without speaking when they are done and that is OK.
My youngest is about to do her 3rd community play. If we had said it was basketball or nothing that would have never happened. She literally loves to act and be on stage. Who know because she is an introvert.
Here’s a good article on how pay-to-play is hurting USA soccer:
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/sd-sp-us-soccer-pay-to-play-u20s-20180814-story.html
Many people are saying the costs listed in the article are quite low compared to reality. A similar argument can be made for baseball and the travel teams.
One of the biggest “scams” and really atrocities is boys/mens hockey. Sadly, a high school hockey player can rarely play collegiate level hockey even at the D3 level. The path is now playing “juniors” after high school which is unbelievably expensive. Only wealthy families can afford it or those who can find someone to fund them. Kids hope to be recruited D1 from there but the reality is most are never recruited and even those who spend a year or two paying and playing in Juniors often “only” go to D3. College hockey players are often much, much older than your typical 18 year old starting college. If you check the rosters you will see players are older and often come from Canada and out of the country.
I can accept that D1 would have this process but I wish Men’s collegiate hockey would regulate the “industry” so that D3 would have age limits and require a path from high school to college eliminating the expensive and “pay to play” route of Juniors. Great high school hockey players can rarely play college hockey.
I really couldn’t stand the sports when my kids were in it. Like a previous poster there is nothing for kids in high school to stay active if they don’t play one sport year round on travel teams. But honestly the parents were the worst.
My d was a competitive gymnast for a time. She got chosen out of her rec class when she was 4. The coach was great talking to the parents, if you’re here now to go to the Olympic or get a college scholarship stop now. It’s too competitive and too expensive. That didn’t stop many parents from believing their child training 20 hours a week was the next big thing
Oh eyemamom; our son did competitive tumbling throughout elementary school at a gym where there were competitive gymnasts. You’re right; they lived at that gym 20+ hours a week! they were talented and in shape. And every once in awhile a girl would get a scholarship to a college. But otherwise - I can not understand the point of what they went through year after year! *for our son, it was around 5 hours a week and a huge blessing! it built his confidence, core strength, and gave him some great tricks which he can still do today (like walking across the room on his hands or back handsprings). But we had no delusions at all about any of it.
I read through that article and feel like we are living what it describes, and have seen a shift with my kid’s friends and HS athletes over the last 7 or 8 years. Thankfully, my kids aren’t super athletic, and we’ve not been caught up in it too much. I have a friend (wealthy) who has a kid at a boarding school in canada to help with his hockey skills so he can be recruited. He’s talented, but on the short side. The amount they pay for that is unbelievable - and there’s not too many results coming from this yet.
Our best spent money so far has been on piano lessons for D16. That can carry you through your life; you can use that talent forever.
Fortunately our community had rec leagues. D2 played from grades 1-12, spring and summer. D1, played grades 4-10. It got pretty competitive during spring because a lot of the girls who were on the HS school team would play just to stay in shape.
In middle school, my kid was a 50th percentile rec league swimmer. She loved to swim; she was just slow. Rec league practices (and meets) in our area are usually a bunch of 5-12yos in bathtub-temperature water, but when she tried a USA team to have agemates and a cold pool, the coaches expected a minimum 15 hour a week practice commitment (plus travel time, plus meets…) and the desire to be fast. So she mostly stopped swimming, because there were no intermediate options for high schoolers. We recently found a coached masters team (which in swim means 18+) that was willing to take a 15yo, so now she swims 2-3 days a week in a cold pool with a bunch of middle-aged triathletes, and it’s been great.
In our area, there used to be regional YMCA swim league. Very fun and low key, but still competitive.
Yep, YMCA is one of the multiple rec league teams here. Warm pool and little kids. 
My wife and I are friends with a couple who have a son who is a freshman in college. Growing up, his entire life revolved around playing soccer on an academy team. Spring, summer, and fall, as well as indoor soccer in the winter. Constant practices and training. Weekend tournaments up and down the Eastern Seaboard from Massachusetts to Virginia. I can’t even imagine how much time and money was poured into it over the years. They even set up a full size soccer goal in their back yard surrounded by netting so he could practice his shots. I assumed he was playing in college (he’s at a D3 school) but when I checked the team’s web page a few weeks back, he wasn’t listed on the roster.
Bummer, ours was more competitive than that and had a 16 and over group, so glad there is a masters’ team option for the kiddo.
The flip side of this is the number of extremely talented kids who are burned out before they even hit high school. We’ve seen it many, many times where the parent is doing all they can to “help” their child with private coaching, driving further for “better” team and the kid quits the sport entirely. Some of these kids had a ton of innate talent, but the parent starts dreaming of Olympics or college scholarship and ups the pressure. Between that and skyrocketing injury rates from too much specialization and hours too soon.
The NCAA only regulates who can play, not how old they are. One has 5 years to play 4 years, and the clock starts to run when you take a college class after graduating from high school. If you take your first class at 18, your eligibility will expire when you are 22-23. If you never go to college until you are 25, you could still be on a college team at 30.
If you want a cold pool, go to the U of Denver. They have community and masters swimming as well as a youth team. It is freezing. Ice burg cold. Purple lips and fingers cold. My kids went to many birthday parties there and the pool was as cold as the ice rink next to it.
I’m with @partyof5. We were lucky to have both the Police Athletic League and the YMCA and HS teams. The kids (or should I say parents?) competing for scholarships had long since been involved with travel leagues and did their own thing; they did not compete on the HS teams.
I think college athletic scholarships can be a trap, and that rather than spending so much money on travel leagues, parents would be better off saving that money for college. Here’s why I say that…
My personal experience is that I played a college sport and quit my Junior year. The amount of travel involved significantly adversely impacted my ability to attend class. I also got into an argument with my coach who wanted me to continue to play with an injury and get surgery off-season. I was so grateful that I could walk away from the team and walk towards other opportunities since I wasn’t handcuffed by an athletic scholarship.
Several of my relatives also played college sports, all at different schools. One quit for the same reasons I had, and was later picked up by another team with a more reasonable coach and reasonable schedule. Like me, she was grateful she wasn’t on scholarship so that she wasn’t stuck. Another relative was on scholarship and said all college was for her was playing the sport; she majored in whatever was easiest and where the profs would work with her schedule. She wished she could quit, but couldn’t. After graduating college she went back to another college to get an undergraduate (not masters) degree in nursing, and said she would have never had the time to do that with her sports commitment. Yet another relative is currently on a team and is having a very difficult time with missing classes for games, and has also had to pick his major based on whatever is easiest and where the profs are more lenient about missing classes. For him, though, this is OK because this sport is his life and he will make his career in this sport (whether competing, coaching or something else, who knows). And my own kid is playing a college sport but as a walk-on, and she carefully chose which teams to try out for based on the level of commitment required. Her commitment is only 12 hours a week (besides games), and games are only on weekends, so no missing classes. This is what I think college sports should be.
Based on my experience, being a member of a very competitive college sports team ends up being a full time job, and it ends up coming first before attending classes, and leaves little to no time for exploring other EC options (many of which are helpful in giving kids an idea about what careers they might be interested in). So if parents have the money to spend on crazy expensive sports travel leagues, why would they want their kid to have a job rather than college? I guess my point is, what is the athlete going to college for? If it’s to make a career out of the sport, then that works. But if it’s to follow intellectual interests or pursue career training in fields other than athletics, then I think some of these very competitive college sports programs can be problematic.