Youth Sports Costs Getting Out of Hand
By Ken Reed
At one time, sports-loving kids played sandlot ball or pick-up ball. Basically, they’d call their friends and set up a game in the park or at a friend’s house that had a basketball hoop in the driveway.
Then with the advent of Little League baseball, parents got involved and started organizing the games for their kids. Teams were made up of neighborhood kids playing teams from nearby neighborhoods.
Fast forward to today and the club sports/travel team nightmare. Top youth athletes today are quickly encouraged to become specialists in a single sport, join a club team made up of top athletes from around the city or state, and then forced to come up with big bucks to fly to other cities, stay in quality hotels, and play games against other elite club teams from that state. Did I mention this happens as young as 10-years-old?
My daughter was on the top team in a highly competitive club soccer program. To continue on that team for the next year was going to cost approximately $8,000 due primarily to a dramatic increase in the number of airplane trips out-of-state. She was going to be 13 years old. We found other sports options.
Many families will also hire personal trainers for their kids to try and make them faster, stronger and more skilled.
This, folks, is the professionalization of youth sports.
Is this progress? Or insanity?
Travis Dorsch is a former NFL player who now studies parents engagement in their children’s sports as an assistant professor at Utah State University. He says family spending on youth sports has grown so much in recent years that it’s now as high as 10.5% of gross family income. As you might imagine, he also says this phenomenon is hurting family harmony.
“A family bringing in $50,000 a year could be spending $5,500,” according to Dorsch.
“Without being judgy, I’m fine with families spending that kind of money. What’s wrong is when that investment brings out some sort of negative parent behavior. Or if the kid says mom and dad are spending $10,000 on me a year, what are they expecting in return? Is it a college scholarship? The chances are slim to none of a kid getting a scholarship.”
Especially a full-ride scholarship. A lot of youth sports parents are shocked to discover that the vast majority of college athletic scholarships are partial scholarships and that there will still be a big invoice number due every semester.
Mike Trombley is a former pitcher for the Minnesota Twins and is now a financial advisor. He says one of the tragedies from the explosion of club sports travel teams is that kids in lower socioeconomic situations are left behind.
“Some people are not in the financial situation to pay for their kid to do it,” says Trombley.
Mark Hyman, an assistant professor at George Washington University who studies youth sports, says parents would be better off investing money in quest of an academic scholarship than an athletic scholarship.
“What I tell parents is if you want to get a scholarship for your kids, you’re better off investing in a biology tutor than a quarterback coach,” says Hyman. “There’s much more school dollars for academics.”
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
Sports Forum Podcast
Episode #28 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: A Chat With Mano Watsa, a Leading Basketball and Life Educator – Watsa is President of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world, with over 150 camps in 30+ U.S. states and Canada. We discuss problems in youth sports today, including single sport specialization, the growing gap between the “haves” and “have-nots,” the high drop-out rate in competitive sports, and the growing mental health challenges young athletes are dealing with today.
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Episode #27 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Kids’ Sports: How We Can Take Back the Game and Restore Quality Family Time In the Process – Linda Flanagan is author of “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports and Why It Matters.” We discuss how commercialized and professionalized youth sports are hurting kids and their families.
Episode #26 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: How Can We Fix Youth Sports? – John O’Sullivan is Founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project and author of “Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids.”
Episode #25 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Physical Education Should Be a Critical Component of K-12 School Design – Michael Horn is co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.
Episode #24 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Mental Health and Athletes: Ending the Stigma – Nathan Braaten and Taylor Ricci are the founders of Dam Worth It, a non-profit created to end the stigma around mental health at colleges and universities through sport, storytelling, and community creation.
Episode #23 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Olympian Benita Fitzgerald Mosley Talks Title IX, Youth Sports and the Olympics.
Media
"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- League of Fans Sports Policy Director Ken Reed quoted in Washington Post column titled "What happened to P.E.? It’s losing ground in our push for academic improvement," by Jay Mathews
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Vanderbilt Sport & Society - On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss with guest Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director for League of Fans and author of How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
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