This was the same for my kids. They aren’t very athletic and the intensity was too much. But they would have kept up rec league with their friends if it had just been fun. My daughter ended up on a team in middle school where other parents on *our* team were heckling our bad players
This is why we need more community and school sport options before high school: parks and rec leagues, places like the Y, sport "clinics" at elementary schools (if not full teams). Some communities have a lot more options for this than others.
The commidification of youth sports is real. The "have's" understand there are really only a few pathways to build and maintain wealth and the sports pathway has detoured from the destitute and shifted to the suburbs and gated communities.
🙋🏻♀️ Correct. I was a cheer mom for 14 straight years, from 2000 to 2014. Luckily, my 2 daughters ‘only’ did youth and junior/senior school cheer, not all star, and only did competitive cheer later in youth and jr/sr school and only 1 daughter went to nationals in FL for 3 years.
I want to say the daughter did All Star and they would take days off to travel and from what they said, you are paying for the travel, stay, entry fees, etc.
Yes. I was an all star mom & not only is it $$, it almost requires a SAH parent. My kid had to be in the gym by like 4pm 4-5 days per week. During comp season, we had to be free to travel & bc you have to win bids to some comps, you can only plan so far ahead. Idk how that would've worked w/a 9to5.
I think she would just randomly take like a Friday off about two weeks in advance. It’s really illuminating to hear about the costs needed to just participate in a lot of sports, especially at a competitive level.
💁🏾♀️ Back in the 70s, when I was a cheerleader and on the Drill Team (dance team), the school paid for our uniforms. We only paid for our socks and sneakers. Now, the parents have to pay for everything! It's like the children are going to private schools!
There is almost no way for a high school athlete to compete for a college/amateur spot without thousands upon thousands of dollars of family income backing their training.
Hard working, talented, but underprivileged athletes are left to predatory insiders who see them as a risk-accessed investment to financially exploit down the road.
What we're really looking at is the system was in the northern US and Canada for Hockey now expanded everywhere. I knew people who were on travel hockey teams in junior high and high school for Hockey. Was like this on both sides of the border.
We’ve put up barriers that are too insurmountable for some kids. Very good players fall thru the cracks as a result. Very good players are not falling thru the cracks in countries that produce strong teams
Become? When I was a child, over a half century ago, sports, band, and choir were the big three "rich kid" activities between the costs for uniforms, equipment and travel for competitions.
Choir was $35 for the outfit, $2 a week for "music use fee", and anywhere from $10 to $300 for transport and accommodations during the competition season, per trip.
It sucks so much. I remember riding my bike like five miles to my baseball games in my uniform sponsored by some local small business with a weird name. Nowadays, middle-school kids are flying across the country during the school year to play in soccer tournaments. Insanity.
Ah um, my kids club has entered into the chat. Kids did tours in Brazil, Spain, France, and Sweden. The year we signed my kid UP it got cancelled due to COVID. Mind you I played with a bunch of foreign kids in empty lots, with book bags as goals. Kids sports now are insane!!!
It is a cottage industry all over the state now too, the athletic private schools. Many of them have plenty of non athlete students... but the campus owned housing is all occupied by scholarship athletes and shit.
Soccer in the US has been an example of this for decades. All you need is a ball to play, but to compete you need parents who can afford to travel around the country with you every other weekend
A million percent. Might sound overwrought to some, but town-based youth sports being hollowed out and downsized strikes me as deeply tragic. Creates bonds within socioeconomic groups at the expense of local social capital across socioeconomic groups.
Yep. It's insane. I went to school in the 50's-60's. Kids tried out and got positions on Cheerleading, Pom-pons, Basketball, Football, Gymastics, Swimming, etc, but it was all school-based. I don't remember any competitive sports that weren't school oriented back then.
Way back in the day Ralph Wiley (RIP) argued that the eastern Europeans were the real rags-to-riches stories in the NBA, because the talented kids in America were being scouted & recruited into prep schools at a very young age
wnba also, daughters of stars/coaches. Caitlin Clark's grandfather, dad, mom and brother(s) were/are players and/or coaches and same is true for her former player-now coach boyfriend, whose dad was Iowa's men bb coach for decades.
If it was this expensive back in the 90s, I wouldn't have been able to play club volleyball, wouldn't have gotten a scholarship, and college would have been a LOT less affordable.
it's because every parent thinks their kid is going to be D1 and then Pro ... very short sighted and takes the passion for sport out of the kid ... just my humble ...
Everything in the USA has to be part of capitalism. Given enough time someone will create industry out of the most innocent acts. Children’s sports, donations to charity, religion, exercise and the list grows by the minute.
It’s been that way for a long time. I never had enough money to play sports growing up. It is isolating not being in the cool kid groups, everyone deserves an opportunity to play
Yo, more than 1/5 parents believe their kids are college level athletes and 1/9 believe they can go pro!
Man, I always thought it was brutal how Millennial's parents crapped all over their kids' athletic abilities, but it was probs for the best.
@minakimes.bsky.social was suggesting we need a "scared straight" for athletics where higher level players come down and show kids how little chance they have of advancing. Too many people are buying into false hope
Absolutely needs to be done. But there is an industry now built up around all this and now the rich are going to use this to make university even more exclusive.
One of the biggest reasons the NBA ratings are down because these new generation of players are so unreliable, They driven Lamborghini since they were 16…
It always was. American football was invented by the Ivy League. Basketball and volleyball were invented at YMCA schools a few years and a few miles apart in Massachusetts. Hockey's Stanley Cup was donated by a British Earl. Boxing: Marquess of Queensberry. Horse racing: "The sport of kings."
Not to mention the time commitment required from parents to get the kiddos around. Blu collar parents who have to punch a clock many times can't do it, while the white collar ones working flexible schedules and arrangements can.
Comments
Youth sport under 16 should not be a business or a career path for coaches.
It should not require all of a family’s free time.
Current systems suck the joy out of sport.
all the alligator shirt kids were the hockey players
You can still run on the cheap.
Meanwhile, art teachers can't afford paint.
That's only been more true since, huh...
Very few players worldwide have come from privileged backgrounds.
Man, I always thought it was brutal how Millennial's parents crapped all over their kids' athletic abilities, but it was probs for the best.