re: How Kids’ Sports Became a $15 Billion Industry

Work with a guy who’s daughters are on a soccer travel team. It’s rediculous. He spends every weekend traveling to New Orleans, Dallas, San Antonio, and other nearby states on occasion. He’s 100% bought in as well and defends it to his death bed.

I’ve mentioned on a few occasions that the Houston area has like 9 million people. Are there not enough 10 year old girls to get a game going? He claims that she would beat everyone silly and has to compete against the best of the best. ITS GIRLS SOCCER. I know for a fact he’s taken a second mortgage on his home already to help cover the cost.

I am sure some of what is said is correct.

But here is what I see.

Most teams are AA or AAA. These teams generally have no paid coaches. They play local and there is not much investment.

Some Majors teams pay the coach. Most do not. It is slightly more expensive to play I. The division because the teams are spread out.

I don’t know a team that plays year round.

I have two boys one travel ball one local league. They both wrap up in June. The travel team starts about 45 days earlier.

I don’t agree with everything travel. I also think that it is pretty benign.

There is a lot of inaccuracies in how some view it. The older the kids get the less crazy the parents are. My kid played in a soccer deal this year. Those folks were crazier than baseball parents

I’ve said it since all this travel ball nonsense started, all it does is bring the player up a notch or 2 from their natural ability, it will NOT make a mediocre athlete into a big leaguer.

I put my money where my mouth is. My son never touched the field with a personal coach or travel ball team for 14 years. He played $30 registration rec ball his entire career. He missed the cut this summer for his high school’s metro summer league team, but he was every bit as good as those kids, just not as polished. I got him 4 one on one sessions at $40 a session and gave him a drill routine that he went through every day of the summer. In December he tried out again and made the team, he’s the only non travel ball kid on his high school team. I’ve invested around $1000 for his entire baseball career and another few hundred for football, which he enjoys, but isn’t serious about.

Regardless of how the rest of his career turns out, he has a minimum of 4 years of quality baseball ahead of him and has already surpassed 70% of the kids that played travel ball.

My son wanted to play hockey just for fun and I got him in skating lessons to learn to skate but as I started researching getting him in a team I said frick this. The cost to join a local team was around 1k a season and it didn’t guarantee thst he would even play. My boy just wants to play hockey. He couldn’t care about going pro.

Yes there are some but most are horrible. Some 5A schools have players that know more than their coaches.

quote:

---

If your kid wants to play baseball, basketball, or football, be thankful. Those three are dirt cheap compared to the others.

---

truth..

These kids are the next generation's "child star syndrome"

Their heads are constantly being filled with expectations that will not turn into reality for 95% of them. Their entire identity and sense of self worth is going to be tied up in athletic achievement that never materializes.

I became a "travel ball" coach because im better at teaching than all the jokers around here... with the exception of one guy, my trainer who taught me. We only charge the kids about $50/mo for training(about $750 for the year with uniforms). The rest of the clubs are anywhere from $1k-3k per year depending on the team. High level will get up to about $7-9k after travel and club/team costs. Crazy.

That's soccer though. Baseball, football, etc seem way more expensive.

We kind of have mixed feelings about clubs. Both of my kids play the community leagues for baseball and basketball, but my daughter also plays club soccer.

My daughter took to soccer very early and is really tall for her age. She would score a bunch of goals against a team of kids who most of the time didn't want to be there. Parents would start bitching and moaning asking why there was an older kid on the team and it got to the point where my daughter started to get self-conscious about it because she could hear it on the field. It's not that she is some soccer prodigy, just that she seems to have endless engery and she seems to (at a young age) understand the strategy of the game, which puts her head & shoulders above most kids.

Last year we decided that for this sport we would sign her up in the club league that way she didn't have to hear parents complaining.

Eta: we purposely found a team that only travels in the immediate region and only local tournaments.