re: The soaring price of youth sports: $50 to try out, $3,000 to play

My favorite are the parents standing outside of grocery stores with buckets asking for donations for their travel ball team. If you can't afford it...find something else to do.

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The soaring price of youth sports: $50 to try out, $3,000 to play

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Peanuts on how much will they spend on the latest "gear," little Jaxxtyn needs the new Marucci bats, retro cleats (metal and formed depending on league), gloves, sunglasses, etc.

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favorite are the parents standing outside of grocery stores with buckets asking for donations for their travel ball team. If you can't afford it...find something else to do.

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Everyone acts like this is exclusive to travel ball. shite happens in rec ball too, all the all star teams from Alabama doing fund raisers for weeks so they can travel to baton rouge to play in a tournament.

These kids get bags, water bottles, wrist bands, personalized towels, all sorts of shite. It's for 3 tournaments, 3, area, state, world series. Thousands for 3 tournaments. They are even collecting for the parents hotel rooms and spending money.

Rec ball ain't much better than travel these days, people have ruined all of it. We play travel but I pay for my own shite.

There are two Cooperstown outfits and the Cooperstown Dreans Park is lucrative for the owner.

Cooperstown Dreams is $1295 per player/coach with a minimum of 11 players and two coaches plus a $1295 umpire and $800 registration fee per team. There are 102 teams each week for 15 weeks in 2026. That is a minimum of $30,893,760 for the summer plus there are additional team fees required. Add on extras and the amount the kids spend at the snack stand because the meals are inedible and their revenue just grows.

Three days of seeding ganes then teams go into a 102 team bracket that is played over just two days. To win a team has to play a minimum of five games to win and as many as nine if seeded. Full six inning games with no time limit. The last four are on one day.



The two big NIT three day tournaments at Traction have just as good competition.

Dreams Park also has no grading and separation of teams by ability, no pitch limits despite playing six to ten full six inning games with no time limit over five days and allows bats illegal in every other promotion. They play on a 200 foot field which can make for some silly games as far as HR totals.

Lawsuit

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She even tried a GoFundMe campaign to raise some of the $4,000 she’ll need to reach Cooperstown Dreams Park

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If you need a gofundme it's time to take a step back & seek other options.

If this chick would spend $4,000 on resume, job training, career development, learning how to sell shite etc. then maybe in a few years she could actually afford it.

Gone are the days when a 10 inch 2 x 12 sufficed as a home plate.

Yep, I have grand kids with marginal talent but they (except one) and their parents saw where it was going.

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not because they all think they are going to college.

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I didn't say the kids thought that.

I haven't met a dedicated travel ball parent yet who doesn't think their kid will be a superstar at LSU on their next CWS team.

I see it on Facebook too. Parents paying tons of money for QB and speed coaches, shooting coaches, batting coaches, etc. Some dudes I am friends with post constant updates like their kid is a 5-star recruit, and literally no one comments or cares.

Out of all of my friends, only one ever had a daughter who became a D1 athlete, and she is at LSU now. He didn't even pay for all the training coaches for her. She was just gifted from the start.

The women in the article is what I typically see and base my comments on.

Wait til she spends 15-20 grand on a good used car for her lil son, then another 2-300 a month for insurance. Then 800-1000 a month toward room and board at his college.

frick them kids. Daddy needs to retire sometime.

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Yep, I have grand kids with marginal talent but they (except one) and their parents saw where it was going.

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It does not have to be as such. There are plenty of teams at the AA or AAA team that stay within a two hour drive and are there for the good side of things that come from playing on a team. Many may take a season ending destination event just for fun.

Almost all the tournaments in New Orleans at Lasalle and Val Riess are filled with such teams,

Baseball is fricked. I don't know who you can blame but the Traction's of the world aren't gonna pay for themselves.

I've told the story before but when my oldest kid was 8 (roughly 7 years ago) we were just bebopping along with 8U and one day I was talking with one of the moms. She said she had a 12 year old and she was trying to figure out how she was gonna eventually pay for both him and her 8 year old to do it all. At this point I was totally ignorant to it. We were paying $250/year at Traction for a club I will not name. She said "it's $2800 this year and they're raising it to $3000 next season.." I'll never forget this. I was like "WHAT?!" I was COMPLETELY shocked by this.

I was a little loud about it. It was nuts. I was just thinking "this motherfricker is fleecing the absolute frick out of all these people..." Needless to say, we left. But this was insane. What did you get for your money? The opportunity to spend more money. Today my kid is a varsity athlete in high school and is absolutely excelling at every sport he plays. But that was my first foray into it.

People are making some serious money on this shite. And it's horribly gross.