Competitiveness as well. Playing for fun when every other kid (parent!) is out there trying to be a pro. My neurodivergent kid had no chance in

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.

Legalize weed and use tax income to fund kids athletics programs

The monetization of everything slowly kills it because it becomes about the money and not the actual thing.

Monetizing parents dreams of having a professional athlete in the family is so gross

Yea it is. Saw it on my kid’s and so many parents have absolutely lost the plot. It’s embarrassing

Also your kid has to start playing when they’re 5 years old or they’ll be behind all the other kids if they want to start playing at 10.

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.

A coworker had a daughter that does competitive cheer and I was shocked at the amount of travel and expense to do these competitions.

🙋🏻‍♀️ 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.

That does sound like a lot of work for you and them. Nationals for 3 yrs is quite an accomplishment.

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.

So soon will be science and medicine (when those rich kids grow up)

💁🏾‍♀️ 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!

Youth sport is out of control in Canada too, although I think we maintain more entry points for community-based rec play. 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.

By design.

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.

Everything* ....At least the CWC is free on DAZN

I am not a writer but I’ve been wanting to research about what has happened to basketball for 2 years

The single biggest problem with soccer in the US

US soccer could be an absolute damn powerhouse. But it would take a near complete teardown of everything about travel soccer.

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

i never played hockey in the 80s bc my parents couldn't afford gear, like not even close all the alligator shirt kids were the hockey players

Precisely it and now all sports have taken on this pattern. Unless you have parents rich enough to travel you ain't gonna be a sports star

Simply living is a rich person’s activity.

Just like science and medicine.

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.

I guess it depends on the area, because when I was a kid 35 years ago, band and choir cost nothing and sports was a $25 uniform fee.

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.

Gross. Glad I went to school in a sane district.

has?

Hooray capitalism!

It’s crazy to me we don’t see more brown in golf. The game is at its core, sticks, a ball, clothes.

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!!!

Certain sports. You can still run on the cheap.

Always has been. Only difference is the 90s pro players, invested in their kids more than any other generation has.

This, and they’re trying to convince us trans people are the biggest threat to sports

Oh, God, it's the worst. The pressure to play travel/club/AAU, etc. Then purchase new gear all the time and get nailed with admission prices.

"become"?

Remember when your parents would also help coach the team and help train. Now they gotta be certified and have training background.

When they started IMG in Bradenton, Florida for tennis, then expanded out to things like basketball, baseball, and soccer, it was all over.

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.

All the training they are put in as kids is only affordable to parents who have the extra funds for them, same for going to professional games

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

Yes. You don't need much equipment at all, but it's one of the most expensive sports, so it's basically off-limits for a lot of kids.

The #1 reason the US isn't more competitive. I'm having that conversation right now with my 8 year old. It's so expensive to play competitively.

Yeah. Sadly, other sports are like that now too. I recall playing little league baseball, but now I guess you have to be able to travel.

Yeah which is one reason why we see less African American baseball players today with the emergence of travel leagues.

You should see what the pros make.

Low population density across the US is leading cause of this

This here

The USA is currently doing to youth sports what it did to music and visual arts education back in the 1970s & 80s.

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.

Highschool sports has been a multi-billion dollar industry for decades Meanwhile, art teachers can't afford paint.

Both of my kids played parks and rec sports. What's happening?

some people got the idea that they would be able to send their kids to college with it and thought it was a pay-to-win system

It’s insane. Gone are the days of recreational teams

Or rich people wanted to invest in poor kids.

Half the NBA are the rich sons of former players lol

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 That's only been more true since, huh...

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.

to play and to watch live in-person😑

And it’s because weird adults are making $$$ off 12 year old volleyball and convincing parents that it is that important also

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 part of the reason why it is so expensive.

Pay-to-play has been destroying youth sports for decades now.

Saudi Arabia , Qatar hosting ,can’t even go . It’s all horseshit . Boxing you can’t find a good fight ( looking forward to Katie Taylor )

The best kids in soccer don’t come from an academy, they come from the streets. Very few players worldwide have come from privileged backgrounds.

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 ...

bsky.app/profile/heej...

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.

I gotta volunteer coach to get a discount so mine can play somewhat cheaply 👍

Low key: They have been for decades. 😢

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

ozzie smith learned to play by throwing a tennis ball against a brick wall, today’s top shortstops had their own personal trainers at age 10

Always has been

unfortunately yeah

A similar fate has befallen the arts, music and, indeed, music journalism in the UK.

You have to start your kids early to build connections and connections plus the price of gear and travel.

We played a lot of "work-up" baseball as kids, with no adults around. Great fun and a great equalizer of the economic classes in a small town.

All of them.

Everything in America is getting financialized

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.

Huh? Parents of millennials are how we got here. They're who started this

Maybe I was just poor but I remember my friends being told by their parents "little league is fun but you ain't going pro"

@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.

Yup. Traveling teams, camps, equipment are all big business.

expensive equipment keeps ^those people^ from participating...

That's by design.

And then it starts to suck cause you no longer have people who are passionate about it playing.

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."

i think all sports derive from games played by the world’s first unemployed people gambling in bars in post-enclosure britain.

Yup

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.