Originally Posted by
himespau
Yeah, when I was a kid in the 80's, there was city league soccer with parent volunteer coaches that you paid like $20 a season for. Then, you had school leagues for many other sports that cost like $10 each and summer league little league and tennis (I think those got extra money from the city/sponsors as they had paid coaches) were similar.
Now, with my kids, everything seems to be trying to feed into elite and traveling teams. No, I don't want to pay $250 for my 2nd grade daughter to play on your "elite" soccer team when she's not really sure she likes it. We're trying volleyball this year, but trying to do low pressure on it (which means she gets less playing time than the teammates whose parents are getting them in private coaching sessions outside of practice, but where's the fun in that?).
Yup.
A few years ago in a small/medium sized town in Georgia (an hour South of Atlanta), I witnessed tryouts for a baseball league with players being aged like 8-12. It looked like NFL combines. The coaches literally had stopwatches timing the 8 year olds as they ran bases.
I thought to myself, "This sh*t is ridiculous."
And it got more ridiculous after the kid makes the team. There is no team equipment. Not only does each kid have to have their own glove, each kid has to have his/her own helmet and bat. Then you gotta have a gear bag to haul all of that in. An the uniforms look like college uniforms with nice material and stitching and names on the back, etc...and fitted ball caps.
Then there are "travel teams" where you travel across the region during the summer and play tournaments. This means mom and/or dad have to take off Friday afternoons to drive to the next state, hotel, restaurants, entry fees, etc...
This culminates in a lot of pressure on the kid. Imagine, after all of that, wanting to tell mom and dad that you don't want to play anymore? Even if they are understanding, the kid still may feel the pressure of not wanting to quit after all of the investment.
I know this is cliche, but back in my day whoever showed up made the team. You paid $5 for a team "jersey" (which was just a colored tshirt). You were big time if your team had tshirts with numbers on the back. All we had to provide on our own was pants, cleats, and a glove. And we could wear the cap of our favorite MLB team. The team provided bats, helmets, and even the catcher's gear. And this was HS
summer ball. No pressure AT ALL. I also played on my HS team during the school year for 3 years, it was a bit more regimented with tryouts and the uniforms were nicer, but still not the pressure of playing today.
I've heard friends and coworkers telling similar stories about other sports including cheerleading.
Only a very, very small percentage of these kids (say 0.01%) will even get a college scholarship much less make it to the pros, but 99.99% of them have to participate in the grind...as well as 99.99% of the parents.
Further, there are the parents who don't handle all of this well and do put a lot of pressure on the kids. It's awful. There was a documentary on Netflix called
Trophy Kids that shed a lot of light on the subject.
Honestly, I'd rather a kid not participate in sport than get involved in the system above. I'm sure that "Casual" versions of these leagues exist, but I haven't run across them.