A friend of mine spent $2,000 last month for his son to play in a soccer tournament in Utah. I love seeing social media posts of the boy in action because he scores a lot of goals and seems to be having fun.
The boy is only 7.
Another friend of mine has a sixth-grader who is an aspiring quarterback in football.
Pay to play
The family is all in—the child has two personalized quarterback coaches, trains on strength and agility at a local gym, has participated in weekend camps and has the best gear available.
They are paying at least $1,500 monthly, including $100 per hour for lessons. And most weeks, the child rarely has a day off. If he does stop, there’s another middle school quarterback who continues to practice and the family fears their kid will fall behind.
I get it. I sent my kids to Catholic school for seven years, until we left for our neighborhood school after realizing that it wasn’t worth spending five figures to drive across town daily for a faith-based education. We’ve mastered teaching them about our faith at home.
But if my child was an aspiring athlete, I wouldn’t be able to have them progress with backyard lessons. Most dads don’t have that kind of free time, nor the knowledge of sport to successfully pull this off.
That’s why I understand families who are forking out fortunes to have their kids compete in top-flight youth sports programs. I don’t know the finances of my friends. I just hope they aren’t being stretched too thin.
I posted a message on Facebook asking followers for their experiences with youth sports. The horror stories immediately started flooding in, but one stood out: A coaching friend, whose wife works in mental health, has seen countless teens who are facing anxiety and other issues because of their youth sports experience, he said.
The cost and participation requirements have become so abusive that it’s taken an activity that long provided meaningful exercise and friendships and turned it into an unneeded burden.
These young athletes aren’t naive to the money their parents are shelling out. The pressure that creates for the child can’t be overlooked, because a poor performance or being cut from a team’s roster not only comes with a feeling of being inadequate but also one of wasting the family’s money.
Imagine a child realizing they had the best training money could buy and yet they weren’t good enough to be the starting quarterback or make the travel team.
It’s equally troubling for parents. Some interviewed for this feature said they were using credit cards to pay for their kids to participate and were overwhelmed with debt.
Parents need to ask themselves if the dream of excelling at a sport is their dream or their child’s dream.
They also need to get off the conveyor belt of paying to play that could ruin a family’s finances—if it hasn’t done so already.
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