I haven't played any sports and turned out okay so no. I rather talk to my kids and show and teach them the life skills like cooking, cleaning, and talking about the books we read. We have a limit of one sport per season for our kids, and we are not doing any traveling sports. I rather do things together as a family.

The return on investment is really low. Everyone’s family and motivation for sacrificing lots of time and money is different. My wife and I nearly went broke chasing a volleyball scholarship for our oldest daughter in hopes of one day watching her play and getting her degree in college. All the extra training, practices, travel, college recruiting, headache, etc was all for not. It caused a huge riff in our family. Long story short she ended up not playing her senior year in high school and quit playing travel because she got burnt out. I would say rec leagues are the way to go and focus on school, personal development and preparing your kids for the future job market. Last time I checked very small percentage of kids earn a scholarship through sports and even smaller percent make it to a level where they can make a substantial amount of money in sports.

Our olest was 15k a year in AAA hockey u15 u16 u18 45k total+. Also Prior to that, he played double aa 3500 a season, plus miget pewee u8 1500 season plus travel to those games hotels gas Also competitive soccer @ three hundred season, now 20 years old 2nd year of colloge civil engineering and is on the track team with small Scholarship 3500year middle son Hockey until Bantam, thousands of dollars and now he plays high school hockey high school football at $500 this season. Hockey camps five hundred dollars a pop +- And also, he plays high school lacrosse. That costs money. Travel to those games and my youngest daughter played the little hocke. U8 level, Swims at a $150/month. 1700/year volleyball over 100k in sports over the years and always broke lol Other Parents did real estate or doctors or owned a company. Or who knows, one kid's mom on Ryan's hockey team She bought a house out here while her husband stayed in the other country/europe. Lake tahoe private school for hockey wanted 47k/year lol My wife's the one that pushes all the sports I understand hockey has a bottleneck, not enough d1 teams in college so thousands of kids are trying out for just a few teams goes for the same in Ushl or NAHL if your kids lower tier3 your payind around 10k seaason online school and billets of 400+ a month. So its a joke in my opinion unless your kid is super good like goes to other states and not just competes but Completely dominates you're not going anywhere!

With all the money parents spend in these expensive travel leagues they could just pay for their college education since that's what they want so badly for them. Not to mention most kids just don't have the talent regardless of how much time they put into it. They get to the high school varsity level and suddenly they are average or D3 (which doesn't offer scholarships) at best.

She makes a very good point. An Olympic athlete champion saying if she’d have picked a single sport when she was young she’d have picked the wrong one.

I wish this story had focused more on the real problem with youth sports, the average kid/"athlete" who is not at all elite but maybe below average to OK-ish to even really good, but no where near being able to play post-high school. These kids & their families (I'm a father of 5 wonderful kids, so....ya, I'm in this category) make up the overwhelming vast majority of participants who are now mandated to play these games year-round. The travel costs & time suck are by far the worst aspects, not even counting the huge fees. It's horrific, but where is the outcry??? Why do we, as parents, accept this? This is nothing but a billions$ industry taking advantage of kids & their families, when these kids should obviously just be playing on their school's team during a given sport's natural season, & NOTHING BEYOND THIS, EVER. I now find myself praying for these years to be over, when I should be enjoying them, all because of this corrupt, purposefully misleading industry of youth sports. It's not like they've got a bit too far, it's that youth sports are cartoonishly, ostentatiously out of control...I wish this issue had any teeth at all so that congress would pass laws to protect us all.

I'm curious about how most of these kids will fare psychologically when reality sets in?

Bruh Im still figuring things out.

There is some mismatch between the enthused words that baseball kid uses and the flat, monotone voice he uses.

Im sorry, thousands a year? for what? (if its special training camps because the parent thinks they have the next David Beckham, then I can see the price) when I was in school sports were like $100 per year

Yea you should help but if they don’t go you shouldn’t throw it in there face

Kid has a great career working at Dicks sporting goods

Bowling ?

It’s sad because it’s Necessary if you want your kid to excel these days

I stopped going to live games of any kind, l dont buy sports channels of any kind. I play any sport l like. I have nothing but contempt at seeing sports hijacked in this country. But its done. So f me, and f them.

It just seems if sports become the center of a kids life his brain suffers. Think of all the bone heads you knew growing up. Lots of them were good in sports and love sports but they were idiots in the classroom.

daddy ball