Official Youth Sports Thread (elementary, middle, and high school)

There is occasional discussion of things like this on the Parenting thread, but figured Wake sports are irrelevant enough to put a thread on the sports board without it dropping too far off. Just general discussion of youth sports for non-recruited athletes (unless they are your own kids, in which feel free to talk about them).

The concept of participation in youth sports declining has been a topic of discussion lately, with MLB creating its "Don't Retire, Kid" campaign which they have been pumping during the LLWS.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickdi...eyre-begging-kids-not-to-retire/#6fc677005b4c

Not with specific respect to baseball, but in general youth participation in sports are allegedly on the decline. Not surprising in today's divisive political climate, this article tries to pin the cause on financial hurdles:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uneven...lass-and-poor-kids-are-ditching-youth-sports/

I think the article is pretty poor in its reasoning, but some issues it raises, and fails to raise, are worth discussing.

First, it says that the focus on obtaining college scholarships drives parents to dump excessive money into their kids' sports. However, it says that 1 in 5 parents with kids playing sports believe their kids will get a scholarship, and then it says that 1 in 10 kids playing sports will get a scholarship. So, only 20% of parents believe their kids will get a scholarship, and half of them are correct. So: (a) their faith is not totally misguided, and (b) that doesn't account for the other 80% who are just having fun with it. So other than another attempt at class warfare, their overall logic doesn't hold water. The drive for college is not what is causing kids to drop out.

Second, while parents can certainly dump a fortune into their kids' sports to try to artificially create a more competitive environment, there are still plenty of low-cost rec leagues. I've got two kids who both play soccer, basketball, and baseball, and rec league fees for each season are less than $100 per kid per league. That's not dirt-cheap, but its also not a lot when you consider the number of practices and games involved, as well as the uniform costs. That is probably 25+ combined practices and games for less than $100; that is really low cost compared to other forms of entertainment. And most rec leagues require little, if any, equipment.

Third, the article completely ignores the draw of video games and other electronics. And I know the usual response of Gen Xers and Millennials is "we had plenty of video games and still played real sports", but there is a big fucking difference. I wasn't enticed to miss practice for Madden '93 or Echo the Fucking Dolphin, because the games weren't that good. It is tough to get a 10 year old to stop playing Fortnite "with" his friends to go outside. The games are simply that much better and more fun than they used to be. Kids who have grown up with games like that don't see a ton of difference in playing Fortnight or actually playing basketball, they are deeply involved in the game either way. I'm not saying video games are bad, but they have to be viewed from a different psychological perspective with today's kids than we would have viewed Space Invaders or Super Mario Bros.

Fourth, I'm not sure how much the stats incorporate girls' sports that only came about a few years ago, peaked, and then dropped off. This article talks about the decline in general, but uses 2011 as its high-water mark. https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...-costs-bad-coaches-study-finds/?noredirect=on
I have nothing to base this on, but girls' youth sports got a huge push in the early 2000s, which has seemed to back off over the last few years. So around 2011 there would have been a number of leagues/teams created to service girls that simply did not exist before. So are girls not getting into those sports as much any more and that is causing the overall decline from that point because those leagues surged the numbers then folded?
Here are some numbers on girls' participation https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcoo...icipation-in-high-school-sports/#112a9d19640c
I get the sense that around middle school for girls a lot drop out: those who stick with it competitively generally play through high school but the ones who drop it don't play less competitive rec.

Just some general discussion points for anyone who is interested in the subject. I spend almost every day either coaching or watching some sort of youth sports, so have heard a variety of viewpoints.

Interesting stuff, but the cost issue is a problem in some places. My son played rec baseball for a couple of years and got asked to join the travel team last year - he has really enjoyed it, and is having a lot of fun and the competition is great, but the costs are crazy. 9 year old travel ball practices twice per week, two games on Saturday and 3 weekend tournaments in each season, fall and spring. The costs of the league, gear (my kid is a catcher), traveling and staying overnight in rando places really adds up - especially if you live in a big city where the costs for these rec leagues are already 3-4 times more than what you are saying here. And until they get into middle school or high school, there aren't always organized school teams for them to join - so it is up to the parents to have them ready by that age - and with so many other "things" that take kids away from going outside and playing, and with a lot more dual income households over the past 20 or so years, it's not always easy to schlep them to weekday practices right after school.

But, if you look at the good teams at these baseball tournaments - even 9 and 10 year old baseball teams - have kids that are recruited from wider areas to play on a competitive team - and these teams know they have to do or provide more things to entice the kids, like have decked out buses with playstations in them to take them to and from games/tournaments.

Its sometimes a tough pill to swallow, and if I see my son not caring about baseball anymore or starting to choose a video game or something over that, I would probably stop paying for the league and move him to rec or just stop altogether - it's definitely not worth it just for "fun".

9 year olds dude

Yeah, my oldest plays 10U travel baseball as well, and we drop easily $5k per year on us traveling as part of it. The fees themselves aren't high, our team fee is $300 per year, and then maybe another $400 a year on equipment (mostly cleats which he wears through like 3 times a year), but it is the family travel for the tournaments that adds up quick.

But i honestly don't think that the travel ball kids are any more talented than our rec kids. They are more fundamentally sound because they practice and play at lot more, but their raw ability isn't really any better or worse on average. It weeds out the kid picking flowers in the outfield who doesn't want to be there at all, but your top end travel player isn't going to be that much better than a top end rec player at that age.

And from an actual in-game experience, I think the travel ball kids have more fun playing rec than they do the travel tournaments. They are playing with their friends from school, nobody is taking it as seriously, and the whole environment is more relaxed.

What I would like to know is whether the travel ball kids actually have any advantage of making a school team when it gets to that point. I would think the puberty variable would have much if not more of an impact at that age. Or is the prevailing thought that by the time it gets to that point, all of the kids who aren't playing travel ball have already dropped out so don't even try out?

Milhouse said:

9 year olds dude

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Yeah, I get that sentiment in a vacuum, but the kid is going to be doing something. I'd rather support them playing sports than have them streaming Netflix or on the Xbox all evening after school, which seems to be the prevailing alternative.

2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:

Yeah, my oldest plays 10U travel baseball as well, and we drop easily $5k per year on us traveling as part of it. The fees themselves aren't high, our team fee is $300 per year, and then maybe another $400 a year on equipment (mostly cleats which he wears through like 3 times a year), but it is the family travel for the tournaments that adds up quick.

But i honestly don't think that the travel ball kids are any more talented than our rec kids. They are more fundamentally sound because they practice and play at lot more, but their raw ability isn't really any better or worse on average. It weeds out the kid picking flowers in the outfield who doesn't want to be there at all, but your top end travel player isn't going to be that much better than a top end rec player at that age.

And from an actual in-game experience, I think the travel ball kids have more fun playing rec than they do the travel tournaments. They are playing with their friends from school, nobody is taking it as seriously, and the whole environment is more relaxed.

What I would like to know is whether the travel ball kids actually have any advantage of making a school team when it gets to that point. I would think the puberty variable would have much if not more of an impact at that age. Or is the prevailing thought that by the time it gets to that point, all of the kids who aren't playing travel ball have already dropped out so don't even try out?

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Baseball is crazy expensive compared to soccer and the amount of travel is crazy. I wastaking my son to soccer game at a big complex in Gastonia and when they saw I was there for soccer they waved me though. They were charging the baseball people $5 to park.

The travel baseball kids in 7th grade and up have a distinct advantage in making the JV and Varsity teams around here, but my local high school is competing at a high level and sending kids to major colleges/pro ball.

Yes, they have different pricing models for each, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Baseball has lower tournament entry fees ($200-$400; or sometimes waive in on prior play), but they charge they parents either per head or per car to come watch their own kids play. They also get a cut of concessions. Soccer charges insane team entry fees (we paid $700 last weekend for our team for a 3-game guaranty at Manchester Meadows in Rock Hill) but there is no admission fee and concessions are much less of a factor.

I think part of the difference is that soccer seems to have 2 or 3 big clubs in each metro area, and each club has a gazillion levels and teams. I think Charlotte Independence has over 5,000 kids, and CSA is probably bigger than that. It makes the cost more uniform across the board. Baseball still operates somewhat on the Little League model of one or two travel teams per league per age group per geographic league until you get up to like the showcase level. SO you'll get one league that does a lot of fundraising so has really low player dues, whereas other leagues say fuck fundraising we'll just charge $1,500 per kid or something like that.

Independence just merged three soccer clubs that are still operating more or less independently. CSA is th 800-pound gorilla.

Hard to believe that high school football kicked off tonight. Eastern Alamance is up on Jamie Newman's school 42-0 in the 1st quarter!!