What's wrong with youth sports?

An opinion from the cheap seats

Full disclosure: I currently have two kids playing travel/club sports: A son (a Junior in high school) plays travel baseball and a daughter (a 7th grader) plays club soccer.

I vividly remember the first baseball practice I ever coached. My oldest son had just turned 5 years old and was playing his first season of recreational baseball. 11 players showed up on that cold March Saturday and I tried to keep them engaged for the next 90 minutes with various drills and games. Those kids are now in their first year of college and probably do not remember that practice—but I certainly do.

A couple of years later I joined the Board of that local league, Grassland Athletic Association, (“GAA”) and then became President for 5 years before retiring. Throughout that time, I coached hundreds of baseball and basketball games with hundreds of different kids and families. All 4 of my kids played multiple sports over the years and all of these experiences gave me some perspective on the current state of youth sports in America.

There is plenty of information floating around about the decline of participation rates in youth sports. Both ESPN and The Washington Post tie the decline to the rising cost of participation, based on research by Project Play from the Aspen Institute. Cost is absolutely an issue here as my team fees and travel expenses over the past few years can confirm. But there is something else going on here as well, which is contributing to these facts.

Parents Do Not Volunteer Any More

When I was playing baseball growing up, my grandfather was my head coach, my Dad was an assistant coach, and my uncle was another assistant coach. It was a family affair and when my own kids started to play sports it was never a question of me coaching. GAA had so many parents volunteering to coach I even had to fill out an application and be directly approved by the Board before I was accepted as a volunteer.

As the years went on, however, fewer and fewer parents were volunteering to coach. GAA would increasingly have to put out pleas leading up to the season asking for more volunteers to keep them from having to turn away kids. Retired coaches (including me) were contacted and asked to consider coaching again, even though they no longer had kids in the program (it was a great season of fall baseball coaching with my two oldest boys).

As parent volunteering declined, so did their family commitment to their local league. The family was not as invested, which made it simpler for kids to quit playing because it was no longer a family affair. It was just another activity that could be dropped if the family was too busy.

Kids Do Not Play Outside of Organized Sports

Much of the same research about organized sports points to an overall decline is kids playing sports at home as well. Smaller yards, the decline of public spaces, the rise of video games and phones (we own 3 Xbox consoles and all my kids have smart phones, so I am not throwing stones here) means kids are playing unorganized sports a whole lot less than previous generations.

Kids are less connected to sports now and are less interested in trying new sports. Entertainment is only an arms-length away and the idea of creative play (or making up your own sport/game) has taken the back seat to TikTok and YouTube. Organized sports, that once brought structure to unstructured games, now feels boring and over-programmed. They are also watching less sports on TV, which weakens the connection with stars, reduces the fantasy of performing like your favorite star, which drives kids to the field to try to replicate their heroics.

Parents Treat Sports Like a Business and Businesses Are Happy to Oblige

It should not surprise you that youth sports is a big business. Some even believe that youth sports are recession-proof. Parents will move heaven and earth to give the world to their kids and youth sports are no exception. Much like moving from one neighborhood to another, more trendy and sought-after neighborhood, parents move from one league or club to another in search of the best for their kids.

Entrepreneurs and businesses are more than happy to step into this void to offer programs to families that are willing to spend the money. Thousands (or tens-of-thousands) of dollars per kid, per sport, per year quickly become the norm. Club fees. Tournament fees. Gate fees. Equipment costs. Uniforms. Spirt wear. It all adds up and it is all offered. Each and every cost creates a barrier to entry, however, for kids and families that simply cannot afford these expenses.

For some families, the justification of this spend is the elusive college scholarship. For most, it is a dream that is not achievable. Even for the most talented kid, there are a limited number of scholarships compared to the number of kids that hope to earn one. As a culture, we have always celebrated the athlete, but the attention paid to every single “commitment” (which may not mean as much as you think it does—especially the earlier that an athlete commits).

For others, the athletic scholarship is the only chance that kid has of paying for college. That is the point, after all, of that scholarship to begin with and should be celebrated.

Communities Do Not Invest Anymore

I grew up playing sports in my local community league. Teams were sponsored by local businesses and the fields were paid for by local government with help from the Kiwanis or Lions Club. Communities took pride in their local teams and celebrated wins over their cross-town rivals. Local tax dollars were put into local facilities to be used by local teams.

As local municipalities faced budget crunches and every tax dollar was stretched way too thin, financial investment in local facilities started to decline. “Minimally playable” became the standard while private facilities started to open up with state-of-the-art facilities cropping up around the country. Private organizations, such as Prep Baseball Report and Perfect Game in baseball (my Junior has profiles online with both organizations) tapped into near-free capital financing to build multi-million dollar complexes to draw the best caliber players and the college coaches that want to watch them play.

Destination tournaments became cool while local leagues—with their less-than-stellar facilities—were relegated to second class status. It was no longer chic to play for your local league or their summer all-star team. You had to play for the hot club with players strewn across a large geographic area (along with players that fly in to play on elite teams for a weekend).

Some small non-profits—like GAA—have tried to step in and fill the gap but it is a losing battle. They simply do not have access to the investment necessary to upgrade facilities nor the political capital to motivate local governments to up their funding to keep up with rising family demands.

What is the Way Forward?

Honestly, I do not know. I have lots of thoughts and theories but very few facts. I admit that I have even tried to come up with a couple of business ideas that would help fill the gap but that feels more like contributing to the underlying problem rather than trying to solve it.

What I do know is that it is a problem worth trying to solve. Kids benefit greatly from participating in youth sports. They learn to play nice together, to problem solve together, to relate to those that may be different than themselves, to compete, to work hard. These are all worthy aims and desirable outcomes. They make youth sports what they are and why we should want our kids to play.