Do you have to be crazy to be a youth sports parent?

[flipper14]

The ProScoutSports, LLC Blog: Do you have to be crazy to be a youth sports parent?: A Sitcom Script

"If nobody can hit bad pitching wouldn't it make bad pitchers, uh, good?

 

[YOCOACH]

Just another blog from this guy railing against all forms of travel sports and the injustices of it. I wish he'd just fade into obscurity.

I do have to give him some credit though. About every fourth blog he does bring up a valid point.

 

[flipper14]

Just another blog from this guy railing against all forms of travel sports and the injustices of it. I wish he'd just fade into obscurity.

I do have to give him some credit though. About every fourth blog he does bring up a valid point.

YOCOACH, you are right. I have noticed that my blog posts have taken on too much of a negative tenor lately. I am not at all anti-travel sports, especially at the top levels. Where I contend that we've lost our way a bit is that I'm not sure that all young athletes need to be traveling extensively, especially at the younger ages. I worry about what sport specialization is doing at young ages, while I'll be the first to admit that in sports such as softball it's very difficult to excel at higher levels if you don't have a primary sport.

I think we've really watered down our clubs. I think we've gone so far with the "if you don't play travel sports you stink" mantra that we now have travel programs and clubs for kids who used to be park district players. Now, instead of playing for fun and with far less family demands, everyone's trying to play travel at some level with too many people not understanding that just because your child plays travel doesn't automatically mean that your child is going to play DI. In too many cases there is a mentality that our child should go all-in on trying to play DI until he or she finds out that she isn't good enough and then too many of these kids drop out of the sport altogether when that dream isn't realized.

However, you are right. While I am not at all anti-travel, my posts have leaned in that direction and I appreciate your feedback.

 

[CoogansBluff]

... everyone's trying to play travel at some level with too many people not understanding that just because your child plays travel doesn't automatically mean that your child is going to play DI. In too many cases there is a mentality that our child should go all-in on trying to play DI until he or she finds out that she isn't good enough and then too many of these kids drop out of the sport altogether when that dream isn't realized.

Everybody drops out of the sport eventually. I don't see the tragedy.

I don't hear of many parents or kids expressing great regret over time wasted/lost playing travel ball. Are some parents disillusioned over what lies at the end of the rainbow? Yes. Can it be expensive? Yes. Have I personally spent more money than makes sense? Yes. But I've never heard anyone say: "If I had known how expensive it was to play travel, or how mediocre my kid really was, I never would've gotten her into travel ball.'' I'm sure some have said it, but I've not heard it, and don't think regrets are all that common.

 

[YOCOACH]

Instead of trying to make the TB world or the parents the bad guys, why not sit back and actually think about who created the "need" for TB and it's associated sports.

The middle class wages, as adjusted for inflation over the years, is on par with what a typical middle class family earned in the 50's. Yet the prices of everything else has risen beyond that. New "must have" technology, cable/satellite service, internet service, medical expenses and increasing taxes are just some of the reasons that it now requires two incomes in a middle class family to have a comparable standard of living as that of a middle class in the 50's. Yet, college tuition has risen exponentially.

Many people see the big money grab going on by colleges, especially at the higher level D1 colleges. Coaches are being paid millions to do their jobs. College Professors are being paid in the $100,000 + dollar range. Don' get me wrong, I don't begrudge anyone their salary or what they make. Text books which used to cost $50 new when I went to college are now triple that unless you can get them in an ebook and download it...then they're only $75. Room and board have doubled and in some cases tripled depending upon the college. One almost can't even keep up in class without a computer anymore. I could go on and on as to the added expenses.

At the other end of the spectrum is college sports. Many people see the new networks/channels devoted to specific conferences and all of the money that is being split by these universities coming in. They also see all of the merchandise sold and worn by fans. They know of the booster money being passed around and they also know the price of a ticket to these sporting events. Is any of this money going back into the college coffers to reduce tuition or is it being spent on new uniforms, facilities (both sports and academic) and the coaches salaries?

In order for the coaches to maintain their salaries and keep their jobs, the pressure's on to win. So how do they do that? They recruit the best players they can. But what happens when the best players are already committed; even if it's a verbal? Thus starts the rat race. They are now going out in search of the best players at ever younger ages and asking for a verbal. Are they going to several hundred rec ball tournaments all over the country or are they going to a couple of big TB showcases to see the better/best players so they can limit their time exposure and expense account to a few tournaments?

Most parents want nothing but for their children to have better lives and a better standard of living than the parents did. Usually that means most of us do not want to co-sign student loans leaving our kids 100's of thousands of dollars in debt upon graduation. They see the big sports money grab going on at the college level, know that there are X number of scholarships available, and that the only way they can get their child seen is to play TB in their child's chosen sport. If college recruiting rules were more strict (i.e. held to Seniors only and get rid of all of the loopholes) and tuition reduced by using even half of the huge sums of athletic money, I really think you'd see a marked decrease in the dropout/burnout rates in the younger ages.

So who is really to blame for all of this? The TB parents or the players that want to play their chosen sports in college? Or the colleges themselves for creating the need to have travel sports in the first place so that they don't have to spend too much time locating the best players and offering to them at ever younger ages to get them 'locked in' before their archrival does?

As a disclaimer, this is just my opinion on the subject. Personally, I have my DD studying her tail off so that she can get Academic Scholarship money if she chooses not to play beyond HS.

 

[RetiredCoach]

I really enjoyed YOCOACH's insightful commentary. I've never thought about the subject that deeply. But, in case it might help somebody, I'd like to share, in short form, some my my thoughts concerning my DDs who are 16 and 14 and both are talented fastpitch players.

The first tenet of my philosophy is that I was not depending upon a college scholarship to send my DDs to school. If it happens, it happens. Really, who needs that pressure? And if it doesn't I will be prepared.

My DDs are required to get at least reasonable grades. For us, a "B" is low and, when not playing softball or tennis, they often make the "A" honor roll. To force them to spend the extra time, especially during softball or tennis season, to get straight A's seems like cruel and unusual punishment. Life is life and spending tons of time inside studying for boring tests, etc. was not how I wanted to spend my school days and neither do my DDs. And I will add that some people think that I turned out all right. Although, to be fair, some think that I didn't. Oh well...

When it comes to college I think it should be fun as well as educational and should be setting you up for your future. I just don't see living a tortured existence now to get a scholarship or during college either. Afterall, Ferris said:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

 

[BobInMadison]

YOCOACH, there is a lot of truth in your post. A FEW things that are a bit off, such as the fact that MOST faculty do NOT make the big bucks. I used to be a professor, and the most I ever made in one year was under $40,000, admittedly in the late 1990s. I had years as an adjunct in which I made under $8000. Also, the middle class incomes have stagnated since the early 1970s, not the 1950s, but the cost of tuition is crazy. When my grandparents attended U of Oklahoma, the tuition was free.

However, some faculty DO make the big bucks, as do SOME coaches. I used to know the twin daughters of a big name football coach (Arkansas) when I was a kid, and their father was middle class to upper middle class, with lots of top 10, top 5 and even top 1 rankings. The current coach makes about $4 million a year.

I also dug up an old scholarship offer from Arkansas, which I turned down to go elsewhere. It was a full ride for tuition, between $400 and $500, can't remember if that was per year or per semester. However, in those days it was quite possible for someone to work in the summer, and possibly part time during the year, and pay for his/ her tuition to a state university. Not any more.

For the most expensive colleges, kids could actually spend a summer working the "fish line" in Alaska, and make enough $ to pay for their tuition. Hillary Clinton did that in college. Some of the kids in my college went to Alaska after their freshman year to work the fish line. The guy who organized the trip, Chris van Hollen, is now a congressman from Maryland. These days community colleges cost as much as the most expensive colleges in the country did back then, not adjusted for inflation.

DS has a partial academic scholarship at a private school, but still costs more than a public college.
DD #1 and DD #2 are in a program that gives academic scholarships to Wisconsin IF they complete the program and get admitted, but have to give up their summers. DD #1 will be living in the dorms for 6 weeks this summer, DD #2 for 3 weeks.

I have hesitated getting DD #3 into that program, since it would kill her softball. I could've gotten her in either after the 6th grade or the 9th grade. I wanted to give her some time for tournament ball, and to be a kid for a few years. In the meantime, I need to figure out if she has a chance at some sort of Merit Scholarship. If so, she could probably get a scholarship without having to enter that program.

Three senor softball players from my county got athletic scholarships. Two were star pitchers (RubberBiscuit knows those girls and their families, since his DD played on TB teams with them). One was a 5'11" 1B who was also one of the best HS rowers in the US. She was all-conference and all-region in softball, but that didn't get her a scholly. Being a top rower got her a full ride to Wisconsin. They say womens' rowing is the easiest sport to get a scholly, but even though there is a top-notch rowing club in Madison, the county as a whole averages about 1 girl a year getting a rowing scholly, and, in most years, even fewer for softball.

 

[YOCOACH]

Bob, we agree on the important things it's just that our scopes of information and the conclusions drawn from them were different

Mom was a College professor at a small D1 and She had her Phd. To be fair, I wasn't exactly precise in my wording since I was a little hurried. I should have said some professors made that much and my mother happened to be one of them although she was there for 40+ years. She's retired now. I know at least a dozen others that are still teaching there that are even higher than what she was making but that usually involves a departmental chair, their Doctorate degree and tenure. I realize that not every professor makes this kind of money but there are plenty that do.

I also understand about the coaches. I personally know 3 major D1 football coaches (programs are usually top 25 in the polls) because they went to HS with my brother and we hung out. One was just fired and came home to coach at our Little D1. I believe his salary is 1.3M and the others are in the multiples of that. Again, not all coaches make that kind of money especially depending on the sport. But the longer the success of the coach and the more financially lucrative the sport, the more they make as a generalization.

When adjusted for inflation, a Semi-truck drivers wages are comparable to what they made in the 1958. Even today, their are drivers such as team drivers that make far more but it usually requires 6-8 weeks away from home and you better hope you like them....real well too. That said, the average income of a single/lone driver today spending 6-8 weeks on the road is just over $39,000. That's just one example. Again, I'm not saying that all job salaries have stagnated to that degree, but the professions that have usually don't require a college degree and involve manual labor or are considered blue collar. The exception to the rule at this level are the people that are union.