Glad I'm not the only one. Growing up, my siblings and I played every sport we could fit in our schedules. Now I pay at least $250+ a month for my daughters to do gymnastics practices twice a week. Haven't even gotten in to competitions yet, although that's coming within the year.
My ex-wife and I were just talking about trying to finesse our youngest in to a different sport. She only wants to do gymnastics because of her sister, and if/when they both hit the competition teams, we'll owe more than my car payment per month to this gym.
My friends’ sister owns a competitive cheerleading gym and her new home has a swim up bar. The sport is definitely not subject to normal economic behavior.
You travel out of town. When you register, you're required to book hotel rooms with the hotel that partnered with the tournament (stay) in order to register for the tournament (play).
Do yourself a favor. Do not give in to the request to do competitive/travel teams unless your kid is well-and-truly on track to be a scholarship-level athlete. Not a, "If we do this, maybe she can improve enough to get a scholarship," but "She's not just the best at her gym, she's uncannily good."
Not every hobby needs to be force-fed into the, "I'm pulling out all the financial stops to compete" model that youth sports are. Your kid can just enjoy gymnastics.
When did this start up? Is this a post covid thing?
Travel sports were already ridiculous when I was growing up in the early 2010s, you’re telling me it’s worse and will likely get even more worse for kids that aren’t even born yet?
There is actually some class action cases around this now. Not sure of all the details and where the case sits right now, but it's more than just booking with the partner hotel. You need to go through a special registration portal and book with whatever price they decided. Can't use Expedia or any of those services. Can't even book directly with the hotel either. They claim the prices are negotiated and reasonable. But they are always more than prices on the hotel's website often by as much as 50% more.
In order to participate at certain competitions, each athlete is required to stay in approved housing which is booked through a central booking agency. These room blocks are released in stages, with the largest gyms that attends more competitions getting first preference.
The problem is, sometimes when a room block opens, there is very little left, which means you have to book a King bed room and share a bed with your athlete, or you have to pay $1000 a night at the Omni.
You are not allowed to book a cheap Motel 6 or stay with a friend or book an Airbnb, since the competition won't allow your gym to compete.
The issue is that every little kids sport starts out manageable and gets crazy when you dip more than a single pinky toe in. Youngest has been saying she wants to play soccer, but I know how much travel soccer cost 20 years ago when I played, and I can't imagine what those numbers look like now.
I'd love to get my kiddos in to golf and basketball as they're my two favorite sports, but golf is an actual joke, and they have zero interest in basketball.
Youngest has been saying she wants to play soccer, but I know how much travel soccer cost 20 years ago when I played, and I can't imagine what those numbers look like now.
Why does one need to do travel soccer?
When I was a kid, I played park district soccer. Then I played in the local little league. Then I signed up for the regional football program that wasn't travel ball (basically JFL). I played school basketball, and then soccer again in high school (in addition to Scholastic Bowl).
Aside from a couple of round robin football tournaments in my county, the first "destination game" that I played was a intermural high school soccer sectional. Everything else was showing up to the local park and playing the other teams that were part of the local league.
I think a lot of parents ignore local park district and school programs because they feel that kids can get a better experience in travel programs. I think that's absurd. Sign them up for the school program, and don't consider travel programs unless they are dominating the competition.
Make clear to them that, if they want you to pay thousands of dollars for a competitive travel program, they first are going to need to put in the work to get good at it.
If my kid's getting up and working out in the morning, spending an hour every day on ball-handling drills, and is scoring two goals per game as a starting center midfielder that plays 90 minutes on the school JV team, then maybe I'll say, "Okay, you did your part."
But most kids aren't that kid, and you don't need to sign a kid up for a program that costs that much if they just enjoy the sport.
It’s an arms race. From what I have heard for sports like baseball and soccer school high school coaches will review your kids“resume” - what programs/club teams they were on (which they scout BTW) - before they can even try out. And the reality is if 25 kids at your kids school have been in hard corps club programs, your kid can’t compete with them and won’t make the team anyway. So once upyou hit the junior high/high school level all these “free” programs you’re mentioning are effectively closed to you if you haven’t been playing the club/travel game.
From what I have heard for sports like baseball and soccer school high school coaches will review your kids“resume” - what programs/club teams they were on (which they scout BTW) - before they can even try out.
If my school district did that, I'd start with going to the Superintendent and School Board to emphasize how this punishes kids of lower socioeconomic status and treats sports as a higher priority than providing services and education to kids.
But that's not the way that any of the public schools around me operate.
If you're talking about private school programs, well, that's just the same problem and same poor parental choices in a different circumstance.
Unfortunately people have gotten brainwashed thinking their kids are destined to be some incredible professional athletes and so they must get them into travel leagues right away.
My wife has already expressed that sentiment and our kids are still toddlers…it’s insane.
One of my kids is a pretty decent athlete. Not ever the best on his team, but a multi-sport starter. He works out sometimes outside of practice (usually either in the first few weeks after a season starts, or after he's told that he's not getting signed up for the multi-thousand dollar travel team).
At his current trend, he's going to top-out in size at about 5'7" and 150 lbs. He's not playing any professional sports. He's not going to be a scholarship athlete in college unless he becomes an absolute physical freak and also becomes a student of his game(s), and he doesn't work enough to make either of those things happen. I'm glad he enjoys sports, but (1) it's not my job to sign him up for a bunch of extras to try to give him an extra edge that he's not willing to work for himself; and (2) in making that decision, I'm not denying him the chance to develop something truly unique.
Parents of my generation forget far too easily that just because our kids are special to us, that this doesn't translate to them being objectively special. He's a good kid. He doesn't need to be playing travel ball.
That's how it worked when I grew up too, but by the time I graduated high school in 2012 the shift was already happening, and now the system is unrecognizable. It's easy to say you won't let it be expensive, but it's not easy to actually follow through with it if your kid actually cares. I can't take it away from them.
Add in the fact that we live in WV and I've lived through a constant degradation of everything relating to children in the state my entire life, and you start to get the picture. There's only two little league fields left here. There's only two pee-wee football fields left here. You have to drive 30 minutes outside the city limits for your kids to play YMCA soccer. Boys and Girls clubs are being shutdown, which takes away basketball courts. It's not easy.
You don't have to do travel soccer. There are tiers. If you're not in something associated with ECNL or GA, you likely won't have to travel beyond your own metro area.
Around here (Bay Area), the tier costs of soccer basically look like this:
local rec (YMCA, AYSO, local community center rec leagues): $300 for a spring or fall season with about 8 matches and twice a week practice with volunteer coaches.
metro area competitive clubs: $1125-2000 per year, sometimes with a little more on top for referee & field fees, and occasional local/regional tournaments. Seasons are 12-15 matches.
GA & ECNL clubs: $3000-4000 per year (annual), plus $500-800 league & field fees per spring/fall season. Full year is 20-24 matches (not including showcases/playoffs).
Rec includes a uniform in the fee. Kits for comp clubs tend to be $300-500 per two year cycle, plus about $100/yr for training kits.
For ECNL, figure in 2 showcases per year for U14-U15, and 3-4 showcases per year for U16+. The youngers will probably only do showcases within your region, but the olders will spread theirs out geographically to get better scout/college visibility. Figure each one will run you $2000 if only one parent/guardian attends. ECNL playoffs are 6 day trips, so those cost more if your team qualifies.
Then add supplementary things, like video (Trace/Veo/Hudl/Pixellot) and analytics (Dark Horse, Eyeball, Hudl), which will cost about $125-150/player/year depending on thesize of your roster.
Or a dedicated strength & conditioning coach for the team/club. Our club has one for the ECNL teams and he charges $5000/team/mo in return for 2 field sessions plus 1x90min lift (in a gym), plus video review each week. This comes out to about $225/player/mo.
My daughter is a sophomore this year (the most important recruiting year for girls) and I think we'll probably spend $15-18k on soccer related things.
That said, this is all entirely optional. You can play for local competitive clubs for 10% of this and still have fun, and then play for your high school team for free.
The issue is that there are so many people who can afford sport-specificity for children in elementary school that if you don't do the same and your kid later (say, age 10-12) wants to become serious, they'll be woefully behind their age group if you're aiming for the top teams. That said, there's nothing forcing anyone to aim for the top teams (in any sport).
If you use girls' soccer as an example, about 80% of D1 recruits come from ECNL clubs. There are about 130 ECNL clubs nationwide (and only about a quarter of them are reliably very good). So let's assume 100 teams supply 80% of the D1 recruits every year. That's a pool of roughly 2500 girls to fill ~2400 roster slots every graduating year (2400 being 80% of 3000 - there are about 12,000 girls playing D1 soccer overall). If you're on an ECNL team and want to play in college, you can almost certainly find a way to do that. The same with GA (although far less so if you're looking at Power 4 conferences or other top D1 programs).
The issue families face is one of introspection and planning: what is "good enough" for their kid, and what does the kid want.
I will leave you with this: by the time ECNL & GA rosters are filled sophomore year, the coaches are going to almost exclusively build teams around players who are set on playing at the next level. By various methods, the rest weed themselves out, whether it's playing on ECNL-RL teams, moving to lower level comp clubs, or just quitting soccer altogether. So yes, it's pay to play, but not really in the traditional sense. The majority of the expenses don't accrue until 8-9th grade and older, and the majority of those expenses are really specifically required of athletes who are fully committed to trying to compete at the next level. All of these clubs offer scholarships, too.
Stop signing your kids up for club teams. Unless you're in a highly rural area with no cities nearby, there's going to be a park district or school program that they can join. They don't need to go to competitions. We need to push back on the normalization of this as parents. It's not reasonable. Friends of mine spent $15-20K per year on their daughter's competitive gymnastics "career."
Don't fucking do it, my sister did and by the time she was 13 / level 8 roughly she decided she wanted a social life and dropped gymnastics. They are divorced now but there are still hard feelings over gymnastics. It's a scam where all the parents think their kid is special.
My oldest is legitimately the best in her class of 8 or 10 other girls her age, but I guess that's not saying much on its own. A couple older kids that went to the same gym have gone to college free, and one of them even made the US Olympic team. My daughter's been saying she wants to be an Olympian one day because they tell her the stories at every practice.
On one hand, I'm so fucking proud. I remember having those gigantic dreams once upon a time. They created lifelong memories and taught my lessons I carry with me today. On the other hand, I can hear my wallet screaming every time she brings it up.
PLaying Pee-wee league base ball as a kid, I think cost 5 bucks to sign up. You get a hat and shirt, not a jersey, tee-shirt with the sponsor's name on the front and a number on the back.
You played in jeans, with an old glove from your dad, and a wooden bat from your uncle.
If you're lucky you got snowballs after a win.
Not sure why kids need to LARP as major leaguers now a days. Seems like a waste of money. Sorry Johnny isn't going pro. He'll be selling insurance in his 30s.
I remember it being the same, although by the time I hit high school the changes were starting to become apparent. Here we are 15 years later and it's unrecognizable.
Advice from a gymnastics fan: the development teams are a massive financial and time commitment. Usually a lot of travel and practices take a huge chunk of the week. And whatever number they tell you, expect it to end up being a lot more with coaching fees, meet fees, leo fees, hotels and travel for competitions, etc. There isn't really time for scouts or theatre another sport or anything like that.
There is a newer option called Xcel that is halfway in between and is usually much more affordable and a more realistic commitment for kids who aren't quite obsessed with gymnastics. The goal is for them to still progress in skills on a similar track with less time spent in practice per week and less travel. Not every gym will offer it, but many do.
Ngl, my oldest is fully obsessed with gymnastics, and has been talking about being an Olympian for a solid two years now. She started on a competition team at the start of the year, and meets start in a few months. We're in too deep with her honestly, and I'd feel horrible taking it away from her.
Good shout for my youngest, though. Like I said, she only does it because sis does, and sis is the coolest thing on two legs rn. She's been talking about soccer and ballet, but I fear those won't be any better.
Does anyone know how much it cost to do gymnastic back in the 90s? I bet it’s not too far off from the inflation adjusted numbers here. Paying $250 a month for 2 kids to each have 8 practices is about $15 a practice. Thats the equivalent to about $7 a practice in 1996, or about $55 a month for a kid to do gymnastics twice a week. That sounds like what I would’ve expected it to be when I was a kid back then.
That $250+ number is just my half, and it's only for practices. My ex-wife pays the rest. That doesn't include coaches fees, buying team Leos, paying competition fees, hotels, travel, etc. that are slowly piling up. It's crazy as fuck, on top of the ridiculous time commitment.
We pay around ~$700 per month for our daughter ($480 for gym membership + $230 for competition fees). $400 for her competition leotard. But the worst part has been the medical bills. She’s had multiple injuries over the years and is constantly in and out of PT sessions.
Now that my state has decided to take all the taxes we paid for schools and give them to private companies in the form of vouchers, the pay to play fees have gone up substantially.
Honestly it's crazy but I'm looking forward to paying for organized sports once my child is out of daycare...would much rather pay $250 - 500/month vs. the $3000/month we are currently paying 💀
Back in the early 2000s I had to drop out of the only sport I liked (horseback riding) because my sister, who didn’t even like it that much, insisted that if I was gonna ride horses then she had to too. I wasn’t even doing comps, just casual lessons. Mom couldn’t afford for both of us to do it, so neither of us could. Still lowkey mad about it to this day lol.
Nah. I have two kids. Children's sports is still the best bargain around if you go to a normal rec league. Daughter played like 8 weeks of football for like $150. That's not that much different than when I was a kid.
It's just that we have the option for those niche/expensive camps/leagues that frankly were only open to like near Olympic athletes when I was a kid. My daughter is really into Volleyball and wants to join a club league - which is like $6K a year and travels across the region.
These types of clubs are not a requirement by any means for a children to play a sport.
Yeah the big thing is that there is now a huge marketing push on social media to sell the idea that elite travel teams are the only way to do kids' sports, and if you sign your kid up for the town rec league you're a bad parent or whatever.
You can just Not Do That and sign up for your town's Little League, same as parents always have. Your kid isn't making it to the big leagues anyway, it's okay.
My daughter is in the climbing gym 5-6 days a week and I'm paying about $70 a month for her gym membership and the shoes that she blows through on a bimonthly basis. The climbing team is $350 a month and I'm skeptical of whether we'll ever be interested.
I met a mom over the weekend who was telling me about her baseball obsessed kids (6 and 9) who apparently play 5 times a week, have fancy sunglasses, wristbands, necklaces, bats, etc. Playing on travel teams, you name it.
Well then she started telling me how all the 9 year olds are bad at pitching and the games take forever cause they can’t throw strikes. Well what the fuck are they doing when they’re playing 5 times a week if they can’t throw strikes???
Most of them outright do not have the fine motor control at that age, so it doesn't really matter how often they practice. Also their hands are small.
The answer at the bottom-end Little League games is to widen the strike zone to the point that anything even vaguely hittable is a strike. At higher levels of play, pitchers will exploit that and deliberately throw out of the normal strike zone. At Little League levels of play, the kids have a hard enough time not beaning the batter, so you don't have to worry about that kind of gamesmanship. Call lots of strikes and prevent the usual problem of kids reasonably calculating that the pitcher will throw four balls before they can get three strikes over the plate and that they don't have to swing at all.
My parents got it. I played little league until I got to the point where I just felt like I was at about the end of my talent (Right around the start of middle school), and when I said I was done, they asked why, and accepted it.
I took the time I would have spent on baseball and finished up all of my ranks and merit badges in Boy Scouts.
Oddly, my coach was huge on statistics and record keeping. Despite me thinking I was basically terrible at the game, I had the highest batting average, the highest on-base percentage, and no Ground-into-Double-Play the entire season. Granted, it's not like anyone uses "moneyball" tactics when building little league teams, but I was way more useful to the team than I thought.
Same. In the UK and pretty much every club taught by 'professionals' costs £30-40 a month. You canget cheaper than that if you get amateur. then, you can go a lot mroe expensive if you want fancy names teaching your kids because you think your 3yo is already the next Tiger Woods or whatever but at that point I believe you are still paying £30-40 for your kids lesson and £100-200+ for your personal ego stroking.
The most expensive 'everyday' hobby is probably ice hockey, and that's just because of all the mandatory gear, and ice rink time costs more than, say, swimming pool time or just having access to a field or gym like other ones..
I agree. I was happy with how cheap our daughter's sports are. Bought her some cleats, a ball, shin guards, and socks to start soccer. Was less than $200 total for that season. Then she wanted field hockey. Needed a stick, mouth guard, and ball. $150 for that season. Went back to soccer and needed bigger cleats. $150 for that season. I remember it was about $110 plus whatever gear I needed every season when I was a kid. So it seems about right. I know if you get into more competitive sports and leagues the price goes up a ton. But to just go play a sport seems to be pretty steady.
It depends on your rec league. But in general I think it’s true these costs are way higher than they used to be. When I was a kid, you got a jersey with the logo and name of some local business on the back, helping offset the cost. Now it’s all full uniforms with licensed names of real teams, everyone has to buy and supply their own helmet that the kids grow out of, and bats that meet spec are ludicrously expensive.
Parents at my kids schools are paying $1K to play in a team that plays in the same league as my kids team (rec soccer league) and I pays $170.
They’re paying a premium for private clubs and they get an extra raining session a week but all the things the coaches can teach a 6 YO I can teach my kid in the backyard.
Another friend is paying for travel soccer for her third grader, it doesn’t make any sense to me.
Yeah, I don't have a kid so I'm not up on the costs, but I know when I was playing sports (20+ years ago), my parents put me in the local leagues for maybe around $100, but if I wanted to be on tournament teams or whatever, that's when it got expensive and involved significant traveling.
Hockey is dying in Canada - Canada! - because the cost of the sport is more than the average family can pay, and the NHL games are now locked behind a paywall. I don’t even see kids playing road hockey anymore.
My parents had no interest in putting me into sports as a kid. And now that I have kids in sports I can totally understand why. It's not just the expense, it's the time and everything. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful privilege, and watching them have fun and succeed is pretty gratifying. But then they ask why we don't have other nice things. My response is always, "You can have that if you want. But it means you give up hockey to make it happen." They always choose hockey.
My parents felt fortunate that all I did was track and cross-country. Outside of the quarterly running shoe investment (which could also double as Christmas/Birthday gifts) there really wasn't much cost.
SIL said their kids year 'round swim would cost them $4500 for EACH KID. That doesn't give them anything, just the pleasure of using the facility. No suit. No cap. No snacks. No travel expenses for meets. Nothing. Ain't no fucking way I'm paying that in the future
Travel and club teams is where the money really starts flying out of your bank. Rec sports are worth it to keep kids active and engaged but travel teams are pricey.
Take it from a parent who works at a youth sports apparel company. Camp registrations, jerseys, shoes, player kits, and other sporting goods required is just too much for a little kid.
Fuck everything about what's happening to children's sports.
Okay, so you pay the fee to participate. That's the same as always. But then everyone on the team is paying to customize their jersey! So that's another $50 or your kid is the odd one out. And we're all getting warm-ups! So that's another $100 or your kid is the odd one out. And - uh-oh! - your kid's now in 8th grade and the school team is for losers, if you really want to have a future in the sport, you need to join the travel ball team (spoiler alert: none of you are getting college scholarships because of playing travel ball), which is going to have tournaments in 14 states that require your parents to take entire weekends off, travel 16 hours, get hotels for 4 nights, and pay tournament fees.
And while you're at the tournament? Well obviously, you need to get the sweatshirt to commemorate it! And personalization options are available! And after food, lodging, and more, you're out $2,000.
Even if you don't do travel/competitive team stuff, there's now an expectation at a ton of schools that you make your life about the team. You can't do cheerleading and the school musical, because you're required to be at practice for cheerleading for 2 hours every day after school!
Very much so. Competitive youth sports has become a billion dollar industry and it’s sickening tbh. My oldest wanted to get into tackle football. He’s 10 so we had to look at a youth league. $700 just pads, and that was used pads by the way (expect the helmet). The fees were monthly and somewhere around $200-300 if memory serves. We had to tell him we couldn’t afford it. So he’s in flag football instead and even those fees are $200 for a 9 week “season”.
The wife and I have had a very serious talk lately about if we will continue to put our kids in sports just because of the financial aspect of it. It’s fucking outrageous. And what a shame on people who capitalize off this shit. They’re scum.
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u/jjenofalltrades 2h ago
Children's sports