It ain't a steal for a young family who's struggling to make ends meet. It's just sad to me how some kids don't get the same opportunities as their well off friends.
Youth Sports Costs
- Thread starter spierceisu
- Start date
That has been a popular question, how many great athletes do we miss out on with the current system. I don’t see it changing anytime soon but I do fundamentally agree
ACBC is a very entry level price for basketball.
This link below is more in line with the popular club basketball teams. The basketball fees specifically are because of gym schedules. The upper level club teams have their own facilities.
Kingdom Hoops Basketball | K - 12th graders developing skills on and off the court
Kingdom hoops is a non-profit organization, empowering K - 11th grade young athletes. We believe that basketball can provide a platform for youth to work on leadership, teamwork, failure, success, commitment, loyalty, goal-setting, and delayed gratification; all of which helps win the most...
So I coach in ACBC and can tell you that this is entirely dependent upon the tournament that the coaches and the grade coordinator sign up for for their team. There are plenty of tournaments out there that only asks for an entry fee for the team and they don’t charge for attendance and then there are tournaments that charge your left kidney for attendance in addition to the team entry fee.
All depends on how competitive you want your kids to be.
My kids will all be done with rec sports by age 8. I've coached all 3 since they were 3 in soccer and started basketball at 5. My oldest is 8 right now (2nd grade) and we started travel U10 last fall for soccer. I couldn't imagine putting my 8yo in any rec league at this point having coached the two sports every year for him for 5 years.
Soccer wise - there's 3 travel U10 teams and 6 rec U10 teams here in Mtown (7v7 at this age with 10-12 on roster) but you get to the point where you get tired of keeping kids on the field and teaching the rules over and over which is what rec is up through U10. Have thought about skipping the second year of U8 for my middle kid to get a team together and just play U9 travel - we did U6 Iowa Games last year and are doing U8 with pretty much the same team this year. Already have a solid 12 travel kids for that age group.
My son has never played baseball but we were going to do travel this year. Then they told us you had to do rec to do travel. That ends up being 4 nights a week - no thanks guess we won't do baseball.
Basketball we did our last year of rec this year for the oldest and then after that there was a 2nd grade team that was essentially travel but just had practices as tourneys apparently don't start until 3rd grade.
TL;DR: If you want your kids to be good at sports you need to do travel, otherwise they're just being babysat in a glorified PE.
My kids will all be done with rec sports by age 8. I've coached all 3 since they were 3 in soccer and started basketball at 5. My oldest is 8 right now (2nd grade) and we started travel U10 last fall for soccer. I couldn't imagine putting my 8yo in any rec league at this point having coached the two sports every year for him for 5 years.
Soccer wise - there's 3 travel U10 teams and 6 rec U10 teams here in Mtown (7v7 at this age with 10-12 on roster) but you get to the point where you get tired of keeping kids on the field and teaching the rules over and over which is what rec is up through U10. Have thought about skipping the second year of U8 for my middle kid to get a team together and just play U9 travel - we did U6 Iowa Games last year and are doing U8 with pretty much the same team this year. Already have a solid 12 travel kids for that age group.
My son has never played baseball but we were going to do travel this year. Then they told us you had to do rec to do travel. That ends up being 4 nights a week - no thanks guess we won't do baseball.
Basketball we did our last year of rec this year for the oldest and then after that there was a 2nd grade team that was essentially travel but just had practices as tourneys apparently don't start until 3rd grade.
TL;DR: If you want your kids to be good at sports you need to do travel, otherwise they're just being babysat in a glorified PE.
You kept them on the two sports they can play for decades post school, smart call
If my kids' youth sports cost $3400 a ******* month, I'm doing something wrong. And youth sports/activities are a CHOICE so do it if you want, but to act like it's a required thing is eye roll worthy.
The $8/adult and $4/children admission fee I mentioned was for ALL of my 2nd grade grandson's weekend games which were played in the Fieldhouse facility in Ankeny. As far as I know, the only tournament he played in was on the last weekend (in the Fieldhouse facility) and the admission fee for that was the same as all the other weekends.
Those just happened to be my 2 favorite, along with roller hockey that I played growing up but the rink here is long gone so not an option.
Sounds about right for the fieldhouse. I can tell you that there are some small town tournaments where they don’t charge an admission fee. On another note, if you play in a gym rats or kingdom hoops sponsored tournament, you can expect to atleast pay $10 each day for admission for everyone AND they will schedule the teams to play both days to maximize their admission take.
As a father of three children who are all grown adults now, I volunteered to coach football, basketball, baseball, and softball. Our family traveled to neighboring towns, then to neighboring states, and then to places like Florida and Texas to cheer our kids on. Over the years, we spent a ridiculous amount of time and money on our kids' sports.
One of the three managed to earn an athletic scholarship at Iowa State, but the other two officially ended their athletic careers after high school. However, all three made wonderful friendships along the way and the up days far outnumbered the down days.
The many many sporting events and travel were something our family got to do together, so I don't think I'd change a thing if I had the opportunity to do it all over, although I'd probably be much more relaxed the second time around because I now understand much better that it's all about enjoying the journey and not about winning championships and scholarships.
It does make me sad, though, that there are so many kids whose families cannot afford the enormous expense involved with youth sports competition.
One of the three managed to earn an athletic scholarship at Iowa State, but the other two officially ended their athletic careers after high school. However, all three made wonderful friendships along the way and the up days far outnumbered the down days.
The many many sporting events and travel were something our family got to do together, so I don't think I'd change a thing if I had the opportunity to do it all over, although I'd probably be much more relaxed the second time around because I now understand much better that it's all about enjoying the journey and not about winning championships and scholarships.
It does make me sad, though, that there are so many kids whose families cannot afford the enormous expense involved with youth sports competition.
If the travel teams want to use the fields for practice the kids have to play little league. Also helps that the JLL is really well ran.
Advice from a guy with experience at every angle. Don’t do tackle fb until 5th at earliest. 3/4 grade is absolutely stupid.
Luckily, track and cross country might be the thing he’s best at. And he’ll stick with basketball at least through middle school for social reasons.
Pretty much how I feel, never been about scholarships for me just for the fun of the game and to compete at the highest level they can growing up. You don't have to play at the best club, you could just play up a year or two if you need more competition and want to save money. Going to tournaments as a kid are some of my best memories. Learned early to go north if you want to win every soccer tourney and south if you want to win every hockey tourney. Basketball we just got our ass kicked everywhere.
Soccer has been a relatively inexpensive sport for our kids. Equipment is cheap and the entry fees aren’t high. Rec soccer here is about $100-$200 per year. Club soccer is around $200 per month. But with soccer we have never had charges for spectators in games.
Dance and gymnastics on the other hand, that’s highway robbery. We’ll drop $10,000 a year per kid easy for all the fees and travel.
Dance and gymnastics on the other hand, that’s highway robbery. We’ll drop $10,000 a year per kid easy for all the fees and travel.
As others have mentioned rec leagues vs even low level club teams are night and day. My only experience with rec leagues (after 4th or 5th grade) was soccer. My class had basically no interest so in 5th grade i played on a 6th grade club team but wasnt good enough to get a ton of time. 6th grade I played on a 14U rec team and was the only kid not in 8th grade. The competition was terrible and the coaching was non-existent. Didnt play again until going out freshman year because it was just boring.
High school baseball was a shock to kids who had only played rec league and went out freshman year. A handful of us had been playing 60+ games a year, hitting camps in the winter and it showed. I had 3 dudes behind me for the freshman team starting 2nd base spot not counting 2 freshmen who started at 2nd and short on varsity from day 1. By senior year only 9 of the original 25 or so in my class were still playing.
Only 1 of those 9 got a baseball scholarship and it was a few bucks to Ellsworth.
High school baseball was a shock to kids who had only played rec league and went out freshman year. A handful of us had been playing 60+ games a year, hitting camps in the winter and it showed. I had 3 dudes behind me for the freshman team starting 2nd base spot not counting 2 freshmen who started at 2nd and short on varsity from day 1. By senior year only 9 of the original 25 or so in my class were still playing.
Only 1 of those 9 got a baseball scholarship and it was a few bucks to Ellsworth.
