My daughter didn't play high school soccer and played on the best Academy team in Iowa instead. The high school soccer coach in our area was one of those "I am the head soccer coach and blah blah blah". So she said screw that, the competition isn't that good anyway. So she just decided she didn't want the high school coach to ruin her love for the game. I wanted her to play high school because I went through that. However, my high school football coach was a total jerk and terrible head coach that ruined playing football for us and took the joy out of it. Not sure if Dowling softball coach is good or what. That might be a reason she chose not to play. These days college coaches don't recruit Softball, Soccer or most olympic sports through a high school. I think football they still do but most football players get recruited through camps.
Youth Sports Costs
- Thread starter spierceisu
- Start date
My daughter didn't play high school soccer and played on the best Academy team in Iowa instead. The high school soccer coach in our area was one of those "I am the head soccer coach and blah blah blah". So she said screw that, the competition isn't that good anyway. So she just decided she didn't want the high school coach to ruin her love for the game. I wanted her to play high school because I went through that. However, my high school football coach was a total jerk and terrible head coach that ruined playing football for us and took the joy out of it. Not sure if Dowling softball coach is good or what. That might be a reason she chose not to play. These days college coaches don't recruit Softball, Soccer or most olympic sports through a high school. I think football they still do but most football players get recruited through camps.
Just so everyone is clear, she didn't play HS softball because she played full time travel club ball.
Some of these baseball teams are playing 145 games a year. My friends son was super talented and could have played in college. He was so burned out by the time he was a freshman he didn't want to play any longer. Some of it's just to much.
I have 3 daughters. All play/played school softball at a small high school. The oldest played travel ball for 2 years. My thoughts...
The "Tryout", at least 10 years ago, was more a tryout for the parents' bank account. If the check you wrote was able to clear, congratulations. You made the team.
Ten years ago, the cost was significant, but it didn't seem ridiculous to me. It was a few hundred bucks plus the expense of travel for practices and tournaments, gear, etc. Not cheap, but not stupid expensive, either.
Then two years in, the entire model seemed to change. The organization she played with, along with others I heard about, started paying coaches instead of relying on parent volunteers, increased the travel range, frequency and duration, leased off-season practice facilities, etc. and the cost got stupid. From a few hundred bucks a season to well over $1,000 - and there are 2-3 "seasons"!
Travel sports, in my opinion, are fine for those athletes that have the talent and dedication that will take them to the next level. It offers a high volume of competitive games. But for the 90+% of kids that will never play after high school, it is more a social activity. Would you pay $2,500+ a year for a social activity?
The down side goes beyond the money in my opinion. Of the 12 girls that played junior high travel ball on my daughter's team, only 3 continued to travel or high school ball after 8th grade. Many travel teams do not allow you to play spring and fall and then play school ball in the summer. My daughter's organization did not and it was actually in the "contract".
My advice would be find a rec league and see where it goes. If a kid has talent AND wants to live and breath that particular sport, I would start by trying to organize a team with some of his friends. There are plenty of rec leagues around and plenty of free places to practice and should be able to find a handful of tournaments that can be entered without requiring each kid's parents to make a mortgage payment to participate. 10U would be the absolute earliest level where I would pay to play anything, and more likely 12U. The existence of 8U teams are almost exclusively rostered by kids with delusional parents that think they have the next Bryce Harper or Jenny Finch or parents with more money than sense. Either way, I wouldn't want anything to do with that.
The "Tryout", at least 10 years ago, was more a tryout for the parents' bank account. If the check you wrote was able to clear, congratulations. You made the team.
Ten years ago, the cost was significant, but it didn't seem ridiculous to me. It was a few hundred bucks plus the expense of travel for practices and tournaments, gear, etc. Not cheap, but not stupid expensive, either.
Then two years in, the entire model seemed to change. The organization she played with, along with others I heard about, started paying coaches instead of relying on parent volunteers, increased the travel range, frequency and duration, leased off-season practice facilities, etc. and the cost got stupid. From a few hundred bucks a season to well over $1,000 - and there are 2-3 "seasons"!
Travel sports, in my opinion, are fine for those athletes that have the talent and dedication that will take them to the next level. It offers a high volume of competitive games. But for the 90+% of kids that will never play after high school, it is more a social activity. Would you pay $2,500+ a year for a social activity?
The down side goes beyond the money in my opinion. Of the 12 girls that played junior high travel ball on my daughter's team, only 3 continued to travel or high school ball after 8th grade. Many travel teams do not allow you to play spring and fall and then play school ball in the summer. My daughter's organization did not and it was actually in the "contract".
My advice would be find a rec league and see where it goes. If a kid has talent AND wants to live and breath that particular sport, I would start by trying to organize a team with some of his friends. There are plenty of rec leagues around and plenty of free places to practice and should be able to find a handful of tournaments that can be entered without requiring each kid's parents to make a mortgage payment to participate. 10U would be the absolute earliest level where I would pay to play anything, and more likely 12U. The existence of 8U teams are almost exclusively rostered by kids with delusional parents that think they have the next Bryce Harper or Jenny Finch or parents with more money than sense. Either way, I wouldn't want anything to do with that.
Some interesting thoughts in this thread so I’ll add mine. My son is 13. Played rec soccer and at 7 years old I think was asked to play on a travel team by one of the league directors. He didn’t like soccer that much and said no and switched to football, where he played YMCA before switching to tackle thru a league associated with the high school. Played basketball mostly with the YMCA and a couple camps in the summer. Some good players and competition, but also a lot of kids who just started. Asked him if he wanted to try a travel team and he said he wanted to keep playing with his friends despite being good enough. At camps he is solid and definitely can hang with the travel ball kids. Played baseball and eventually moved up to a travel team. Almost all of those kids stopped playing within a year or two including him.
I’m not sure travel ball gives you these great advantages in many cases. For some, the schedule is just too demanding, coaching is not that much better, and denies them the chance to play multiple sports. People think by playing in these leagues they will earn college scholarships and make the pros but that simply isn't the case. Just look at the rosters of the D1 schools in the state for whatever sport and see how many came from Iowa, then do the math with any local tournament and see how many kids are there...it just doesn't work out. Now if your kid is super passionate about it, has friends doing it too, you can financially afford it and want to give up lots of time, go for it. My goal has always been for my son to play as many sports as he can for as long as he can. It's a lot harder to pick up a sport when you've never played or been away from it for a while.
I’m not sure travel ball gives you these great advantages in many cases. For some, the schedule is just too demanding, coaching is not that much better, and denies them the chance to play multiple sports. People think by playing in these leagues they will earn college scholarships and make the pros but that simply isn't the case. Just look at the rosters of the D1 schools in the state for whatever sport and see how many came from Iowa, then do the math with any local tournament and see how many kids are there...it just doesn't work out. Now if your kid is super passionate about it, has friends doing it too, you can financially afford it and want to give up lots of time, go for it. My goal has always been for my son to play as many sports as he can for as long as he can. It's a lot harder to pick up a sport when you've never played or been away from it for a while.
Do track and xc.
Affordable.
It can be as serious as you want it to be. Teaches grit and determination, which, if they eventually want to do another sport, can go a long way.
Plenty of clubs in the metro. I help coach one, and honestly, participation seems to be at an all-time high.
Affordable.
It can be as serious as you want it to be. Teaches grit and determination, which, if they eventually want to do another sport, can go a long way.
Plenty of clubs in the metro. I help coach one, and honestly, participation seems to be at an all-time high.
I'll sort contradict myself here a little bit, but on one hand the reality is that at a larger school the percentage of kids that can basically do the structured school practices and workouts and actually play is probably pretty small. Right or wrong, that's just where things have gone. And if a kid is good with that, that's great.
Now, the flipside is that I don't believe that means a kid has to do AAU basketball and expensive travel baseball from a young age. Maybe never. I think a trap a lot of parents and kids fall into is they think they do these travel things and think that's some golden ticket to playing in HS. My experience with my kids is that those things provided some competition and game reps, but a vast majority of their development came from finding drills on Youtube and spending hundreds of hours doing them. I mentioned my son and his friend, and neither has ever had a hitting coach or any significant hitting instruction, and they have all the hitting metrics you want, and are hitting really well. They just video their swings and dive into all that crap on Youtube and elsewhere and just spend an incredible amount of time doing drills on their own with teammates.
And not that playing or being a bench guy should matter, but a kid that has a role is much more likely to keep going out for a sport, and it really is a great social, get off your phone/gaming system and get out into the real world catalyst for kids. My son and his baseball friends spend almost all of their time doing baseball stuff, fishing, being awkward around girls... all the stuff we used to do in the real world 30 years ago.
It doesn't have to be sports, just get kids into activities that they love and let them geek out on it with fellow junkies.
Daughter just finished her 1st season with JRC, wasnt as terrible as I thought but those weekend meets are looong.
That is completely ridiculous. Not the same sport, but the main reason the Euros have caught up to and in many ways surpassed the US in basketball is because they're model is WAY more practice than games. In the US there seems to be some dumb obsession with playing a bunch of games. First of all, there are so many games in these basketball and baseball tournaments, they don't really have any stakes.
That's one of many reasons kids should play on their HS team and not just do travel. Winning and losing (at least for a good kid raised right) with your friends and classmates and for your school means something. Losing a club ball game and turning around and playing 6 more meaningless games in a weekend doesn't really teach them to deal with that.
Plus I can say from a recruiting standpoint in baseball, 90% of my sons interaction with coaches comes through school ball. I suppose that's unique to baseball because it's summer in Iowa, so coaches have free time. So I can see why basketball happens at AAU in the summer.
You'll see scouts at club ball events for sure, but I see way more at high school games in baseball. That also might be a 4A-specific thing as most games there are D1, Juco, or at least NAIA/D2 guys playing.
Iowa still playing summer softball is the main cause of this. All of the major high level club tournaments are in the summer. This is also why club Volleyball is killing girls high school basketball.
This is exactly what we did. We played A and AA and it was perfectly fine. Really the biggest difference form AA to Majors is pitching.
Form a USSSA team with your kid and kids from their class. Register as a class A team and enter for 4 weekends from April to July. Will probably cost each family $200. Class A teams are pretty "below average". If you think your kids are pretty decent put them in AA.
There's been a couple baseball players do this too. Last one I can think of was a catcher from Dubuque who ended up getting drafted one one of the earlier rounds from what I remember.
My bits of advice:
- Watch out for club politics. Any club that promotes their prowess first over the actual sport is a red flag. A club that tried to tell parents of an elementary schooler that their club has X number of players that went on to earn college scholarships is preying on a parent's desire for their kids success.
- Coaches matter. If your kid finds a coach they like and they have fun, you have your home. Life is too short to deal with a screaming coach that doesn't care if he/she belittles a kid when they are in their formative years. A coach can be firm without being a maniac. Besides, that behavior bleeds over to the parents and players. You're going to be spending a ton of time with other parents. If you find a good group of parents, it makes the early games / late games / crappy weather / complete beat-downs much easier to stomach.
- Above all, remember to treat your kid as your kid first and a player second. Never care more about the sport than they do.
- Watch out for club politics. Any club that promotes their prowess first over the actual sport is a red flag. A club that tried to tell parents of an elementary schooler that their club has X number of players that went on to earn college scholarships is preying on a parent's desire for their kids success.
- Coaches matter. If your kid finds a coach they like and they have fun, you have your home. Life is too short to deal with a screaming coach that doesn't care if he/she belittles a kid when they are in their formative years. A coach can be firm without being a maniac. Besides, that behavior bleeds over to the parents and players. You're going to be spending a ton of time with other parents. If you find a good group of parents, it makes the early games / late games / crappy weather / complete beat-downs much easier to stomach.
- Above all, remember to treat your kid as your kid first and a player second. Never care more about the sport than they do.
Last edited:
This is what we did last year for my son's 8u team. This year in 9u they have moved up toward the top of AA. The goal is to get to AAA next year. We are in Waukee and all tournaments we go to are in the DSM metro.
We have a group of 5 or 6 dads that help coach baseball, basketball, and football. All the boys are buddies from the same elementary, and they have played together for 3 or 4 years for some sports. No paid coaches, but the costs still add up with tournament/season fees, uniforms, practice space reservations, etc. But it's a heck of a lot cheaper than joining any tryout/travel ball program and we are competitively right where we should be.
I’ve noticed there are two things us suburban dad’s have strong opinions on: youth sports and lawn care.
We got ice time at Hilton back in the day before 6am 4-6am being prime practice time.
For sure, man. In my case 25 years ago, my friends and I were sandlot kids. We played pickup games that were constantly interrupted by various drama and hijinx, only to be picked up again. Played catch in the street messing around and working on random stuff at our own pace pretty much every day (ruined so many good baseballs that way). That part was never organized or structured. Never forced. It was just what we did, and it was fun.
I've always stressed that skill improvement and growth takes place almost entirely outside of practice and games, as well as exploring, maintaining, and growing a love for the game and solidifying your place in it. Kind of similarly to how your body grows and takes shape after the lift, the lift is just a catalyst. The part outside the games and practices is arguably the most important piece, IMO.
When you come to practice, I can gauge progress pretty well, and no that doesn't always mean they've been doing anything physical like doing drills, playing catch, or attending a camp. Sometimes it's as simple as they've steengthened a friendship, asked a relevant question on their own, or they're excited to tell me about a game or a player they've watched or learned about, or just daydreamed about sports in general. They've somehow fostered their own enthusiasm and made plans for their personal journey on their own terms. Sometimes that's physical and baseball related, sometimes it's not even sports related at all and more of a spiritual growth. They all count just the same toward that eventual finished product when their time with us is done one day.
Baseball and life are both a game of contradictions, of unexpected twists and turns that have a way of coming together coherently sooner or later, for better or worse, and they are the sum of so many parts. So if you weren't contradicting yourself I would question whether you did it the right way, that is to say holistically. Which it's clear to me you did, and also I'd bet you're one heck of a good Dad.
I agree the value of travel ball is about competition and game reps. More specifically, conditioning yourself to be comfortable in a quasi-"pressure" competitive "more structured" environment, developing the game-speed muscle memory that is often a little bit different gear than non-game situations (also learning how and when to throttle that up or down as needed) and measuring yourself against your peers to kind of see where you stack up and have room to improve against a larger sample size than you would get elsewhere.
I love the idea of filming each other and also YouTubing stuff, btw! (that's how I work on my cars and do a lot of DIY fixes a lot easier than I would otherwise).
Latest posts
-
-
-
MBB: Who Should Iowa State Want Their Basketball Rivalries To Be?- Latest: CycloneRulzzz
-