Don't you just have to "sign up", to get into the state tournament in USSSA? Mom's post way too much **** on Facebook. We don't need a family picture after every tournament. Especially if you go to tournaments every weekend.
Youth Sports Costs
- Thread starter spierceisu
- Start date
Don't you just have to "sign up", to get into the state tournament in USSSA? Mom's post way too much **** on Facebook. We don't need a family picture after every tournament. Especially if you go to tournaments every weekend.
I agree with you. I9 was a great way to get started in football - one day of practice and a game for a total time commitment of about 90 minutes for the week. I coached a few seasons, they have both a fall and spring season, and it was perfect. Oh, I wasn't a great coach by any stretch but was competent enough and smart enough to know my limitations. We did have to travel to Waukee for a few games, but that wasn't a big deal. My son loved it and so did his parents!
For 6th and 7th grade he did Ankeny Junior (flag) Football with practice three nights a week and a game on Sunday. Practices began a week or so before Labor Day and they had six games. It was just enough.
Eighth grade is a different animal. Football practice (and it is practice and not conditioning like advertised) and weight training three mornings a week for all of June and July.
My son also plays lacrosse for Ankeny Thunder. That's a great sport btw. It does cost a couple hundred bucks because of equipment rental and helping to rent practice fields. There is some travel. This year the 14U teams traveled to the Quad Cities for a double header, Mount Vernon for a double header, the Meskwaki settlement, and Rockford, IL and Farmington, MN for a tournament. The tournaments were new this year and were a product of the players asking for it. Travel is much more for JV and Varisty because of having to play Nebraska teams. There is also a summer all-star team out of Waukee with three out-of-state tournaments but the summer is not required a lot of players don't participate.
Iowa Sticks Baseball
www.iowasticks.com
Seems straightforward to me!
Just put your kid in the "t-ball development program" (seriously, they offer it), at age 3 and 14 yrs later and around $75,000 you should have a scholarship locked up!
This stuff always cracks me up, you can't make it up!
Our T-ball and Coach Pitch Development program is designed specifically for youth players age 3-5 (t-ball) and 5-6 (coach pitch), to help develop a love for the game and learn the core fundamentals needed to advance to higher level baseball.
Ever watch those games? I caught moments when at the Ankeny fields. My god watch a joke, and I feel bad for those kids.
The giant printed banners with the entire team on them (that seem to get created or handed out after every tourney) crack me up. How many of those do ya need!? How much do those cost!?
All I know is that if my hometown is not an absolute juggernaut at the high school level in 6-8 years I'll be amazed. These kids are getting rings and pennants at every tournament!
I've been reading about the explosion of Lacrosse. There was a guy on a podcast I listen to who was a sales and marketing leader for New Balance and they're spending a ton of time and effort into development of shoes for lacrosse and to a lesser extent pro paintball (they wear the same shoes). I hadn't ever seen lacrosse anything until a couple years ago. I guess since baseball and hockey have gotten so competitive for suburban white kids their parents had to find something else to live vicariously through them.
Could be. My kid tried baseball and didn't like it, and never showed interest in hockey thank god. I know we steered him towards lacrosse because he wanted to play tackle football and we though a fast paced contact sport like lacrosse would dissuade him from a collision sport like tackle football. It hasn't, but it still may, and in the meantime he fell in love with lacrosse. And if I am being honest I never played lacrosse and thought it looked really cool. It is really cool. What I like about lacrosse of today is there are more opportunities to play than there are players. Kids don't need to have been playing since age 8 to get on a team and see significant minutes. Of course that could change with the growth of the sport but that is not the way it is today. Lastly lacrosse is really fast. The players fly up and down the field, and the games move quickly. A 14U game from start to finish is less than an hour. There is a lot to like about lacrosse.
No. They were outside most of the time. We would work with them and wash them once a week.
I have two banners from when our boys were 11 and 12. They got one for getting second in a AA tournament, and one they just got for being in the tournament. We pinned them up on the back of their dugouts when they were playing. They thought that was cool and that they looked so bad ass. LOL.... I don't know what to do with them now. I guess I'll put them up at his grad party to see what they all looked like when they were little turds.
Man… I really enjoyed this thread until you all started writing novels
They are out there I’m sure. The people I’m around just have kids who like to play. I bet most don’t even play in high school let alone get college money.
Everything costs money. If you want your kid to do martial arts, dance, guitar lessons, gymnastics etc it’s all expensive and most youth sports don’t touch the cost of much of it.
My son is 15u and has several friends on that Ankeny Thunder team and I coached 6th and 7th grade AJF. Honestly we probably coached against each other and have met in real life. It just got weird.
I've had a long week so have not had time to keep up with this thread so just a few thoughts:
I have 2 daughters going into 6th and 3rd grades, we've done nothing but sign them up for sports through our local park and rec leagues up to this point. Our thought is if they show natural talent and a love for a sport we'll look at options to get them in more competitive leagues or teams but we don't want to push them where they hate playing and want to quit. My older kid I don't think sports are going to be her thing as she gets older, she's much more into music and the arts and has talent for that. She's done rec soccer, softball, basketball and volleyball and already has said she is dropping volleyball and given that she didn't want to do summer basketball camp this year makes me wonder if she wants to do that or not. She enjoys soccer the most of them and she's been on a local rec team the last 3 years now after starting with some other rec programs before that. Her team has done really well and the coach signs us up for 1 or 2 local rec tournaments a season that challenges them a bit more than they get in league games. We have some girls that probably could play select or traveling teams (our daughter probably is not at that level though) and the local soccer club asked him if he would coach the 12U select team this fall so he ran it by the parents about what everyone was thinking and everyone basically came back that our daughters enjoy this team and the competition level is even with where we are at so we see no reason to move up to select if we can keep this team mostly intact as long as everyone wants to keep playing. One dad even told me "my daughter is not going to be a soccer star so why would I want to pay several hundred more than I am now to have the same coach and have to pay to travel more on top of it?"
My thoughts are you let your kids play and don't push them unless they want to be. Over they years I've seen some parents push some of the kids on the teams my daughters have played on and then moved them into higher level teams only to have the kid hate it and wind up quitting the sport entirely. Saw it with 1 soccer girl that was probably one of the best 2 girls on the team and he was pushing her already in rec league then got her on an academy team and not long after she quit soccer and she hated it and I think it was because her dad didn't just let her have fun playing the game and was more into wanting to turn her into a star player that she already was on track to be if dad would have just let her go at her own pace.
Sorry for the rambling, I have a few more instances I could share but I'll refrain. Bottom line is your kids are only young once and the odds 1 turns into a star athlete are usually slim so don't push them at an early age. Sports are supposed to be fun and every kid develops skills at a different pace and age so if they have the talent just let them play without the added pressure and the natural talent will come out if they have it and the rec vs competitive thing will work itself naturally too. My own opinion is when the get to junior high it will sort itself out 1 way or another. Kids that go to smaller schools will obviously have more opportunity than those who go to a larger enrollment school but that has never kept kids that went to smaller schools from becoming stars in college either and they all had different paths that got them their so talent always will rise to the top regardless.
I have 2 daughters going into 6th and 3rd grades, we've done nothing but sign them up for sports through our local park and rec leagues up to this point. Our thought is if they show natural talent and a love for a sport we'll look at options to get them in more competitive leagues or teams but we don't want to push them where they hate playing and want to quit. My older kid I don't think sports are going to be her thing as she gets older, she's much more into music and the arts and has talent for that. She's done rec soccer, softball, basketball and volleyball and already has said she is dropping volleyball and given that she didn't want to do summer basketball camp this year makes me wonder if she wants to do that or not. She enjoys soccer the most of them and she's been on a local rec team the last 3 years now after starting with some other rec programs before that. Her team has done really well and the coach signs us up for 1 or 2 local rec tournaments a season that challenges them a bit more than they get in league games. We have some girls that probably could play select or traveling teams (our daughter probably is not at that level though) and the local soccer club asked him if he would coach the 12U select team this fall so he ran it by the parents about what everyone was thinking and everyone basically came back that our daughters enjoy this team and the competition level is even with where we are at so we see no reason to move up to select if we can keep this team mostly intact as long as everyone wants to keep playing. One dad even told me "my daughter is not going to be a soccer star so why would I want to pay several hundred more than I am now to have the same coach and have to pay to travel more on top of it?"
My thoughts are you let your kids play and don't push them unless they want to be. Over they years I've seen some parents push some of the kids on the teams my daughters have played on and then moved them into higher level teams only to have the kid hate it and wind up quitting the sport entirely. Saw it with 1 soccer girl that was probably one of the best 2 girls on the team and he was pushing her already in rec league then got her on an academy team and not long after she quit soccer and she hated it and I think it was because her dad didn't just let her have fun playing the game and was more into wanting to turn her into a star player that she already was on track to be if dad would have just let her go at her own pace.
Sorry for the rambling, I have a few more instances I could share but I'll refrain. Bottom line is your kids are only young once and the odds 1 turns into a star athlete are usually slim so don't push them at an early age. Sports are supposed to be fun and every kid develops skills at a different pace and age so if they have the talent just let them play without the added pressure and the natural talent will come out if they have it and the rec vs competitive thing will work itself naturally too. My own opinion is when the get to junior high it will sort itself out 1 way or another. Kids that go to smaller schools will obviously have more opportunity than those who go to a larger enrollment school but that has never kept kids that went to smaller schools from becoming stars in college either and they all had different paths that got them their so talent always will rise to the top regardless.
