The Trouble With Travel Sports

KingMan at sports camp in Massachusetts

When I fall asleep early, I wake up early.  Way too early.  So on this morning I decided to watch an episode of Real Sports with Bryant Gumble.  One of the topics was Kids Travel Tourism.  Whoa! After watching the segment, my mouth dropped open.  I wonder if the family featured in the segment will look back at the interview and be mortified that they admitted to spending $150,000 on travel sports for their children.  There goes the college fund.  It is amazing how we parents get caught up in the frenzy without being realistic about the numbers.  In fact, Travis Dorsch, founding director of Families in Sport Lab at Utah State University thinks families are working backwards by spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars pursing a college scholarship through travel sports when they could have put that into a college fund.  Only 2-4% of high school athletes go on to play at the top level of college sports, the NCAA Division I, and even less make the pros! 

My little LionHeart enjoying recreation basketball with his favorite coach.

Here's the other secret, they said in the show that most of the players who are on the rosters of professional teams learned their sport without parental supervision and played multiple sports.  I'm not a big fan of Michael Jordan, but after reading his book Salt In His Shoes a million times to KingMan when he was younger, I learned that Michael honed his skills on the neighborhood courts and he didn't even make the high school basketball team, initially!!!!  

Since I banned football, LionHeart was thrilled to be able to wear pads and a helmet for hockey.

The Changing the Game Project reports that so much is lost in the athletic version of the "Race to Nowhere" and serves mostly the needs of the adults and not the children.   The mission of the Changing the Game Project is to "ensure that we return youth sports to our children, and put the ‘play’ back in ‘play ball.’  We want to provide the most influential adults in our children’s lives – their parents and coaches – with the information and resources they need to make sports a healthy, positive, and rewarding experience for their children, and their whole family."  Here, here! When LionHeart briefly played ice hockey coaches were already eye-balling him for the travel team because he took to the ice so quickly.  No thank you! I felt assaulted.  I just wanted him to enjoy the game and I was taking advantage of an anomaly in an urban community - an ice rink! 

LionHeart following in his brother's footsteps.

What disturbed me most about this segment on "Travel Sports Tourism," (get a load of that made up name will you) was the impact on family life and the athlete.  The family featured in the segment said they travel 30 weekends out of the year and that more than 50% of their family time is devoted to sports.  Even worse, the family has to be split up on the road because one plays baseball and the other runs track.  Way too much and way too soon.  Early specialization of a sport also greatly increases the chances of injury.  The American Journal of Sports Medicine in a 2015 survey found that 60% of all "Tommy John" surgeries were teen patients! The fact that a surgical procedure is named after a baseball player is another topic altogether.  Are we parents that delusional? Forbes magazine reports that one-sport specialization is more likely to lead to "pain than a scholarship."  How's that for a reality check.  A study by Loyola University (Chicago) says that if your child is spending more time playing sports than his age, the likelihood of him suffering a sports-related injury increases by 70% - WOW!

KingMan didn't start baseball until age 11, but he made up for lost time.

Time Magazine wrote in the September 4, 2017 issue, that the $15 billion (yep, B) has all but dried up local and community baseball leagues that used to bond families and communities.  Guess who owns plenty of stock in this industry, top owners of professional sports teams.  In the written vernacular of the youth:  SMH.  The article further says that there are families spending upwards of 10% of their income on travel sports.  A baseball family in New Jersey spends $30,000, a volleyball family in New York spends $20,000 and a mom from Springfield, Missouri travels 7.5 hours round-trip to take her son to travel basketball practice.  Some families skip car payments, house repairs, weddings and birthday parties all in the name of travel games.  What in three worlds?!

KingMan during his travel soccer days.

I will admit that I drank the cool-aid too.  I was an AAU basketball mom for a split second (worst experience ever!)  They really do expect you to give up EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND to one sport and not develop any other aspect of your child's life.  I was also a travel soccer mom for many years.  I did it because KingMan loved it and I dragged LionHeart out of bed at the crack of dawn to sit in the cold bleachers with the equally cold parents.  When KingMan was done with soccer, I felt like we had our life back.  Interestingly enough, neither one of my children play soccer anymore.  Their father encouraged me to enroll them in soccer.  He said he never played and he thought it was good conditioning.  He was old school and believed playing sports was good for physical training of the body and not just a pathway to a scholarship or the pros.  I wonder if they had only played soccer for fun, would they still play.  Both still love basketball.  Their father LOVED basketball.  Both of my sons play basketball every season and I don't get caught up in the rapture of coaches asking me to allow LionHeart to play with their AAU teams.  He has been invited twice and already made a travel team this year.  I'm not interested.   I will allow him to play with 3 teams this season but only because when the season ends, we are done!  They both have drumming.  KingMan is hitting the weight room and music studio.  Last summer LionHeart was on a swim team and he's about to join an all-boys step team.  There would be no time for any of that if I allowed travel sports to dominate our lives again.

 Here's the full clip of the episode that inspired this article.  Thank you insomnia!