I don't know if we discussed Dream Horders here but there was a discussion at Crooked Timber which, IIRC, wasn't terrible.

Correct link.

THE TRAVEL TEAM IS THE GREATEST POSSIBLE HONOR!

Rich people punish themselves, liberals worry the poor aren't getting same. News at seven.

Heh.

1: That's unpossible.

Ugh, this sounds a lot like the public vs private school arguments, and are probably as fruitful.

Is complaining about the 'sacrifice families make' to be part of some crazy travel team, cost and time wise, at all relevant in any meaningful sense?

Dude. I just try to post regularly. I'm not trying to only post on productive topics or else this well would have dried up years ago with all the other blogs.

They look haunted. You see them at school events, trying to figure out how to get three different kids to three different cities and booking every minute of their Saturday to stand beside a field and make small talk with other parents while one parent goes nuts in the ref.

They should have sensible kids who do nothing but read and have to be forced to get some activity.

They great thing about ambition is how it punishes itself.

That's beautiful.

I was hoping somebody with more exposure to youth sports than me would opine, but it occurs to me that there are (at least) two other possible trends that are worth considering in a discussion of youth sports.

1) What is the relationship between organized and non-organized sports? Are kids still playing pick-up games, even if they aren't on a team or are kids not playing pick-up games regardless of whether they're on a team (e.g, could there be a much larger decline in non-organized games)? The question here is whether there's a trend towards kids having more scheduled activities and fewer unscheduled activities?

2) Is this just a case of their being more competing alternatives for kids' time and attention. If the range of activities has increased you could see kids doing Karate, playing minecraft, or doing robotics club rather than a team sport (this is the same argument for why fewer people go to the movies these days).

Also, there was this rich guy back in Nebraska who ran a traveling basketball team for poor boys. Because the 80s were a different time, we were all surprised when the molestation story hit the news.

Whatever would we do if a bear ever ate Moby?

Hopefully kill the bear for me.

I could list all the activities we're doing this fall but then you and I would both hate me. We are avoid crazy travel teams at least, only one kid in one sport is doing travel and he's currently out for a month with a broken thumb. But as is I am at at least one hockey rink five or six days a week.

I am posting these comments from the first of two rinks tonight.

Hockey is the worst time suck. I told my son that playing hockey stunted your growth so he wouldn't even ask.

Is this just a case of their being more competing alternatives for kids' time and attention. If the range of activities has increased you could see kids doing Karate, playing minecraft, or doing robotics club rather than a team sport (this is the same argument for why fewer people go to the movies these days).

Probably, for middle class and UMC kids?

I had a friend on FB cheering about how proud they were that their high school student had X, Y, Z activities, and in order to make the A/B Honor Roll, there'd been many nights when the student had stayed up till 1:00 am finishing homework, only to get right back up at 5:30 am the next morning.

I'm trying to think if there are activities I'd enjoy enough to make me glad to have that schedule. It sounds awful and it made me dislike the parents for celebrating it.

A/B Honor Roll? Is the kid even trying if they get some Bs?

That was my suggestion at a comment for you to put on that post.

Why are they taking on so many sports? Are they hoping for admission or financial aid at the most selective colleges, or is it motivated by something else---fitness, maybe?

I have read the book Heebie mentioned and remember nothing about it.

You have to ace Design of Experiments to make the A/B Honor Roll.

I have four kids on three teams and I am coaching all three.

On the plus side I've lost seven pounds in the last two weeks. I don't know if it's because I'm getting more exercise or because I don't have time to eat.

I'm sure whatever you did in your previous life was pretty horrible and you enjoyed it.

I'm confused. Do American schools not have sports leagues and coaches and buses to carry the brats to matches?

They do, but I think there are also extra-scholastic leagues. And possibly also sports that are not part of scholastic athletics.

Typically not school affiliated until at least 8th grade or high school.

I was and remain so glad neither of my kids ever wanted to go for travel team sports.

I know some folks whose kids are doing ski racing. Make travel hockey look like a real bargain.

So the parents recreate separate parallel sports programs at their own additional expense? Mobyssatva's theory looks sound.

I've been hearing about this for years now as the reason your men's soccer team is so unimpressive. The American system leads to less participation in sports and innumerable crushed dreams. Do unfogged commenters maybe have some aversion to jocks that make you not take this seriously? Sports is something lots of poor and working class kids care about a great deal and can give them focus and discipline as well as fitness and friends, I could go on.

But not on and on, because of poor conditioning.

Do unfogged commenters maybe have some aversion to jocks that make you not take this seriously?

There's no way for me to know what I'm thinking, but that sounds plausible.

26-29: That was what was good about private school, tbh. We had teams in the 7th grade and the school paid for stuff. (Or it was included
In tuition and financial aid).

Fees for team sports in public school here are expensive as is having the school bus pick you up. Many of the teams are coached by parents in the evening.

Tim's coaches in Canada were mostly volunteers, and they had to do a lot of fundraising for sports - which left out the less well off.

26-29: That was what was good about private school, tbh. We had teams in the 7th grade and the school paid for stuff. (Or it was included
In tuition and financial aid).

Fees for team sports in public school here are expensive as is having the school bus pick you up. Many of the teams are coached by parents in the evening.

Tim's coaches in Canada were mostly volunteers, and they had to do a lot of fundraising for sports - which left out the less well off.

I'm right now in the midst of a drop one off, go elsewhere, drop off the other, come back and collect the first, then go get the second shuttle run. We only do it because they really love there activities and don't have a good reason to say no.

I was considering a post on something like this topic. I was telling my wife that if I go all Earl Woods on our older kid, he'd probably be able to get a baseball scholarship to college. But the price in pressure and neuroticism just seems too high. What I really don't understand are families that do commitment-heavy sports when the kids are only pretty good. It seems like such a waste of time and energy. Learn a language! Play the piano! Read a book! Not that sports aren't great fun; I loved playing when I was young, but at least some of that time could have been better spent.

If I would have spent all the time I spent failing at basketball learning how to be a bigger pain in the ass, I would have probably had to invent Bitcoin.

Our poor school district doesn't have team sports until middle school. There's a city football (and associated cheerleading) team that's very expensive, plus it's football. Last year there was a fully bilingual rec/beginner soccer league for kids in the school. I think it was $20/child and you could get a break on that if you needed. It was one of the most inspiring things I've seen, the kid in a wheelchair out on the field with everyone else, serious parents shrieking, Selah getting an encouraging lecture from the high school coach that she could make some goals if she'd kick more and do cartwheels less. I'm told we're getting this again and I will probably force all the girls to play again even though the older two claim not to want to just like they did last time. They could probably do well on track and field when they're old enough (throwing heavy things and running super fast respectively) but I haven't done much other than had them participate in Junior Olympics for a day in the summer on years when that happens so they can rack up medals and feel good about themselves.

Lee thinks I'm being abusive by not finding sports for them. Right now I don't have the excuse right now of physical therapy at least once a week (though I will once Mara gets her cast off the ankle she broke at the end of the month) but I work until I get them from daycare at 6 three nights a week and I would like time to be a socialist and have a family. Plus Lee also wanted to veto Selah playing in the soccer league because she doesn't believe that eventual soccer scholarships were good enough to be worth it for a kindergartner, so I don't actually care what she thinks and I get to choose what extracurriculars they do on my time. Nia is playing the clarinet and they're all on a waiting list for a program for free piano lessons for children of color. I know that they're missing out by being raised by a single parent without a lot of extras and with a focus on mental and physical health that means one girl's needs may keep the other two from doing what they'd rather. But I figure that's family. And they're pretty amazing and I'd rather have that than star athletes, even if I could get a lot of knitting done in the stands. (And next year Mara will be old enough to just stay home while I take Selah to hockey if that's still her sport of choice, but the cold makes Mara's joints swell and so she doesn't want to skate but can't comfortably sit and watch either. Juggling this kind of thing is what's already hard and annoying. I would prefer not to, obvs.)

I sometimes think it is a conspiracy by the hotel owner's association to fill otherwise under-booked "business" hotels (often near "office parks") on the weekends.

8: For which thanks!

8: sorry, wasn't meant to be personal. The framing was similar. Also, dude?

"It seems like such a waste of time and energy. Learn a language! Play the piano! Read a book!" I dunno. I learned one language quite well and another one or two marginally, played seven years of trumpet (piano would have been better for future me for sure), but as an adult I played decades of pickup basketball and tennis. And heck, more than a decade of softball leagues, too. Sports-that-you-can-do-in-adulthood were way more fun for me in the long run, without even counting any arguable physical benefits than language and music. I do still read books.

40: For real. My friend's kid made it on to Allstar baseball, which is some elaborate thing after the regular baseball season is over. His team was in danger of moving up to the next level of playoffs in New Orleans, and there were rules like:
- you have to stay at the official hotel; you can't crash with friends or anything
- you have to stay for the entire four day tournament - if you lose all your games in the first two days, you still have to pay all four nights.

I hear that bassoon scholarships go begging.

Not once Bassoon Hero comes out for the Xbox.

15: Eat it, too.

re: 46

Genuine laugh out loud.

xelA has his Saturdays semi-filled with organised activities. Drama club, football, swimming.

None of those are competitive, though, and they aren't expensive.* They are just fun activities to do with kids he knows. Swimming, I guess, is more a life skill. He loves swimming, though. His teacher is the right mix of stern and funny, so he eats her company up.

* for us. If you were on a very low income they would be. You'd be losing a couple of hours of wages post-tax at minimum wage for the week.

Do American schools not have sports leagues and coaches and buses to carry the brats to matches?

As mentioned, high schools certainly do, but one must choose between doing Fall Sports and doing Marching Band. And obviously, marching band is the clear winner there, so you're left with all the attractive, athletic kids doing marching band, while all the remaining geeks try to cobble together a football team.

Anyway, there's a real problem with rich parents bogarting all the activities that look good on college applications, but I don't know if pre-existing high school sports count as that.

Why did my phone change "pre" to"pre-existing"?

Because admissions offices will soon expect serious applicants to have invented sports of their own. It's called predictive text for a reason.

Selah getting an encouraging lecture from the high school coach that she could make some goals if she'd kick more and do cartwheels less.

Selah impresses once again.

I'm getting the barest taste of this, having put my six-year-old through two fall sports (at his request). I don't even know if long-distance travel teams requiring lodging are even a thing here in a dense urban hellhole, but I'm sure I'll find out eventually.

I'm not sure if I'm crankier about the logistics for the sports practices (during the week, after school, kind of in conflict with parents working, usually in inconvenient locations especially given that neither of us normally drives during the week) or about the games themselves consuming large fractions of the weekend.

Lee also wanted to veto Selah playing in the soccer league because she doesn't believe that eventual soccer scholarships were good enough to be worth it for a kindergartner

Not that you didn't already know this, but your ex has bad ideas about priorities.

The most American thing to do is to play low-intensity soccer constantly from kindergarten until third grade, and then completely ignore it for the rest of your life.

You left out the part where parents argue over whether or not donuts are a suitable post-game snack for kids.

AIMHMB I found it hilarious what a super jock mom my sister was with her son - he was on travelling basketball and baseball teams, and he never was really disciplined enough to become really good at either. But now he works for a company that does sports camps, and he's doing really well.

And then I start thinking maybe we failed as parents because we stopped dragging my stepdaughter to soccer. We would drive for an hour to where they had the soccer for kids with disabilities - and there would be all the kids in wheelchairs, using crutches, walkers etc and they would all be enthusiastically chasing the ball and there would be my stepdaughter with her 2 perfectly functional legs, staring obliviously into space, as the ball rolled by.

Obviously, you should have yelled, "Is the ref blind? That kid is offsides."

9.last is why my kids and Moby's should be friends, and also why they aren't.

I was on a bike ride last Sunday with a guy my age, talking about finding time for long (4+ hour) rides, and he talked about his 3 boys and managing their schedules. I didn't say, "on weekends, my kids only leave the house if I drag them to go shopping." Slight, but bare, exaggeration. I don't know what I would've done if either had showed the least interest in sport (or other out-of-house activity), but am thankful not to have found out.

What I really don't understand are families that do commitment-heavy sports when the kids are only pretty good. It seems like such a waste of time and energy. Learn a language! Play the piano! Read a book! Not that sports aren't great fun; I loved playing when I was young, but at least some of that time could have been better spent.

This is where I've always been. I loved baseball as a kid, but was terrible. So what. I was in the local league from 2nd through 8th grades, we played for about 3 months, 2-3 times a week. All games were at these two parks within a couple miles of our house, unless you went to counties, which required maybe a couple weekends of going downtown.

But this is where the stupid parenting arms race comes in. If your kid is a legit college-grade talent, that's not much time, and pretty weak competition (I mean, he might be pitching against me, for instance). So those families seek out more. And then the other families can't let little Brock be left behind. Ugh. Fuck everything about that.

Closely related rant about single-sport kids. If a fraction of a year each in baseball, basketball, football, and track was good enough for Jackie Robinson, it's good enough for your little shit, you rich pricks.

If they got out more, they'd probably just vandalize stuff like I used to.

61.last: The risk of screwing up your joints with too much of the same kind of activity is very high compared to the old way of four sports a year.

Anyway, from almost four years ago, when baseball and hope still lived in Pittsburgh, here's Andrew McCutchen's extremely valuable piece on what this whole culture means for poor and/or black kids. His success came almost entirely down to one or two generous coaches supporting him out of their own pockets, when he otherwise would've ended up like any other schmoe.

63: sins of the father visited upon the knees and elbow of the sons.

I loved baseball as a kid, but was terrible

Me too! Fortunately, 8-year-old me had a coach and two parents who had no problem watching me sit on the bench, so after that season I decided I'd rather stay home and read.

Of course, no football means much less risk of concussion.

No baseball means missing your best chance to learn proper spitting.

So we probably shouldn't be making college admissions dependent on such easily hoarded opportunities. Maybe we should just stick to grades. Of course high schools could respond to such a change in focus with rampant grade inflation. So we'll need some standardized measure. Hmmm... What ever could we do?

I don't know much about other sports- I guess baseball and soccer to some extent, maybe football, don't know basketball- but the infrastructure of the independent USA Hockey program is IN SANE. Coaching certifications, safety training, official developmental programs, leagues, referees- the whole thing is an organization completely separate from schools or any government and it dominates the whole sport from ages 6 to 14. I assume Canada is similar.

I played baseball as a kid and umpired when I was an older kid and the coaches were parents of my friends and they found umpires by asking older kids if they wanted to make 10 bucks some weekend. Hockey is mostly organized by town but you have to be a member of the national organization to coach or referee which has all kinds of control and regulations asssociated with it. I think it has something to do with insurance. Like if I am ever caught coaching without a helmet I am banned for 30 days.

You know, Jan Stenerud came to my alma mater, from Norway, on a ski jumping scholarship.

I don't think they have those any more.

Oh, no. There's lots of Norwegians. They're just not very sociable now, because of all the oil money.

Perfect for bassoon explosion.

Fencing bassoons in Canada was going to be my gig.

70: Hockey Canada is very much like that: not connected to government or school in any way. It's also very powerful; it bends the more local organizations to its will.
One great thing about Hockey Canada is that they take development seriously, and so they have a national curriculum for every age and level. I'm helping coach my 6-year-old's team, and practices are super-easy to run: I have a nationally-designed lesson plan emailed to me every week. I've coached local kids soccer, and the organizational approach there is "eh, get them to kick the ball a bit. I'm sure they'll figure it out."

I live in the most densely populated part of the country, and if my son plays rep hockey (what we call 'travel' up here) he'd be on the ice 5 days a week, and we'd be driving to cities 3 hours away for games, plus further for occasional tournaments. Which is one reason he won't play rep.
But hockey is popular and dense enough up here that if he stays in 'house league', he'll still be able to play lots of hockey without absurd travel, and with more manageable 2x/week ice times.

[My role at unfogged seems to be 'guy who de-lurks occasionally to explain Canada stuff.']

Great! Whay do you fence with bassoons? So unwieldy.

Have you seen non-NHLers play hockey? We like unwieldy sports. Curling is super popular up here. Caber tossing likewise.

Because you have to wear mittens all the time?

32: it's because soccer is a non-sport sport, an empty space in the fabric of sports filled by children playing something to be well-rounded or get out of the house, or whatever. deep down almost no one takes it seriously, participation dwindles and flatlines as HS graduation approaches, and while there are a handful of genuinely good players who go on to continue in college, after that there's literally nothing. probably it's too connected with the rest of the actual world to merit real americans' attention.

here in narnia the american school stubbornly insists on playing "football," even when they had to divide their own school into two teams because no one else cares. now there is a second american-style school and they play each other. the american school kids bully the other school's kids on the bus, naturally.

You take them off when you use the restroom, if that's the worry.

Why? Why freeze three extremities and not just one?

De lurking to tie this to ogged's ancient-past swimming posts.

I was a swimmer growing up and through college (over 20 years ago). Back then, individual sports (swimming, skating, gymnastics especially) were way more intensive than team sports: daily (even twice daily) practice, year-round, and travel to competitions. But the practices were local and the travel for competition was infrequent (maybe 4 meets per year that required hotel stays). Team/school sports were much more local, and there weren't the overnight travel obligations at all. It's interesting that it's reversed now at the competitive levels.

On the scholarship side (mentioned in the article from the OP), this is crazy. Investing the time and money in youth sports hoping to finance college is a disastrous ROI. Even a full scholarship at an out-of-state school (which basically don't exist outside football and basketball) is worth, what $160,000? Most of them are worth a few thousand dollars/year (the article linked in 64 mentions 70% at an in-state school for a super-elite baseball player). And the odds of getting (and keeping!) even a partial scholarship are vanishingly small. Not to mention that elite college athletics (i.e., where there are scholarships) makes it hard to do well academically.

But here we come full circle to the hoarding issue. Athletes from relatively affluent backgrounds (i.e., those that can afford intensive sports) get *roster spots and admissions preferences* at elite academic institutions. Their families can afford the tuition (or the loans don't frighten them as badly because they aren't in precarious circumstances), and the kid has a much better positional good. Instead of going to big- or directional-state university, they go to a higher performing school that fields their sport and where their abilities give them an advantage in admissions. Further, because those schools' athletics programs aren't as intensive (in part because they lack scholarships) the athlete is primarily a student and can do well academically. Basically, admissions advantages for athletes largely redound to the benefit of affluent, mostly white students. Hoarding of sports opportunity ends up helping to hoard educational opportunity.

Or maybe that's all just obvious?

And, linking to ogged at 37 and JRoth at 61, that's me. Pretty good, non-great athlete. I liked the sport, and needed something to dissipate a lot of energy. And then I took the path above: got into a college that I couldn't have gotten into on academics alone, where I could be one of the best swimmers without it dominating my life. And, lo and behold, am relatively affluent myself.

Would you be interested in purchasing a time share?

Phred in 83 covers most of the points I would have made if I still had the will and ability to post anything substantive.

Thank you 83, I was trying to write all that but confused myself.

To foreigners who are dimly aware of the US college sports scholarship system: It has to be emphasized that there are two sports with LOTS of college scholarships (football and basketball), and these are the ones where privilege and wealth play the LEAST role in getting you a scholarship. There are huge networks of amateur leagues for high schoolers that do not require major parental investment, because they are sponsored by, e.g. Nike, and the colleges themselves do an incredible amount of scouting to find the best players and don't limit themselves to just the most obvious leagues with the most professional setups.

So these privileged parents trying to get scholarships for their kids are trying to do it in sports that barely have any scholarships to begin with (lacrosse? lacrosse is the rage now) and hiliariously getting in each other's way in the process. And what they end up with, and what they are happy with, is not really a scholarship - it's that they pay MORE than they would otherwise, because the kid who otherwise wouldn't get into an elite school gets into an elite school (instead of the University of Indiana) because the elite school has to staff all its sports teams and lets non-brainiacs in for that purpose.

Baseball and ice hockey are in between. Colleges have maybe enough scholarships for half or a third of the players, depending on the college. These sports have a football/basketball-like professionalized status at maybe 40 colleges in the country, most of which aren't very prestigious or expensive to attend in the first place.

86: ISTR the US olympic performance rests on a massive colleg-based system. How do all those things (swimming, wrestling, whatever) fit in?

85 is the comment I would have made if I still had the will and ability to read anything substantive.

86: Those are all excellent points. Especially that investment in pricey amateur athletics often ends up with families spending more money for college tuition, as their kids get into private or out-of-state schools where they get neither academic nor athletic funding.

I also really like the point about proliferation of other sports that are overwhelming white and affluent: rowing, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, volleyball, golf, swimming, water polo, skiing, gymnastics. yeesh.

Foreigners should also know about Title IX. This is the law that states that male and female college students must have equal rights. Until a few years ago, the main way most people heard about Title IX was because colleges are bound to interpret it in such a way that they give equal numbers of scholarships to male and female students. And this means that at every college with football scholarships, since football is male only and has up to 85 scholarships, they had to either create new sports for women, or get rid of other male sports, or some combination of both. Lots of sad stories of alumni getting upset because the men's rowing, swimming or wrestling program went away. So if anything, getting into sports is a better bet for your elite daughter, not son.

90 probably should have said "equal opportunities" rather than "equal rights".

i've written about 4 different posts on this thread and deleted every one, will probably delete this one before hitting post, because recent history here --- not good! but ... ogged and selah have it right, parents in a position to support youthful acquisition of life-time-joy-inducing-skills should support just that! i super firmly believe a childhood-adolescent interest-to-obsession with swimming, or cartwheels on an inviting greensward, or dancing, or knitting, or reading the collected letters of flaubert, or playing the oboe, that results in an adult with ingrained pathways to access joy is parental success. even if the grown up sometimes loses touch with those pathways they can always find their way back. so balance with a side dish of supporting the inevitable over-the-top obsession is great. and then you have a 17 year old whose friends want them to play one more piece please! and then everyone sings along to the internationale (fr lyrics, the best).

Obviously, the interests of individual parents, and of society as a whole, are going to look a little different with respect to encouraging kids. No parent is going to tell a kid they they shouldn't pursue their passion to play the bassoon because other kids in the country can't afford lessons/purchase/rentals. Should we be subsidizing bassoon lessons? I would say yes, and think public schools should be funded adequately to do this, although there are points at which lines can reasonably be drawn.

Obviously, the interests of individual parents, and of society as a whole, are going to look a little different with respect to encouraging kids.

I'm not a parent, and don't have a strong opinion on that question, but I wanted to point to a recent CT post on the subject.

[Hagerman] misplaces the real tradeoff. I said that I have figured out nothing about parenting since having a kid, but this one I knew long before the kid arrived: Good parenting is not about providing as much advantage for your kid as you can harness. It is also--it must be also--about making your kid a good person. I don't care whether we say that good parenting is about maximizing your kid's flourishing and insist that being a good person is part of flourishing, or instead say that being a good person is a distinct thing from flourishing but that being a good parent involves promoting both. The point is the same: Helping your kid become a good person is part of good parenting, and helping your kid become a good person requires modeling being a good person. Good citizenship is part of good parenting. But because sometimes being a good person and citizen is causally inert as an investment in your kid becoming a good person, a second point needs to be made: On either understanding, being a good parent does not require doing the things constitutive of good parenting at any cost. Even in cases where being a good person and citizen would be causally inert as an investment in your kid becoming a good person, then, being a good person and citizen is perfectly consistent with being a very good parent, even if it means passing up an opportunity to maximize your kid's advantage.

(and I am certain that dq is quite conscious of these questions and, based on her descriptions, is certainly invested in teach good citizenship)

No parent is going to tell a kid they they shouldn't pursue their passion to play the bassoon because other kids in the country can't afford lessons/purchase/rentals.

"Eat your bassoon! There are bassoon-starved children in Africa!"

Still chuckling over "Bassoon Hero" above.

https://entertainment.theonion.com/activision-reports-sluggish-sales-for-sousaphone-hero-1819569239

96. I met a real life Bassoon Hero once or twice. I'm sure I've told the story many times.

"Eat your bassoon! There are bassoon-starved children in Africa!"

Something something never even seen a bassoon.

and then everyone sings along to the internationale (fr lyrics, the best)

I'm sure I said this at the time but at Rust Belt socialist prom, the djs followed the Internationale (Billy Bragg version) with Bitch Better Have My Money, which was amazing.

Blockquote in 94 is excellent.

I had to give a public speech following a band that played "Uptown Funk". Which -- like it or hate it -- the song is considerably more energetic than anything that's going to come out of my mouth.