Travel sports are killing American families

[Anonymous]

This is what John Delony stated on his show [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvkpAkDmf-Y]. It's a 1 hour show, but the sports discussion is in the first 20 minutes of the show. His argument is that the family should not revolve around a 10 year old's sport. He also talks about younger and younger kids playing their sports to the point of getting injured from over-using their bodies.

[Anonymous]

Who?

[Anonymous]

He’s a shock jock who like all propagandists sprinkle truths with lies.

Yes your whole family should not revolve around sports unless your Katie ledecky then it’s awesome.

[Anonymous]

Youre*

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who?

I had the same question when I heard this on a Facebook reel. I searched for the whole video to understand the context. Apparently he is on Dave Ramsey's team and specializes on mental health issues [https://www.ramseysolutions.com/john-delony]. PhD in psychology.

[Anonymous]

Travel sports seem dreadful and I honestly can't understand how so many parents get sucked into this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is what John Delony stated on his show [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvkpAkDmf-Y]. It's a 1 hour show, but the sports discussion is in the first 20 minutes of the show. His argument is that the family should not revolve around a 10 year old's sport. He also talks about younger and younger kids playing their sports to the point of getting injured from over-using their bodies.

Who is this and why is his opinion about anything valid or influential.

[Anonymous]

This is an exurban disease. Most people don’t do travel kids sports.

[Anonymous]

So many of my kids friends' parents who do this seem miserable due to one thing or another – the driving, the expense, the pressure on the kids, the opportunity cost, or some combination of these factors, but yet all of them act as though they have no choice and they have no idea how it got like this.

[Anonymous]

I see it as similar to the proliferation of smart phones among younger kids. No one thinks it's a good idea but once other kids start doing it, others join in, and then it becomes essential to participation. Those who would have wanted to just do rec sports (the dumb phone equivalent) are forced to either quit the sport (as kids get older) or join in on the travel sports fiasco.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Travel sports seem dreadful and I honestly can't understand how so many parents get sucked into this.

I said the same thing and then ended up with three in travel sports. The problem is that the rec sports sort of die out after 6th/7th grade. And if you want to play a HS sport at your 3000 kid public HS, you need to be playing on a pretty competitive team in 8th grade at least. I really discouraged all my kids but at the end of the day was not willing to put my foot down and say no when it was something they really wanted to do. On the upside, we do what is sort of “travel lite”—usually 2 practices a week and then tournaments 3–8 tournaments a year. If we only had one kid that would be totally doable—but again I wasn’t willing to tell my youngest she couldn’t do something I had left the oldest do.

I wish there wasn’t such a market for travel draining all the kids from rec leagues. We would have stayed in rec leagues through MS but it becomes hard to find teams, or the teams are filled with kids that are brand new to sport so it’s not so fun.

[Anonymous]

Well, he has a point.
- injuries are real and can become chronic over time
- parents feel their child will be the next rich and famous one
- athletics are important in the US and can open some doors
- weekends do revolve around the sport like it or not. And while this type of recurring activity helps grow bonds not only between the athletes, but also between the parents, most of these bonds are “good while it lasted” and fall apart when the kid goes off to college
- siblings/family members might get resentful with focus on Jack’s sport.
- these kids miss out on other weekend opportunities to hang out with neighborhood friends, pursue other interests

I have a nephew and niece in travel sports. One is in a 2 year college D3 hoping to transfer but not getting any interest. Has had shoulder issues for years. Did not focus on academics so now his options are severely limited due to grades and he just isn’t as good as his parents thought he was. The mental pressure has made him very agitated as he tries to figure out his life without baseball.
Niece is a junior in HS and recruited to play lacrosse at a small D1 school. She feels cheated that she wasn’t picked up by a bigger school. No one on her team was. So now all we hear about is it’s the clubs fault.
Both of them could rarely attend any of their cousins (my kids) events (birthdays, sleepovers, theme parks, etc. They used to be very close until they turned 9 and then grew apart.
I think the whole travel experience is ridiculous. My sister defended it and touted how amazing the experience was/is for her kids. But at what cost? She complains now that her former travel mom friends don’t get together anymore. How her son’s club did him wrong. How her son’s shoulder injury prevented him from being selected. It’s exhausting to hear and probably more exhausting to live. When your life revolves around one thing, what do you do when it’s gone?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Travel sports seem dreadful and I honestly can't understand how so many parents get sucked into this.

I said the same thing and then ended up with three in travel sports. The problem is that the rec sports sort of die out after 6th/7th grade. And if you want to play a HS sport at your 3000 kid public HS, you need to be playing on a pretty competitive team in 8th grade at least. I really discouraged all my kids but at the end of the day was not willing to put my foot down and say no when it was something they really wanted to do. On the upside, we do what is sort of “travel lite”—usually 2 practices a week and then tournaments 3–8 tournaments a year. If we only had one kid that would be totally doable—but again I wasn’t willing to tell my youngest she couldn’t do something I had left the oldest do.

I wish there wasn’t such a market for travel draining all the kids from rec leagues. We would have stayed in rec leagues through MS but it becomes hard to find teams, or the teams are filled with kids that are brand new to sport so it’s not so fun.

DP. We're a rec family right now and I worry this will be us. Especially my middle kid desperately loves her sport, is decent at it, and gets really upset when nobody around her cares. We currently do rec + select for her and tell her that's what we can manage, but even on her select team she's irritated at the kids who literally don't care (why their parents put them on select is beyond me).

[Anonymous]

No idea who this guy is, but it’s absolutely true that the youth sports industry is not set up in the best interest of kids and families. It takes away time from free play and pick-up games, and all the social skills that children get when they organize themselves, set and enforce rules, etc. And because so many kids participate, even the families who would prefer to just send their kids to the park to play kickball with the neighbor kids feel they have no choice.

And ironically, it often sets kids up to become sedentary adults because they don’t learn the joy of living an active lifestyle for its own sake vs. training for a highly competitive and very specific setting. Only a small number of kids can actually be the best at an elite level, and it’s easy for the rest to end up internalizing “this isn’t my thing” and end up applying they attitude to exercise more broadly.

[Anonymous]

And killing childhood too imo. Kids are too busy and there is less unorganized play or hanging out for kids.