Regrets or inputs about competitive sports for elementary kids

[Anonymous]

We never got into travel sports when DS was younger, but that may be a function of being in NYC where its was less of a "thing." He played for local little league teams until high school, where he now plays on his school team and for a travel team in the summer. He's a junior now, and we're in the beginning of the recruitment process because he would like to play for an academic D1 or D3 school. He dedicates a lot of time off-season to improving his skills, and he works with a trainer and a pitching coach on most evenings after school.

He has always loved to play, but he didn't become truly committed to it until his early teens. The motivation comes from him, and we support him as much as possible. The understanding is that school comes first, and part of what drives him to succeed academically is knowing that it will make him a more attractive candidate to college coaches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Which parent wants to move up to travel? That parent needs to agree to be the one to give up all of their weekends to travel to games. Your entire weekends will be consumed by traveling for games, so make sure you know what you're signing up for before agreeing to it. IMO low level players shouldn't be playing travel sports, rec is perfect for them.

This is something you need to figure out ahead of time! The travel and chaos will fall on both parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Short story is that kiddo is in elementary school and their other parent (my ex) and I disagree about moving up to the next league which is not the travel league but it is more competitive than the current recreation league our kid is in - it involves one more practice per week and some weekends could be up to three-ish hours round trip for a game. I recognize that travel leagues are a much heavier lift. Our kid loves playing and is fairly good. They enjoy their current rec team with friends but are worried about getting left behind as several friends plan to move onto the next league. I could see our child excelling in the next league as well as being content until middle school to remain in the rec league and have more weekend time for other social activities.

Any input on how it is for your family currently or looking back, if you started your child in competitive sports early?

Why do you feel travel or more competitive leagues are better / harder than rec leagues?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Short story is that kiddo is in elementary school and their other parent (my ex) and I disagree about moving up to the next league which is not the travel league but it is more competitive than the current recreation league our kid is in - it involves one more practice per week and some weekends could be up to three-ish hours round trip for a game. I recognize that travel leagues are a much heavier lift. Our kid loves playing and is fairly good. They enjoy their current rec team with friends but are worried about getting left behind as several friends plan to move onto the next league. I could see our child excelling in the next league as well as being content until middle school to remain in the rec league and have more weekend time for other social activities.

Any input on how it is for your family currently or looking back, if you started your child in competitive sports early?

Why do you feel travel or more competitive leagues are better / harder than rec leagues?

Other "social activities", like what? It's a DC area suburb people here don't do anything; they don't even talk to each other. When sports started for my kids, it was like, "Alright something to do."

DC social pick-up lines, "So what do you do?", "Which school area do you live in?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Short story is that kiddo is in elementary school and their other parent (my ex) and I disagree about moving up to the next league which is not the travel league but it is more competitive than the current recreation league our kid is in - it involves one more practice per week and some weekends could be up to three-ish hours round trip for a game. I recognize that travel leagues are a much heavier lift. Our kid loves playing and is fairly good. They enjoy their current rec team with friends but are worried about getting left behind as several friends plan to move onto the next league. I could see our child excelling in the next league as well as being content until middle school to remain in the rec league and have more weekend time for other social activities.

Any input on how it is for your family currently or looking back, if you started your child in competitive sports early?

Why do you feel travel or more competitive leagues are better / harder than rec leagues?

OP here. I never said they were better or harder. I asked about the family experience of spending more time on sports and how they felt about it looking back or now, if they're currently still in it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All my kids did high level travel in elementary and middle school and we are very happy with that choice. I think it had 3 big benefits.

1. Fitness. All of my kids are in fantastic condition (much better than their non-travel peers)

2. Social skills & confidence. All of my kids have good social skills, can deal with authority and are appropriately self-confident. It also ensures a significant amount of time away from screens.

3. Parent child relationship. For us working with them on their sports “career” spending one on one time in hotels, and being with them as they went through their ups and downs was the best bonding that I can think of. Particularly with my youngest who was cut from a team and then working him to get in another team was a key event in his life. When things are hard for him now I will say to him remember getting cut? You survived that and you’ll survive this. You can’t get that anywhere else.

But with that said, as a parent you need to approach it with the right mindset. No matter how many opportunities you give them ultimately they have to be the ones to want it. Additionally, pursuing youth sports is no guarantee of athletic success or even continued interest in the sport. You have to look at it as a healthy activity not as a down payment on the future.

Good luck.

Thanks. My kids aren't into screens (yet) and are super active locally so I do question the need to move things further out (more travel/time commitment, etc) when things are "working" how they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Which parent wants to move up to travel? That parent needs to agree to be the one to give up all of their weekends to travel to games. Your entire weekends will be consumed by traveling for games, so make sure you know what you're signing up for before agreeing to it. IMO low level players shouldn't be playing travel sports, rec is perfect for them.

I'm not the parent who wants to do travel sports, and also don't love the idea of increasingly losing more hours or eventually whole weekends for sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which parent wants to move up to travel? That parent needs to agree to be the one to give up all of their weekends to travel to games. Your entire weekends will be consumed by traveling for games, so make sure you know what you're signing up for before agreeing to it. IMO low level players shouldn't be playing travel sports, rec is perfect for them.

+1 and read this book.

https://www.si.com/more-sports/2009/04/07/youthsports-untilithurts

My older son had lots of female friends with sports injuries in high school.

My coworkers also have kids who had injuries so bad they quit their sports.

I read high school scholarship apps and a common essay topic is "how I recovered from a leg injury so I could meet xxx goal in my sport".

Thanks. I'll take a look. Definitely do not want to go in that direction

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ He is likely to be the best player on the varsity tennis team as a freshman.

That's it. I appreciate the honest perspective. I'm not the parent who is going to push my kid for a decade for a scholarship. I'm happy if they are active and enjoying activities with their friends so I also just worry a bit about going in the direction of travel sports bc of the exposure to more competition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It really depends on how much your kid loves the sport.

My kid is a baseball fanatic - it is his life’s great passion, and has been since he was about 4. Aided and abetted by a baseball loving dad who coached tball and played hours of catch. Still - with all that love - we still didn’t do travel until 12, and then it was a B level local travel team. Kid didn’t ask before then, and we didn’t offer. I would have had a hard time saying no if he had asked.

He is going to college next year and will play. Over all of this time he has never said he didn’t want to go to practice, never did more than grumble to himself about 5am tournament wake ups. He has driven this the whole time.

I’m glad we enabled his baseball playing - it’s what he loves, and makes him happy and gives him motivation to get up and out the door in the morning. He still lights up when he looks at the calendar at 7am and says “it’s a baseball day!”

Thank you for the perspective. I like the idea of waiting until one's kid expresses the interest on their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We never got into travel sports when DS was younger, but that may be a function of being in NYC where its was less of a "thing." He played for local little league teams until high school, where he now plays on his school team and for a travel team in the summer. He's a junior now, and we're in the beginning of the recruitment process because he would like to play for an academic D1 or D3 school. He dedicates a lot of time off-season to improving his skills, and he works with a trainer and a pitching coach on most evenings after school.

He has always loved to play, but he didn't become truly committed to it until his early teens. The motivation comes from him, and we support him as much as possible. The understanding is that school comes first, and part of what drives him to succeed academically is knowing that it will make him a more attractive candidate to college coaches.

It's helpful to know your child can still play in college even without being super competitive until later. I feel like there's this story around here that your kid will get left behind if they don't start sports when they're in diapers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We never got into travel sports when DS was younger, but that may be a function of being in NYC where its was less of a "thing." He played for local little league teams until high school, where he now plays on his school team and for a travel team in the summer. He's a junior now, and we're in the beginning of the recruitment process because he would like to play for an academic D1 or D3 school. He dedicates a lot of time off-season to improving his skills, and he works with a trainer and a pitching coach on most evenings after school.

He has always loved to play, but he didn't become truly committed to it until his early teens. The motivation comes from him, and we support him as much as possible. The understanding is that school comes first, and part of what drives him to succeed academically is knowing that it will make him a more attractive candidate to college coaches.

Did you attend any Fall D1 camps?

Even Ivy D1 programs have around 80% of their 2026 class recruited by the end of this Spring…especially with the smaller rosters starting Fall 2025.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All my kids did high level travel in elementary and middle school and we are very happy with that choice. I think it had 3 big benefits.

1. Fitness. All of my kids are in fantastic condition (much better than their non-travel peers)

2. Social skills & confidence. All of my kids have good social skills, can deal with authority and are appropriately self-confident. It also ensures a significant amount of time away from screens.

3. Parent child relationship. For us working with them on their sports “career” spending one on one time in hotels, and being with them as they went through their ups and downs was the best bonding that I can think of. Particularly with my youngest who was cut from a team and then working him to get in another team was a key event in his life. When things are hard for him now I will say to him remember getting cut? You survived that and you’ll survive this. You can’t get that anywhere else.

But with that said, as a parent you need to approach it with the right mindset. No matter how many opportunities you give them ultimately they have to be the ones to want it. Additionally, pursuing youth sports is no guarantee of athletic success or even continued interest in the sport. You have to look at it as a healthy activity not as a down payment on the future.

Good luck.

God damn, travel sports is like a cult for you Psychos.

I could never imagine looking at my son when dealing with a real adult problem and telling him "hey, remember when you got cut in 6th grade?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All my kids did high level travel in elementary and middle school and we are very happy with that choice. I think it had 3 big benefits.

1. Fitness. All of my kids are in fantastic condition (much better than their non-travel peers)

2. Social skills & confidence. All of my kids have good social skills, can deal with authority and are appropriately self-confident. It also ensures a significant amount of time away from screens.

3. Parent child relationship. For us working with them on their sports “career” spending one on one time in hotels, and being with them as they went through their ups and downs was the best bonding that I can think of. Particularly with my youngest who was cut from a team and then working him to get in another team was a key event in his life. When things are hard for him now I will say to him remember getting cut? You survived that and you’ll survive this. You can’t get that anywhere else.

But with that said, as a parent you need to approach it with the right mindset. No matter how many opportunities you give them ultimately they have to be the ones to want it. Additionally, pursuing youth sports is no guarantee of athletic success or even continued interest in the sport. You have to look at it as a healthy activity not as a down payment on the future.

Good luck.

God damn, travel sports is like a cult for you Psychos.

I could never imagine looking at my son when dealing with a real adult problem and telling him "hey, remember when you got cut in 6th grade?"

Are you having a bad day? Feeling lonely? What is the possible benefit to calling the other poster “psychos” ?

Go take a Xanax and feel better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS attends one of the big 3 private schools, and he will likely plays varsity tennis there as the number one player on the team. It took so much time and money to get there, and knowing then what I know now, I am not sure I would do it again. YMMV.

I had a friend just like this growing up. Top 20 in his age group in the nation from 10 - 18. Number one player on Varsity for four years. Got to mid major D1 school on partial scholarship and had a 50/50 W/L record his freshman year. Played through college and graduated. Told me if he could do it over he would have rather had a normal high school and college experience and not have his entire life dictated by tennis from age 8.