Sports that aren’t a huge time / money commitment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Can someone explain to me why travel soccer is so expensive? You need two goals, a couple balls, and a referee for an hour. The kids usually buy their own cleats, shin guards and uniforms. Why is it $10k?

I have a travel sport kid, not soccer, and it is from the practices. Add in the gym or field rentals for those, and coach fees for tons of practices, insurance costs, coaching fees for tournaments, coach travel and hotel costs. Factor in the league's advertising and marketing fees, the coach's administrative time and lastly... because parents will pay and the increased cost will make it seem more prestigious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Track

Niece is in track in NoVa. They travel a lot on weekends up to 4 or 5 hours away. Whole weekend is shot. Hotels hundreds of dollars. Meets all day and she gets to run like maybe total a few minutes. No schedule at meets. Each race finishes when it finishes and then the next race. SIL sitting in stands all day. Have no idea cost to be on the travel team. Off season was doing conditioning with trainer. Niece is OK but not top or anything. They went to Fl for some big meet. SIL probably spent 10-12K last spring/summer.

All above sounds horrible to us with time commitment, resources, and money. DC is young. We are encouraging sports but not travel anything unless DC is really good and pushes it for himself.

[Anonymous]

Wow. These numbers are insane.
I coach crew, which I always considered an expensive sport, but we charge $1k/season and have a few fundraisers. Kids carpool to hotels and share rooms. Sometimes I rent a 15 passenger van and drive them while one of the other coaches takes the truck/trailer.

[Anonymous]

Any rec sport is cheap. You and your DH must be from wealthy families—golf and hockey are both expensive hobbies.

Rec soccer, basketball, volleyball, Flag football, softball, and summer swim are all popular and inexpensive.

But what will happen is you will end up Doing what she is interested in regardless of cost.

[Anonymous]

When your kids hit middle school, anything offered by the school. There are no costs to you and they have an activity bus to take your kids home (providing they are not in a self contained special education program). About once a semester, there is some outside activity that you will want to attend.

Things offered by rec clubs, like boys and girls clubs and county rec departments aren't bad. But, you do have to do the driving once a week for the practice and once a week for games if there are any.

As far as time commitments, the worst I've seen are travel soccer and baseball, any sort of gymnastics (rhythmic, acro, tumbling) and swimming are really time consuming. And the gymnastics ones are by far the most expensive, though the others are not cheap.

[Anonymous]

Just don’t get into horses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing to do with water, frozen or liquid.

And nothing to do with horses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Golf is where it's at for girls in terms of college scholarships, so your investment while she's young may pay off! Plus, you already know how to do it so it's something you could do together.

But seriously, don't listen to me, my daughters and I ride horses and my husband is always aghast at how much it all costs. He almost choked when he found out the horse my daughter was petting was for sale for a quarter of a million dollars. (Not our horse, just to be clear).

Golf is incredibly, incredibly expensive if you want to be good.

Also, if you are chasing a women's golf scholarship realize that there is a good chance you will end up out west or in the south.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Track

Niece is in track in NoVa. They travel a lot on weekends up to 4 or 5 hours away. Whole weekend is shot. Hotels hundreds of dollars. Meets all day and she gets to run like maybe total a few minutes. No schedule at meets. Each race finishes when it finishes and then the next race. SIL sitting in stands all day. Have no idea cost to be on the travel team. Off season was doing conditioning with trainer. Niece is OK but not top or anything. They went to Fl for some big meet. SIL probably spent 10-12K last spring/summer.

All above sounds horrible to us with time commitment, resources, and money. DC is young. We are encouraging sports but not travel anything unless DC is really good and pushes it for himself.

I ran for a few seasons in high school and this is accurate. I didn’t get home from weeknight meets until close to midnight a few times. And track is not the sport for those concerned about social distancing - so much sitting/laying around with your team in tight corners while waiting for your event to start.

[Anonymous]

Cross Country/distance running. You can practice for free and you can enter all sorts of road races for cheap in this area if you want extra competition experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Track

Niece is in track in NoVa. They travel a lot on weekends up to 4 or 5 hours away. Whole weekend is shot. Hotels hundreds of dollars. Meets all day and she gets to run like maybe total a few minutes. No schedule at meets. Each race finishes when it finishes and then the next race. SIL sitting in stands all day. Have no idea cost to be on the travel team. Off season was doing conditioning with trainer. Niece is OK but not top or anything. They went to Fl for some big meet. SIL probably spent 10-12K last spring/summer.

All above sounds horrible to us with time commitment, resources, and money. DC is young. We are encouraging sports but not travel anything unless DC is really good and pushes it for himself.

I ran for a few seasons in high school and this is accurate. I didn’t get home from weeknight meets until close to midnight a few times. And track is not the sport for those concerned about social distancing - so much sitting/laying around with your team in tight corners while waiting for your event to start.

Field events are even worse, you spend so much time sitting around waiting for your turn.

[Anonymous]

Rec soccer and basketball are by far the cheapest and least time consuming kid sports in this area. I do not include baseball in this because the games are long, but, if you don't mind a two hour game on saturdays, rec baseball is cheap too. MSI soccer was $80 per season when my kids played rec. Rec basketball through MoCo is less than $100. Games are 1 hour or less, all played within MoCo. Practice is 1x per week. Name me a cheaper, less time consuming sport. If you are catholic, CYO sports are even cheaper less time consuming. Flag football is probably the least time consuming, but is not cheaper in my experience.

The only way little kids (pre-middle school) can do track/cross country is through a year round club, and that gets expensive and time consuming. The meets are all day (like swimming). And the better you are the further you travel. People who say track and cross country are cheap sports have never done them outside of the school environment.

For folks offering up martial arts as a possibility. I won't even go there with you.

[Anonymous]

Field hockey

[Anonymous]

Tennis. We do lessons once per week and the occasionally tournament if it is local. You can obviously put a lot more time into it and drive all over the state for different tournaments, but we don't.

Swim. It is through our local gym. They our on the "swim team" but it is all conditioning and practice drills. We don't do meets.

Any sport that doesn't involve a lot of equipment can be made low key if you want it to be- with the option of putting more time and commitment into it later if you want,

[Anonymous]

watermelon seed spitting