Are travel sports bad for community?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The alternative to travel sports in middle school is to stay home and plug in to screens. That's just reality in 2023. It's not 1985 when kids went outside to play, etc. (and even that wasn't totally real--a lot of that is fetishizing history.) I agree that this country has screwed up priorities, but travel sports parents and kids are making a choice between that and a worse thing. It's not like there are these amazing local sports communities just ready to accept kids past age 11. It's travel or stop playing, in reality.

No, it isn’t. You people are so myopic. Try parenting.

[Anonymous]

Sad way of thinking really, if you want your kids too play/hang out like this, which I'm surprised some don't, you either let them or make them.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Travel takes up more time than any of these other activities listed. But keep justifying all the costs - both monetary and time from family events and holidays.

But yes, I missed the days where kids had lots of unstructured free time to roam the neighborhood on their bikes.

It will be interesting to see if in the next generation or two, the kids of today stop with the travel nonsense and competitiveness

They don’t know what they’ve missed, so it’s a crap shoot.

K
Wow. That’s pathetic.

Damn. Just chill

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think the travel sports community is one type of community and having various communities is a healthy thing.

The problem I see with the travel sports community is that it’s limited to players whose parents have enough disposable income to pay and enough free time to do all that travel. Very insular.

Wealthy people will find ways to gather and exclude others no matter what. County clubs, golf clubs, vacation homes, private schools, real estate zoning and gates communities. Travel sports is the tip of the iceberg and I imagine teams manage to find money for really exceptional players.

Sigh. There’s always someone. Our travel experience was the exact opposite — a great way to get to know a mix of kids and families. Less wealthy, public school, private school, bunch of different races/ethnicities. It was actually one of the best ways to get to know each other because it was about the sport, not where you lived or how much money you have.

No. REC is “not about how much money you have.” Travel is expensive AF and is “pay to play.” And no, sorry, the vast majority of kids your kids are playing with are not on full scholarship. They’re wealthy kids, just like yours.

You could not be more wrong. Some families have a lot of money, most don’t. It’s a big part of life for some families so worth it to spend money on. Rec is something different, it’s good for a side thing and families/kids aren’t really invested in the sport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Youth sports are emblematic of pretty much everything that is wrong with American culture these days. It's just ugly, ugly stuff - over-involved parents pushing kids way too hard at way too young an age, using their kids talents to grasp at some sort of illusory "status" for themselves.

We have friends who have allowed their family lives to revolve so fully around various youth sports schedules that they are essentially incapable of talking about or planning anything else. They have zero idea how boring they are.

And yes, it doesn't help in terms of fostering any sort of community outside their inner circle of the sad and the youth sports-crazed.

I’m sorry you don’t like sports. I did the equivalent of “travel” growing up and I am in my 50s. Still keep in touch with the people from my sports community.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:There have always been kids who do a high level sport that involves practices kind of far from home with kids who don’t live nearby, and lots of traveling to competitions. What has changed is the age at which it all starts and how involved the parents are. Because it starts so young now, the parents have to be more involved. The whole family didn’t used to go. It would be the kids traveling with the coach or maybe one parent would drive several kids because they were old enough to be more independent. This gave parents time to stay around the neighborhood to doing their own thing and interacting with neighbors etc. In this era of intensive parenting you have parents who attend every practice and the whole family goes to competitions. It’s also the intersection of immigrant cultures with the travel sports. The immigrant families tend to all do things together so if one kid is in a sport then they will all attend together. This takes entire families away from the local community in a way that didn’t used to happen.

But honestly I don’t think any of this matters. Smartphones and online shopping/food ordering/everything have killed our sense of community more than any sport.

Sure there have been high level athletes. However, 95% or more of the kids in travel aren’t at that high-level on existing travel teams. They are just players with wealthy parents trying to keep their kids from the unwashed masses. If they all stayed locally, they would develop the same.

I've noticed that parents can find a travel team for any kid with a modicum of athletic ability. Everyone wants to say their kids is on a travel team, though I'm not really sure what the point is for most of the kids involved.

Agree.

The point is that rec teams are "no cuts." Some 12 year old girl who can't catch a ball to save her life, doesn't know how to run bases, and has clearly never watched a televsied baseball or softball game in her life can show up to 12U rec softball and they have to take her. And give her decent playing time. Kids who have been playing rec since age 6 or 8 reach a point where that is just too frustrating and discouraging, so they leave for low level travel. Not because they fancy themselves anything special, but because they are tired of having to practically start over every season because of kids who have never played before.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We combined Scouts, some rec sports (basketball, swimming, tennis) with travel for what became the primary sport (baseball, soccer) for all of our kids. Plus other school clubs where no one keeps score. That was a nice balance. Travel sports do indeed have their own communities. Each of our kids made lasting friends in our communities and in the travel community.

It is t about whether a club or team is a community. It’s about being involved / being grounded in their own hometown, being involved and concerned about their local community, being present so they can give back, etc.

One more time: Why do you think these things are mutually exclusive?

75% of travel sports = practices. Believe it or not, those typically do not happen far from home. In fact, my kid practices her travel sport at her school.

Enough with the trolling….

Enough of your trolling. Your situation is not the case for many families. My kids’ school friends are on teams (which we follow via game changer) that are traveling far afield. One team for example is going to Richmond, Philly, Myrtle Beach, Florida, North Carolina, and other places on weekends in June and July. They will practice 2-3 times a week here back home. It’s been like this since they were at least 12yo.

Others are slightly more local but they live in western NOVA and travel into Falls Church / Arlington / Manassas for practices.

You are still salty about kid’s birthday party invite being turned down, I see.

Land the helicopter.

Say what? My kids are too old for birthday parties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are also still areas of the country that run travel differently, in order to play travel you have to be in the house league as well. I grew up in an area like that, there were no travel teams not associated with a rec league(s) at least peripherally if they weren't just an integrated team. That kind of helps. The travel team kids split up among rec teams and get to have more laid back games and the kids who only play rec get to have better players to learn from- also the kids that with fewer resources but a lot of talent tend to rise to their potential in rec then too

This was my experience as well, and it really brought kids together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The alternative to travel sports in middle school is to stay home and plug in to screens. That's just reality in 2023. It's not 1985 when kids went outside to play, etc. (and even that wasn't totally real--a lot of that is fetishizing history.) I agree that this country has screwed up priorities, but travel sports parents and kids are making a choice between that and a worse thing. It's not like there are these amazing local sports communities just ready to accept kids past age 11. It's travel or stop playing, in reality.

Are parents not just setting rules when it comes to screens? I really don't get this. I want my MS kids to be kids as long as they can and play outside. I may not have total control, but I'll try. And it sucks that in many ways it's travel or nothing. Nothing wrong with kids who just want to play for fun. Of course, they can play pickup sports informally as well.

There is literally no one in my neighborhood to play with by the time the kids are 10 on weekends.

Sorry. We also saw this. And before travel sports it was kids in day care from time mom/dad left for work in morning to when they came back in the evening. Kid across the street was gone 7am to 7pm. By the time she got home, she was ready for bed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So little introspection and such defensiveness from the travel parents

+1,000,000

Also agree.

[Anonymous]

I don’t see this having an impact. Many of the kids in our neighborhood play travel sports but are on teams with kids from the larger “community”. If anything, travel sports has expanded our local network and helped forge connections with kids and families our child will eventually go to middle school, high school, and college with some day.

[Anonymous]

“Local” travel teams - the ones that just play tournaments within an hour of home, or at worst in close PA or Richmond or something are just not that expensive. We are talking $1000-$1500/year. $150/month. Toddler dance classes cost more than that.

[Anonymous]

Yes!!! Lots of conflicts at local schools with travel coaches also coaching at high schools so if you’re not paying big bucks or don’t make the cut for the travel team, coaches will bench or favor their travel kids. Rampant at MCPS schools and they won’t ban the practice like they’ve done in Virginia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes!!! Lots of conflicts at local schools with travel coaches also coaching at high schools so if you’re not paying big bucks or don’t make the cut for the travel team, coaches will bench or favor their travel kids. Rampant at MCPS schools and they won’t ban the practice like they’ve done in Virginia.

Have they? I'm not so sure... Even if so, its all so incestual that all the coaches know each other and many of the kids long before the actual HS tryout.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes!!! Lots of conflicts at local schools with travel coaches also coaching at high schools so if you’re not paying big bucks or don’t make the cut for the travel team, coaches will bench or favor their travel kids. Rampant at MCPS schools and they won’t ban the practice like they’ve done in Virginia.

Have they? I'm not so sure... Even if so, its all so incestual that all the coaches know each other and many of the kids long before the actual HS tryout.

DC's aau coach introduced them to their high school coach at a tournament in 7th grade. The high school coach gave us the trainer info that most of the team uses. By the time DC got to high school, he had been training and scrimmaging with the team for years.