Except there are many. Go look at Artillery or Canes National as just two examples. |
Keep in mind that these people pour tremendous amounts of time, money, and resources into raising their kids, not to to be future well-functioning adults, but to be future college students. They simply can’t comprehend a parenting philosophy or strategy (or God forbid the lack of strategy or philosophy) that is not 100% focused on college admissions. |
So play rec. If you are doing the sport for pure joy, why would you spend thousands for the privilege? |
As a former D3 athlete, this is true, but so what? For a kid who loves sports and it’s a big part of their identity, it can be a great bridge to college. I moved in 2 weeks early to practice with my fall sport team freshman year. My teammates filled many of the same social and emotional roles as my sorority sisters would come to fill in later years. It gave me access to upper class women as mentors and long bus rides to away meets to soak up their experience and advice. When many 18-19yr olds are testing the limits of being away from home by drinking, staying out all hours, and eating junk for most meals - I spent my freshman year sober, eating healthy, and coming home by 12am because of my weekend races or 7am workouts. Were there faster women on my HS X-county team? Absolutely! Were there more people at my HS meets? Most definitely. Was it a waste of time? Not at all. |
I already asked this. Apparently there are zero rec baseball teams. Zero. You are obligated to pay thousands for travel to experience the joy. |
Name one other thing you kid does for "fun" that you spend thousands of dollars a year to participate. Would you spend thousands per year for your kid to play paintball with a group every week? I bet your kid thinks that is fun too. If the answer is yes, then at least you are fine with whatever your kid does for fun. |
DP but the fact that you refuse to acknowledge the answer doesn’t mean this question hasn’t already been answered, multiple times actually. The quality of play in rec leagues doesn’t compare to that in travel, particularly as the kids get older. For a sport like baseball, if the other kids aren’t good the game isn’t actually fun, believe it or not. Kids who love to play would much rather strike out swinging against a talented pitcher than be walked or hit by a pitch, for example. Not to mention it can be downright dangerous to have kids who are vastly more skilled playing with kids who aren’t that good. Have you ever even seen a baseball game? I would think this would be obvious. |
There are few...but then just have your kid play another sport. At the least, have them try other sports at the same time and guess what, they may enjoy the other sport even more than baseball. Know a kid that started playing Ultimate while playing baseball...decided really liked that sport...dropped baseball and went on to play for the NCAA D1 team that finished 2nd in the country. |
Because if you love the sport you might want to become the best at it that you can, and play it as much as possible, and for some athletes and their families that might entail committing to something that is more ambitious or more frequent than club. |
| I'd like to know how many of the people on here hating on travel sports are paying for outside academic enrichment or coaching. |
I don't get why you are so bitter. What does it matter to you? Maybe that's what the kid wants to do. Perhaps training with a team and competing helps keep the kid in a mentally healthy mind set and out of other troubles. Most of our DCs' friends opted for academics over athletics as did our DCs. One DC ended up on school team in a sport for which they do not recruit (only at D1 level). Other played travel from 8 years old, but decided in COVID that they didn't want to play in college. Occasionally there have been some regrets, but started a club team with others with similar backgrounds. FWIW, not all LACs have club teams unless students start one. Your comment regarding audience size is also interesting. IDK many sports that have more than a couple dozen fans at the collegiate level, save hoops, football, lax, and soccer. There are a lot more sports in college than those four. As a former senior manager who did a lot of hiring, I found that a lot of folks who played team sports were often more suited for the push and pull on a team. The hire that was the most challenging was one who had been in a number of lead roles in plays/musicals from middle school on. I worked far far from the finance arena, but gave me insight to why managers hire so many sports bros. And it is amateur hour, that's the point. |
Buddy, the only one spiraling here is the angry fool arguing about a game with a ball. Please keep it up. We all enjoy laughing at you. |
You don't get around much. One of our DCs is super competitive. Played on a travel team with even MORE competitive kids. They had some tournament successes, trips to regionals, nationals, etc. There were a core group who wanted to play college, another core group who hoped to play in college, and another group who were competitive, but not really interested in playing college. DC was in last category. Perhaps because money isn't an issue, we never really thought about how much we were shelling out. DC's HS team ended up winning state championship. Most of the girls had played travel at some point, perhaps through HS. That win probably meant more to DC than any of the club victories over the years. |
Wut? A kid who plays D1 isn't good enough to play D3? You ate a lot of crayons as a child, didn't you? |
Yikes...you are spiraling deeper...seems like someone is getting agitated. |