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Travel sports are killing American families
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Anonymous
Of course it wasn't a priority, but churches not bankrolled by the Catholic Church need any parishioners they can get. |
Anonymous
Not necessarily. Protestant churches tend to be bifurcating right now. Small ones are getting smaller, but big ones are getting bigger (at the expense of the small ones). Big ones that try to spin off church plants are finding that people won't go. |
Anonymous
THey need to adapt to survive. If they can't or won't, nobody will miss them. |
Anonymous
Really? "As an agnostic, I have spent most of my life thinking about the decline of faith in America in mostly positive terms. Organized religion seemed, to me, beset by scandal and entangled in noxious politics. So, I thought, what is there really to mourn? Only in the past few years have I come around to a different view. Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall to hold back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence." I don't think travel sports, at least, will hold back American hyper-individualism. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/america-religion-decline-non-affiliated/677951/ |
Anonymous
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A big benefit of travel sports is that they greatly broaden the reach of sports participation generally.
Pre-travel sports, the number of sports played at schools was smaller, and the same kids were getting the bulk of the playing time in multiple sports. Now, there are more sports played, and more kids are involved. The quarterback on the football is not walking onto the basketball team, because there are 20-30 kids in his grade who are focused on basketball, and a different 20-30 kids who are focused on baseball. And 2-3 who want the quarterback position who are training for that. Instead of the same 20 or so kids moving from sport to sport, you now have 60-80 involved in different sports. |
Anonymous
Then let's go back to a simple 5 day workweek where Sundays were sacrosanct and businesses were closed. But since that's not happening because we don't want the inconvenience of not shopping on Sunday, or appear to favor Christianity, the reality is Sunday is just another day of the week. If the churches can't adapt to the changing culture, then they won't survive. Or people will have to find a congregation that has more flexibility. They are out there. |
Anonymous
That's actually not what the data shows. Participation statistics are more complex. Youth participation is down which high school is up. High school is where you have some opportunities - like no cut cross country - that kids can just jump into. Crazy travel is where you have significant gates, including cost, time, and making the team. I'd argue that well-run, widely available, relatively inexpensive recreational leagues would be better for broadening the reach of sports participation generally. Source: https://www.jerseywatch.com/blog/youth-sports-statistics |
Anonymous
Catholics are theologically committed to Sunday services. In Catholic theology the Saturday 5 pm vigil masses theologically count as a sabbath service and it meets the obligation to attend mass and celebrate the eucharist. The great thing about being Catholic is that mass is the same everywhere, so if we are traveling we can pick up a vigil mass or a morning mass without a problem. I lived somewhere with Sunday evening masses and that's what I miss most- we called it "last chance mass." I don't go to a mass without seeing kids in shinguards or warmups. My friends who are protestant and attend specific, one-location churches definitely get more stressed about missing church because their services aren't quite as portable and there is more social pressure to be in the exact same place every week. |
Anonymous
This article blows up a lot of the commonly held beliefs repeated often here. Myths like: 1) Myth: Rec leagues have been decimated. Fact: The majority of youth athletes (58.4%) play community-based sports, like recreational leagues. 2) Myth: Sports are only for rich kids "pay to play" Fact: Families whose children play organized sports tend to be in lower income brackets 3) Myth: Sports are ruining families. Fact: 70% of kids also quit sports by age 13 If so many kids drop out how can families be ruined by something their kids don't do? |
Anonymous
They could be ruined in the first 13 years? But I would say that travel sports can't be ruining most American families if most kids aren't athletes and the majority of them play rec. They might be perceived by part of DCUM's audience to be ruining families, since DCUM's audience is heavily embedded in subcultures where travel sports are a thing. But most American families aren't DCUM types. |
Anonymous
| This is so weird. I came here to comment on how much we as a family loved everything about our kids' sports participation. And one of my two dropped out after middle school, just wasn't that good. But wouldn't change a thing. But came to find pages of arguments about church. Huh. |
Anonymous
I don't get the sense that the complainers here care at all about other American families. They seem angry that other kids aren't available to entertain theirs, they have a serious case of FOMO, and they just aren't athletic, nor are their kids, and they have a chip on their shoulder about it. There's not much evidence about what's going on in these so called ruined families to support the judgment. That Billy missed Johnny's birthday party doesn't mean his family is ruined. Billy will get to many other birthday parties in a year. |
Anonymous
| We have a kid who has a pretty severe learning disability but has excelled at sports. Travel sports has allowed this kid to be really good at something when school is really challenging. It has done wonders for confidence, self-esteem and I am thankful for it every day. |
Anonymous
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It's the "travel" part of travel sports that is the problem.
In a major urban area like the DMV, it should not be a problem to have leagues at all levels of competition--even highly competitive leagues--without traveling overnight for it. It's absurd that different teams of good DC players travel to, say, Philadelphia, to play different teams in their respective leagues, when, really, they could just stay home and play the other strong local teams. The problem is that the leagues sell the "travel" thing as prestigious. But's it's a waste of people's time, it's financially burdensome, it's unenvironmental, etc. But it works for the league... |
Anonymous
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I have kids, nieces and nephews who all played travel sports with many of them playing in college. We are basically an athletic family so sports were just assumed. Unfortunately none of us live close by so the only events we were missing were classmates. And most of those, bc of crazy school districting, were never neighborhood kids. Anyhow, for us we had a community in the travel teams. Just like family and neighbors, not everyone gets along all the time plus folks move on.
I will concede the church attendance point. Having been raised Catholic I always knew I had to go to church every weekend no matter where we were bc there was always a service. I'm no longer a practicing Catholic, but I still do attend a Christian church and we most definitely stopped going on the regular when we were deep in the midst of travel sports. |