Anonymous wrote:I don’t get you guys at all. My kid plays on a serious travel team. She’s a 7th grader, so not in HS, but so far the only thing she missed all year was a sleepover- and she went to the event and stayed until 10 pm. But so did two other girls who do similar sports. She also plays 3 sports at her middle school and is in the play.

There are 5 girls on the team who live in our neighborhood and most played together during the rec years then moved up. Additionally, she’s been to bat mitzvahs for 3 teammates this year and had amazing experiences at away tournaments hanging with her team. The parents are also very close- helping each other with everything from carpools to dog sitting. If that’s not community, I don’t know what is.

Does her sport take up a lot of time? Sure. Is it time she’d spend selling lemonade on the block? No. She’s got three great communities- school, the neighborhood, and her sport. As long as she loves doing it, the only downside I see is incurred by us parents doing the driving and paying. But we go into that with eyes wide open.

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Anonymous wrote:With everyone away traveling every weekend, there scant time for communities to bond.

I think you are over looking the travel team community. And who is traveling every weekend.

Travel sports are bad for communities. It’s not about developing community within the team but with the community where they live. Travel becomes self-focused on players. They barely know other players down the street if they play for different organizations.

What is this community you keep referring to? My neighbor has no kids, two doors down is little kids, and so on and so forth. We are all friendly with the neighbors but what does this have to do with my kids? They have friends from school, their various activities, etc. but their closest friends don’t live in the neighborhood or community you refer to.

It’s sad that we’ve evolved to a point where we barely know our neighbors.

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Anonymous wrote:With everyone away traveling every weekend, there scant time for communities to bond.

I think you are over looking the travel team community. And who is traveling every weekend.

Travel sports are bad for communities. It’s not about developing community within the team but with the community where they live. Travel becomes self-focused on players. They barely know other players down the street if they play for different organizations.

What is this community you keep referring to? My neighbor has no kids, two doors down is little kids, and so on and so forth. We are all friendly with the neighbors but what does this have to do with my kids? They have friends from school, their various activities, etc. but their closest friends don’t live in the neighborhood or community you refer to.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With everyone away traveling every weekend, there scant time for communities to bond.

I think you are over looking the travel team community. And who is traveling every weekend.

Travel sports are bad for communities. It’s not about developing community within the team but with the community where they live. Travel becomes self-focused on players. They barely know other players down the street if they play for different organizations.

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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.

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Anonymous wrote:My kids have nothing in common with most of the kids in our neighborhood, so I am glad that they have multiple circles of friends in the area from their travel/club sports who they hang out with (either team-related or during their free time).

Do they have to have everything in common with the neighborhood kids to hang out with them or possibly become friends though? No one has everything in common.

. The travel kids (including mine) are often unavailable to do anything outside of school for half a year.

Anonymous wrote:I’m not in the DMV and don’t really get this thinking…our travel team kids are local kids. Maybe it’s just the geographic area you are talking about and how densely packed the area the club teams are pulling from.

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

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids have nothing in common with most of the kids in our neighborhood, so I am glad that they have multiple circles of friends in the area from their travel/club sports who they hang out with (either team-related or during their free time).

Do they have to have everything in common with the neighborhood kids to hang out with them or possibly become friends though? No one has everything in common.

Anonymous wrote:By this definition, anything kids do outside of their neighborhood is bad for the community.

Church
Music lessons
Private schools
Divorced parents
Dance teams
....the list is endless

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Anonymous wrote:With everyone away traveling every weekend, there scant time for communities to bond.

I think you are over looking the travel team community. And who is traveling every weekend.

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Anonymous wrote:I think in some cases travel sports can create a stronger community.

+1. I’m much closer with the travel families than my neighbors.

But that’s a problem

Says who? You really don't see how/why travel sport families of a particular sport will likely have more in common than people who have homes near each other?

I don't know if it's a problem or not but reality is these relationships with travel families are a moment in time. Ask me how I know. Wait until your kid doesn't make the team or needs to switch teams or just ages out. Your strong community won't be so strong. The travel community is a community of convenience.

That’s true for a lot of communities. Work friends disappear when you retire. The mom groups that are so tight when their kids are infants or preschoolers fade away when their kids start going to different elementary schools. That doesn’t make the friendships at those points in time any less enriching.