Youth Sports (i.e. the thing we all loved which parents have now ruined)

No idea what the price tag is on that these days but it's gotta be up there or higher for the Marlies or any of the top AAA programs (even some of the shitty ones will probably rip people off just so dad can tell the guys at work his kid plays AAA in the GTHL).

To me the time commitment has to be at least as much of a consideration as the cost when considering moving to a travel team in any sport. It's considerable, especially when it gets beyond your area like into the US or into other provinces.

 

One of the worst things I've discovered about "travel" is no one says "no." Such as: "No - you guys are not a travel team. Please don't play on the travel circuit."

So yeah - we (the coaches) don't make our schedule, and our game Saturday made me angry at the people who put the kids on the other team in this position.

Nevertheless: Spin 45 Power looked pretty good.

 

Where was this location? Looks like a field turf gridiron/pitch surrounded by a cinder track in a very rural setting.

 

Woodbridge Middle School, located just off I-95 at exit 158. Decidedly not rural!

 

LOL.

 

Dear Care and Feeding: Can I Make My Son Quit His Travel Sports Team? We’d Like Our Life Back.

 

This is an interesting question (and the provided answer is terrible, IMO).

How do you tell your teenager "enough is enough"?

 

Holy crap! The right side of the line looks like the 1967 Green Bay Packers. Where'd you get those guys?

 

The kid playing guard and power tackle (the inside tackle in our unbalanced) are big 11 year olds. The kid playing tackle is the biggest 11 year old I've ever met, and makes the other two look small.

I mean: My kid is the center and has been in the 90th percentile for height his entire life. And he's tiny compared to those three.

 

I appreciated that the parent knew this kid wasn’t going to get a scholarship by playing on the travel team. And that advice was horse shit. Spending all your time on one kid — to the detriment of the rest of the family — is insanity. Tell the kid to suck it up and pull him from the team.

Full disclosure: I have kids who are not interested in sports, so this isn’t an issue I have to face.

 

So what if it was chess club, or band competitions?

How as parents do you prioritize the needs/wants of one kid over another, especially when it's something that's not generally harmful? It's a net positive to participate in sports and so on ... so it's not like this is something where you're like, "No we're not doing heroin this weekend!"

I see it in football, too. These siblings are dragged along on stupid road trips so one kid can play a youth football game ...

 

I should have included music and STEM and whatever it is that parents cart kids around for. I knew I would get called out for that omission.

Not a heroin shooter, but I like weed a lot.