The price of chasing your child's sporting dreams
By Gordon Marino |
June 10, 2012, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE mantra in America is that everyone needs a dream. So why not dream that your kid will be the one to land an athletic scholarship or sign a pro contract?
Because - as Mark Hyman has documented in two important but troubling books - the lengths to which many of us go in pursuit of that vision can turn it into a nightmare.
Hyman's previous book, "Until It Hurts," called attention to the physical and psychological injuries that zealous sports parents can bring upon their children. Now, in "The Most Expensive Game in Town," he examines the juggernaut of youth sports through the knothole of economics. How much are parents plunking down to send Jack to that hockey camp or to support Jill on the travel softball team she was so thrilled to make? The short answer is: a lot. He also asks who exactly is selling us these sports fantasies, and who is profiting from them?
Hyman, who teaches sports management at George Washington University, researched the book partly by drafting an online survey about spending patterns. He was flooded with responses indicating that many parents will pay almost anything to beef up their child's athletic skills. As though suffering from a strange addiction, some seemed befuddled by their willingness to still write the checks in hard times.
For the Andersons, a middle-class family from Lawrence, Kansas, life orbits around hockey. They drive thousands of miles a year so their teenage boy can play on a travel team. With costs for lodging, food, fees, equipment and rink time, the yearly tab comes to about eight grand. "When I think about how much we've spent," the father tells Hyman, "I'd say we're nuts."
Then there's athletic training for toddlers, private lessons, prep schools specializing in sports, expensive high-tech gear. For aspiring football stars there are (fee-collecting) college scouting services. Yet even as he tallies this up, Hyman - a recovering sports dad himself - adopts a non-judgmental attitude toward the parents who started out pacing the sidelines and ended up walking off the deep end.
Instead, with a mix of facts and anecdotes, Hyman pivots to explore the supply side of the equation. Years ago the small town of Round Rock, Texas, invested millions to build a sports utopia, which includes "a startling layout of five softball and 20 baseball fields." Most years, Hyman writes, 30,000 to 40,000 children "converge on the city with big equipment bags and bigger dreams." Taxes on hotel rooms alone add US$30 million a year to city coffers.
On the other side of the ledger, there is the dark tale of Aberdeen, Maryland, which took on crippling debt to build a kids' baseball city that hasn't panned out.
Hyman's work should give anyone who feels the psychic tug of tryouts and travel teams even more pause about joining the ranks of helicopter sports parents.
Because - as Mark Hyman has documented in two important but troubling books - the lengths to which many of us go in pursuit of that vision can turn it into a nightmare.
Hyman's previous book, "Until It Hurts," called attention to the physical and psychological injuries that zealous sports parents can bring upon their children. Now, in "The Most Expensive Game in Town," he examines the juggernaut of youth sports through the knothole of economics. How much are parents plunking down to send Jack to that hockey camp or to support Jill on the travel softball team she was so thrilled to make? The short answer is: a lot. He also asks who exactly is selling us these sports fantasies, and who is profiting from them?
Hyman, who teaches sports management at George Washington University, researched the book partly by drafting an online survey about spending patterns. He was flooded with responses indicating that many parents will pay almost anything to beef up their child's athletic skills. As though suffering from a strange addiction, some seemed befuddled by their willingness to still write the checks in hard times.
For the Andersons, a middle-class family from Lawrence, Kansas, life orbits around hockey. They drive thousands of miles a year so their teenage boy can play on a travel team. With costs for lodging, food, fees, equipment and rink time, the yearly tab comes to about eight grand. "When I think about how much we've spent," the father tells Hyman, "I'd say we're nuts."
Then there's athletic training for toddlers, private lessons, prep schools specializing in sports, expensive high-tech gear. For aspiring football stars there are (fee-collecting) college scouting services. Yet even as he tallies this up, Hyman - a recovering sports dad himself - adopts a non-judgmental attitude toward the parents who started out pacing the sidelines and ended up walking off the deep end.
Instead, with a mix of facts and anecdotes, Hyman pivots to explore the supply side of the equation. Years ago the small town of Round Rock, Texas, invested millions to build a sports utopia, which includes "a startling layout of five softball and 20 baseball fields." Most years, Hyman writes, 30,000 to 40,000 children "converge on the city with big equipment bags and bigger dreams." Taxes on hotel rooms alone add US$30 million a year to city coffers.
On the other side of the ledger, there is the dark tale of Aberdeen, Maryland, which took on crippling debt to build a kids' baseball city that hasn't panned out.
Hyman's work should give anyone who feels the psychic tug of tryouts and travel teams even more pause about joining the ranks of helicopter sports parents.
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