Soccer, other youth sports becoming games for rich kids
Alex Morgan knows a thing or two about goals and how to achieve them.
The former Cal standout and current U.S. Women’s National Team star forward nailed it last week when she said the youth soccer model in the United States is broken. “The fact that we’ve made youth soccer in the U.S. more of a business than a grassroots sport is, I think, detrimental to the growth of the sport in the United States,” she said.
The issue goes far beyond soccer. The current direction of youth sports is unhealthy for kids and doesn’t serve their best interests.
America needs a national debate about the direction of youth sports. The problem isn’t with today’s kids. It’s with the adults who have turned youth sports into a $17 billion industry that targets the wealthiest families at the expense of middleand low-income families.
Gone are the days when kids changed sports with the seasons and practiced their skills in pickup games at local parks and schools. The world of youth sports today is a pay-toplay machine that exists primarily for the club sports organizers and coaches who rake in the profits.
According to a survey conducted in March by The Harris Poll on behalf of TD Ameritrade, 1 in 4 families with children playing youth sports spends $500 or more a month on their kid’s athletics, and 1 in 10 spends more than $1,000 a month. In order to pay for their child’s sports expenses, 36% of parents are taking fewer vacations and 19% are working a second job.
Those parents are falsely led to believe that their investment will pay off in the form of an athletic scholarship that will substantially reduce — or eliminate altogether — their college tuition expenses.
The fact remains that only about 2% of high school athletes win sports scholarships at NCAA colleges and universities. The great majority of those scholarships are split with other team members and don’t come close to covering the costs of tuition and room and board.
It’s not just misguided parents who are paying the price.
Participation in youth soccer is dropping at an alarming rate. A 2018 Sports and Fitness Industry Association survey found that the percentage of 6to 12-year-olds playing soccer fell nearly 14% over the past three years.
The drop-off in participation isn’t only in soccer. As recently as 2008, almost 45% of children ages 6 to 12 regularly played a team sport. Now only 37% do. The rise in club sports has also negatively impacted high school sports programs. A study by the Rand Corp. and the Women’s Sports Foundation reported that 24% of high schools no longer offer sports. The survey, which was released earlier this week, also showed that 63% of school sports budgets are either decreasing or stagnant.
Meanwhile, the health of American children continues to deteriorate at alarming rates. The percentage of U.S. children and adolescents affected by obesity has more than tripled since the 1970s. Nearly 1 in 5 youth 6 to 19 years old in the United States is considered obese.
It’s time for a revolution in youth sports in the United States that focuses on participation and the best interests of children first and the profits of club sports organizations last.