Hitz365 t1_j20boso wrote on December 28, 2022 at 7:03 PM

Reply to comment by IIIllllIIlllIIlllIIl in The next youth sports arms race by eddytony96

From the UK, live in the US. I coached freshman soccer for a minute and asked how many played outside of organized practice. None did. I asked how many watched soccer, none did regularly.

It's sickening how much it costs parents for what could mostly be learned in playgrounds and fields. Playing against older and younger kids, organizing your own teams, getting into fights, figuring out how to play with better and worse players than you.

The investment in something that at best might get a scholarship feels like a bad risk to reward ROI.

IIIllllIIlllIIlllIIl t1_j20d75o wrote on December 28, 2022 at 7:13 PM

This is the crux of the whole thing. In my recreational team last year I coached I took them and had to teach them how to self organize. 11 year olds that didn't know how to pick teams. So I taught them how to pick teams, including picking which coach they wanted on their team (older/younger). Then had a parent apologizing that her son and another boy got into an aggressive argument over who would be goalkeeper. Conflict is part of growing up. I had to teach the boys how to solve it without just sitting and whining. Do paper/rock/scissors or something, I don't care. Figure it out.

There are those of us out there that are trying our best to bring back the old days. It feels like an uphill battle with all this money involved, but the culture is broken at the moment. For now we have to look across the pond with envy.