sports----is it possible to have a healthy relationship with kids sports these days?
I don't know.
Things I do know:
1. there are a ton of cool sports kids can do with high level coaches and serious competition. Back in my day it was dad's coaching kids, we played in jeans, and most of the competition was a bike ride away.
2. back in the day the cost was next to nothing. Maybe $25 to play baseball including the tee shirt. No travel fees. No coaches gift. No tournament fees. Sometimes parents watched games but usually not and we usually rode our bikes to practices and games. And yes a couple of the guys I played with and against went on to play AAA pro ball having pitched for some big 8 (dating myself) college powerhouses.
3. Fast forward to today where parents seem to be at many of the practices, spend a ton of money and time and the odds of your kid getting a scholarship or playing pro have gone way down. But worst of all agro sports parents have exploded. But don't blame the parents---it's really the system that has evolved slowly but surely to a horrible horrible place.
Why am I thinking sport as the holidays arrive? My son is a kinda a high end sailor. 'Kinda' what does that mean? Well he races in a lot of the top level regattas, one of which he is heading to today in Miami. He will be racing against 85 other boats from as far away as Ireland, and as close as Miami. Most of the kids he is competing against live within 30 miles of the water. They race 8-12 months out of the year. They have often been racing with the same partner for years (although some switch teammates faster than employees turnover in the White House.--always searching for something better). Some kids use crap hulls and the same sails for a year or two (mine for example). Other kids get 3-6 new hulls a year and new sails for each race. While equipment isn't everything, for high level racing a new sail and a super fast bottom can make a HUGE difference. Figure a new boat and sails at 10k per, while new sails maybe 1k. Then there are the travel costs (10 nights of hotel room for this race, airfare and car rental). For OB figure $5k for travel. Then cost of boat and coaches and clinic fees and race fees. Call that 1.5k. So if we buy the boy new sails for the season and I want to amortize that over 5 races let's say the cost of him racing in the Orange Bowl is close to $7k.
One race.
Then midwinters in Florida which is much shorter (4-5 days) figure that is $3.5k and then the summer of racing is maybe another $8k and the total is about $19k for him to race for a season. Multiply that by 4 years and we are close to $80k for his high school sailing experience. OMG. And I am a cheap parent not buying new boats, not buying lots of new sails, not buying much in the way of equipment and assuming no major issues. $80k. WTF. And then you wonder why parents get agitated when their kid acts like a kid and not a professional and gets silly. Or doesn't fight for his exposure, coaching, position on the line etc. It's a big investment to make without getting emotionally drawn in. And not only are we cheap in terms of what we buy him, we are not making a big time investment, because we are so far away from the water we can't, don't, helicopter him or the coaches. There are parents who homeschool their kids and travel the circuit to give their kids the best opportunity to succeed. If you think I can get frustrated with my kid or his coaches, just think about the parent who has tailored their life around their kids sport. Healthy? Not a chance.
I don't have a good solution to all of this. I do believe being aware of the issue and aware of the trap you can get sucked into is a good first step towards remembering its just kids sports. The goal should be having fun, getting exercise, learning how to work as a team, having a healthy view towards competition (winning is good but it's hardly everything, and not everyone can win).
That said I would really like to see the boy finish in the top half. And then turn some college coaches heads and have some good meetings at college night (with Yale and Harvard and Stanford and MIT and Brown), and maybe given that he is doing that well while living in CO and only sailing 3 months out of the year maybe then...............oh fuck there I go again.
Have fun, sail strong and maybe meet a cute girl.
and if you want to get a feel for what a race looks like this is a pretty good vid of nationals from last summer
c420 nationals Waino
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