Can We Make Youth Sports Fun Again?

Youth sports used to mean riding your bike to your friend's house to play Wiffle ball in the backyard, with a tree for second base. Eventually you'd head to the rec center, maybe join the school team. But those days are long gone. Kids' sports have become so involved, specialized, and expensive that fewer and fewer kids are even able to participate— and those who do play have to opt in to grueling practice schedules and travel teams that prioritize achievement and winning above many of the lessons sports are supposed to teach kids in the first place.

Inspired by Caitlin Moscatello’s New York Magazine article “The Pay-to-Play Childhood,” we discuss how youth sports have shifted toward an increasingly expensive, competitive, and business-driven model, including:

Why travel teams and sports specialization have become the norm

The pressure parents feel to make their kids competitive at an early age

How the wealth gap informs youth sports and elite athletic teams

What parents and communities can do to make youth sports more accessible

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:

Written Testimony of Katherine Van Dyck Before the U.S. House Committee on Education for a Hearing on “Benched: The Crisis in American Youth Sports and Its Cost to Our Future”

i9 Sports: Chances of Getting an Athletic Scholarship

Stephen Borelli for USA Today: Congress addresses 'crisis' in youth sports. Can we fix it?

Neglect of probability, defined

Ryan Huettel for These Football Times: US Soccer and the re-imagining of an elitist culture