Word: travels
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...parent knows that few pleasures match the sight of a child who's flushed and beaming after a romp on a stretch of turf. Travel teams in particular can do much to melt away the inhibitions between parents and their teens. "On about the seventh hour of a road trip from western Pennsylvania," says lawyer Robert Luskin of Washington, "you tend to hear things you wouldn't otherwise...
Barry's father Stan, an Olympic alternate in track in 1976, coaches his son's club track team, the Roosevelt Express. Last year the club spent $60,000--most of it raised from local companies--to travel to tournaments as far away as Seattle and Antigua. Saunders estimates his out-of-pocket expenses last year...
...most kids, though, the odds of a scholarship are long. Robert Malina, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University, says most parents would be better off putting the money they spend on travel teams into a savings account. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, fewer than 1% of the kids participating in organized sports today will qualify for any sort of college athletic scholarship...
...often, says Engh, "we take Johnny and Mary and push them into sports without knowing whether they're physically or mentally ready. The travel teams, the all-stars, the championships--they're what the parents want. There's nothing wrong with competition. It makes people successful. But children under the age of 10 don't necessarily want competition. What they want is to have fun, to go out and swing on a swing and go down a sliding board...
Swings? Slides? How hopelessly retro. Nowadays, if a kid waits till she's 10 to decide she wants to compete at an advanced level, the travel team will have already left the station. Her peers will be making deft one-touch passes while she's still learning to dribble. That leaves as her only option the easygoing recreation league, where the coaching is desultory and players often go AWOL. While many parents of kids on "rec" teams equate "keeping it fun" with holding down the level of instruction and competition, the kids often see things differently. Young, of the professional...