Monday, January 14, 2008

Sports Insanity

This weekend I went on the mission of trying to look into spring sports. I have to admit i hate this task. I have a hard time paying for and planning for a sport that won't start until May.

Both Kylee and Seth played baseball/softball last year and want to play again. The problem is that we played in a weird league last year, although very good and very reasonably priced, it was also pretty far from our home and with two practices a week and two games a week it was just too much driving for me, and that was before Saturday services started!! i don't think I could do it on my own.

So I looked into some leagues closer to home and I was blown away! What are they thinking? The prices to participate are just out of this world. When did children's sports become a big money making venture? Now I am sure that there are costs involved and I don't mind paying my part but these prices seem ridiculous.

Example- one local league's fees went like this-

100 dollars for Seth to play, 110 dollars for Kylee to play and 180 dollar fund raising/family fee. Apparently if you sell your allotted raffle tickets before the first game you make the 100 dollars back. RRRRight. I can't even tell you how much I am not going to be selling raffle tickets!

This doesn't seem okay to me. What in the world is all this money going towards? They aren't paying the coaches, oh don't even get me started again on the 50 dollar coach gift that is expected of each parent at the end of the season, and the t-shirts couldn't be that much....Are the fields that expensive to maintain and don't our city taxes pay for anything?

That is just too much for a little kid to play a sport. Even if I had 400 dollars laying around I wouldn't pay for this. It just doesn't seem right.

Oh, and the league that is actually in our town is just as expensive, but you have to know someone to get into it. They have such a high demand to be on their league that they don't except mail-in or internet registration. Yeah they expect the parents to line up at some awful hour in the morning, outside because they don't open until later, but if you don't line up early your sweet-ums will not get a place on their precious team. Have I mentioned how cold it is here? Who is doing this?????

So as much as I would love the kids to participate in the team sports this spring unless someone has another alternative for me it isn't going to happen.

Kristen

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, the maybe less than obvious suggestion is to start your own league.

Talk to other churches in the area. See if you could get a Christian youth baseball league started.

Just a suggestion.

Bill Curley said...

Keith stole my suggestion on this one. Get Mike and his church involved in starting a team (of their own) and invite other churches to participate with their own teams. Costs should then be limited to securing uniforms, parents should be responsible for sharing equipment costs, renting a field, and getting referees. As for coaches, you probably have at least one sport father (or mother) in your church already.

Anonymous said...

Keith, Bill great idea! By the way, what ever happened to little league? It used to be reasonable when I had three boys playing on it!

Anonymous said...

Amen, sister! I completely agree. And what is with starting them in soccer at 3 and 4 and then getting frustrated because they would rather sit in the field and pick daisies?