MOM-enomics with Booth Parker, CPA

Travel sports: good or bad? There are a lot of things to consider and it's not all that simple. On this episode Booth takes her time to consider many of the factors that go into deciding whether or not taking up a travel sport is right for your kid and your family. From finances to attention and time, you'll have a great starting point for considering if travel sports are the right activity for your child!

Listen to the Carolina Women's Collective Podcast, also hosted by Booth: https://carolinawomenscollective.com/podcast

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  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (00:15) - Everyone's Talking About Travel Sports and Kids
  • (02:16) - Factors To Consider For Your Family
  • (04:28) - The Time Investment in Travel Sports
  • (07:17) - Travel Sports Increase Your Options
  • (08:39) - Is a Travel Sport Age-Appropriate?
  • (09:17) - Keeping Up With The Joneses
  • (11:27) - Our Travel Sports Experience
  • (15:29) - Managing the Pressure
  • (18:24) - Outro

This podcast is produced by Rooster High Productions.

Creators & Guests

Host
Booth Parker, CPA
Financial guru by day; domestic diva by night and sharing it all in between.

What is MOM-enomics with Booth Parker, CPA?

Real moms. Real mom financial issues. Real moms in business. Real stories. I am Booth Parker. A CPA, wife, and mom that loves all things home and family. In this podcast, I talk all things money for moms, families, and small business. From tips to ideas to info you just need to know, I break it down so moms can apply it to their own families and businesses!

S2E23 - Travel Sports
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IntroductionEveryone's Talking About Travel Sports and Kids
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Booth: If you spend any time over on Instagram, you may have recently seen the debate on reels about travel sports. So there's one influencer, blogger, however you want to refer to him, and his whole stance is that travel sports are destroying American families. And then there are these retaliatory type reels that have been posted how travel sports are great for families.

So I am going to weigh in on this topic today. I feel like both sides make a point but they're failing to kind of take a lot of other things into perspective. They're being a little one sided so to speak. So I'm going to take a little deeper [00:01:00] dive into the whole issue of travel, sports, and families.

So first and foremost, I think sports are great for kids.

Sports teach everything from teamwork, work ethic. They help kids build confidence and self esteem. They teach humility. Lots of good things come out of kids playing sports.

So when I was growing up, my sport of choice was I showed horses competitively. We lived in an area where that was not a thing and so we had to travel to competitions. This was 20, 30 years ago. Actually, this was more than 30 years ago. So travel sports were not a thing back then. I didn't really think of it as a travel sport because it was the only way for me to compete.

Now when I got to high school though the school I went to my freshman and sophomore year of high school, they required a sport every single season. So I got exposed to other [00:02:00] team sports there where we played other schools in the area. But still, no travel sports involved with that.

But fast forward to today, and there are travel leagues for just about every sport you can think of.

Factors To Consider For Your Family
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Booth: And that's why every family needs to evaluate if the travel sport is right for their family. And is the right choice for their child. They've got to ignore the societal pressures, the pressure on their kids. And that can be really, really hard to do. And that's why you have to make a good decision based on good information and evaluate: what is the goal and what is best for your family and your child?

So I'm going to go through some things to consider and the first one is a potential negative and it's one that may not affect every single family. But it's one that does affect a lot of families and needs to be considered [00:03:00] in your evaluation in making your decision about travel sports.

And that is the topic of cost. So travel sports can be very expensive. There's not just the cost of being on the team but you also have to buy equipment and then there is the travel expense which can add up really, really quickly. You've got a lot of miles on the road. You've got hotel rooms to pay for.

If you're like me and you have a bunch of dogs, you've got to board them or find someone to come take care of them. So there's a lot of factors with the cost in addition to just that original payment you make for your child to join the team.

Most families are on a budget, so you've got to look at all of the costs involved and make sure that they fit into your family's budget. There are a lot of families out there racking up credit card debt for their children to play. Travel sports, and the children are very young, so [00:04:00] they're starting this process really early, and they're just going to keep accruing debt.

And if you're in that situation, you really need to ask yourself, what is the goal here of doing this and going into debt for it? And I've heard many say that they think their kid might get signed by the Yankees at 10 years old, and the reality of that is not nearly as likely as the reality of you having debt to pay off later from doing that.

The Time Investment in Travel Sports
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Booth: The next thing to consider is time. Time in this situation with travel sports can be a positive or it can be a negative.

It can be a positive in the fact that it can create great quality family time. It can be a negative in the fact that it creates a lot of stress within the family because of the time it takes up.

That time may be dividing up the family and greatly reducing the amount of actual quality family time you have. In that situation, it can be [00:05:00] stressful. If the whole family is able to go and the whole family is participating, then you can make it good quality family time. Maybe both kids play the same sport and you're all going to be at the same location anyway.

You're able to squeeze in a theme park or a play and get some other good family time in along the way. In that situation, it can be quality family time.

But maybe there's a toddler and mom has to stay home all weekend with the toddler and dad is going on the road. With the kids to play travel sports. He's getting in late on Sunday with those kids and then Monday morning Everyone's up bright and early back to school back to work and all of these things and the family's not getting any good time together When that becomes the regular schedule, it can be stressful on the whole family

So again, you just have to evaluate what your family's schedule and lifestyle looks like and how the travel sports schedule would fit into that and then make the [00:06:00] decision that is best for your family and your child.

I have personally watched a family who, they have two kids, and when the oldest one was pretty young, got involved in a travel sport. It's a fairly expensive travel sport, it takes up a lot of time, and the family invested their resources and their time into supporting this child.

Fast forward several years, the child is successful in this sport, but the younger child has interest in another sport, but there aren't resources and time for that, and that child ends up tagging along in support of the older sibling. Situations like this can end up causing a lot and lot of stress and friction between the family members.

So you really have to consider what is best for all involved. I do not think this family had the intention of things going this way, but the decisions they made along the way kind of let it to evolve that way, and it is sad to see the younger child not being able to [00:07:00] participate in what they want to because the money and the time has been invested in the other child.

So, really consider those things if you have more than one child when you're starting the oldest one out into travel sports, how it's going to work long term with multiple kids.

Travel Sports Increase Your Options
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Booth: One thing to consider that is generally a positive for travel sports is the availability of the sport. So, like when I was growing up, my sport was not an option where we lived. I had to travel to it. So, 20 and 30 years ago, kids were very limited in the sports they could play based on what was available within their school system

or local rec leagues. So now they have the ability to maybe pursue something that is not offered locally and go after it that way instead of having to play a sport they maybe aren't as interested in.

I personally know some young ladies that are heading off to college to play lacrosse there, [00:08:00] and when they began playing lacrosse, it was not a thing in our area. It's kind of starting to become one. There's a few schools that offer lacrosse teams. But they got involved in travel lacrosse because it was the sport they wanted to pursue, and it was not available locally for them to go after.

So in this regard, these girls were able to pursue something they wanted to do and have the ability to grow in it and excel in it because of travel sports. So to me, that is a win.

But again, you still have to consider that cost and time factor when you're making that decision for your child to go that route.

Is a Travel Sport Age-Appropriate?
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Booth: And as I briefly mentioned above in the Yankees example, you've got to consider age in all of this, the age of your child, and if the travel sports are appropriate at that age.

I've seen injuries in really young kids because they're playing so much, and I've seen kids get burn out because they play so much. Are [00:09:00] playing so much at such a young age that when they do get to the age where you know, middle school teenagers, they get interested in dating or whatever, they quickly lose interest in their sport because they aren't super excited about it anymore.

They've gotten to a little bit of that burnout phase.

Keeping Up With The Joneses
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Booth: I see families with six and seven year olds spending every weekend on the road pursuing travel sports. So, to me, that's a little bit young to be doing that because the child is probably just kind of going the route that the parents are pushing them to do or maybe that their friends are doing and they're not really pursuing something from their own desires and passions and following that route.

And the parents, they feel a ton of pressure. Parents want to give their children every opportunity they can. They feel like if other parents are exposing their six and seven year olds to these things that maybe they're going to miss their opportunity to get their kids [00:10:00] foot in the door. Maybe their kids won't be able to fit in with peers that they want to because they're not involved.

So there are a lot of societal pressures on both the parents and the kids to go do these things because everybody else is doing it.

But there does come a time where you have to let a kid be a kid, and that is when the parents really have to make hard decisions on what is best for their child, what is going to be the best for their child long term, maybe it might be a little hardship for now, but it could be the best decision that will work for your whole family and your family's lifestyle and budget.

Remember these travel leagues are a business. The more games you play and sign up for, the more teams, all of these things, that is making money for those businesses. Now I, by no means, have a problem with businesses and businesses making money. That's what they're in business for. So there are very, very few people [00:11:00] involved with travel sports that are doing it on a volunteer basis.

I know there are some, I've seen them, they're great but they are not the majority in the travel sports situation.

When you're paying for your child to be able to play, and you pull up at these multi multi million dollar facilities, and then you still have to pay to get in, you know they're making money and that it's a lucrative business you're supporting.

Our Travel Sports Experience
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Booth: So my son is a junior in high school and he plays baseball. And he didn't become interested in playing baseball until about middle school. So we missed the whole Little League and there's plenty of kids playing travel at six and seven years old, so we missed all of that because he wasn't interested and we never pushed him to do sports that he didn't have an interest in.

And even in middle school, he had a lot of friends playing travel sports but he only played at his small private school. They only had a [00:12:00] handful of games, and then he played in, I guess what you could call a rec league, with the local Babe Ruth Baseball, and he had a wonderful time, he met some great friends, and all in all, it was a lot of fun.

We did have one travel, one overnight travel situation with the Babe Ruth when he made an all star team, but that was the extent of travel that we had in middle school with sports.

And even as he started high school, he continued to play on his small school team, continued to play in some Babe Ruth, and started playing in another local rec type league called Legion Ball.

Meanwhile, he still had plenty of friends playing travel ball, but he felt that he was getting enough of what he was pursuing from the sport using his school and the local Babe Ruth and Legion ball teams.

We never pushed him on travel and it wasn't something he came to us wanting to do. My husband and I are not easily pressured by what other [00:13:00] parents are doing, so that didn't become a factor for us. My son wasn't on social media, he wasn't getting a lot of pressure from his friends, so we were fortunate in the fact that we didn't have a lot of that pressure on us that a lot of people feel, but again, that's where you really have to make the decision that's best for you, your family, and your child, not what everyone else is doing, even though it can be a really hard decision to make when you're feeling the pressure.

But then, as his junior year approached, he wanted to play more baseball. He was really getting into it, and he wanted to play more baseball. And so, as his junior year approached, he wanted to be able to continue playing that fall. And so the only option for us at that point was to look at travel ball. And we did find a league that was only going to do four weekends.

They were jam packed weekends with three or four games a weekend. And we, for the first time ever, we did the travel ball [00:14:00] thing. And we had a great time with it. It, it was great quality family time. I am a planner. I looked at where we were going. I made some fun dinner reservations for Friday night when we got there, and we stayed in some fun places.

We were able to do some shopping for things we needed because it was in a, more of a metro area than where we live. And so we really made happy time. the best of these weekends and had really good quality family time. The road trip part was fun. The whole fam went. All of those good things. So our experience with travel ball was very, very positive, but it wasn't, we didn't expose ourselves to so much of it for such a long time that, that it became stressful.

It was just that small period. It worked for our budget. It worked for our calendar and we were able to have very good, quality, family time.

All in all, it was a very positive experience. Lots of wonderful memories made. My son learned a lot. He got good [00:15:00] playing time. He played at some really beautiful venues. And, and it was, like I said, it was all in all a very positive experience, but I don't think it would have been necessary when he was 10 or 11 years old.

So, travel sports. Yes, they can be a positive experience. Yes, they can be a stressful experience. Every family needs to evaluate the pros and cons for them, their family, their child, their situation, all of those things as they make their decision.

Managing the Pressure
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Booth: Social media puts so much pressure on families and kids alike to do all the things. FOMO is real and social media only makes it significantly worse.

And I'll say, don't cave to the pressure, but it's hard, it's really hard, especially when your child's feelings might be hurt, and they're upset, and you don't want to see your child upset, you want to see them going after things they want to do, even if you're hesitant, that right now is not the right time, and that is a really hard decision [00:16:00] to make, but I would encourage you to really look at all the pros and cons, and make that decision that is best for your family, and your child long term.

What is going to be the best long term for them? Not just right now here in the moment because we oftentimes get really stuck in right now here in the moment. I do it as well and looking at the long term goal really is a better option.

I really do like to let kids be kids, you know, no screens, all these kind of things, so sports are great for that, but there's plenty of rec leagues and things that kids can play in depending on the sport they're doing, so you have to always evaluate all of those things. And you also want to have time for actual vacations, so we had fun doing our travel sports, but our actual vacations, I can honestly say, are more rest and relaxation for the family and good quality time.

Don't want to use every single vacation day you may get at work pursuing the travel sports things. Want to have a little bit of time for the whole family, especially [00:17:00] when you have multiple kids and they aren't all playing a sport.

It's all about that million dollar word, balance, right? Finding the balance, it's not always the easiest thing to do but it really does help in making your decision and knowing what will balance out your family's situation the best.

And I like to let things happen in their due time. It's hard not to rush things in this hurry up culture that we live in, but as I recently told my husband, it's sometimes you just have to trust the process and it's not easy to do. You're really relinquishing a lot and laying it all out there but it really does have to just evolve sometimes for things to work out the way they're meant to be.

And I know, I want the best for my son, I know you want the best for your kids, so really evaluating that long term situation as to what is best for your kids. I know that so many of us look back on times when we were kids and there was something we wanted [00:18:00] to do, Desperately, our friends were doing it, all of that kind of stuff, and our parents said no.

And in the long term, when we reflect back, that no was actually the best thing they could have done for us. So keep that in mind as you're looking at what is best for your child right now in long term and making those decisions that will, and making those decisions that will create the best outcome for your family and your child.

Outro
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Booth: So thank you so much for listening today. I know this is a little bit of a touchy topic with some people, but I just kind of wanted to weigh in and, you know, give you some perspective on things to consider that maybe you weren't considering before in making your decision with travel sports.

And also be sure to check out my new podcast with the Carolina Women's Collective.

This one is super exciting. Every other week, I interview an amazing women entrepreneur or business leader, and we've got Talk all about [00:19:00] their story, keys to their success. We gain insights into struggles they've overcome and how they've done it. It's super, super enlightening information. So I will link it in the show notes so you can check it out.

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