It only took seconds for Rachel Kennedy to grab her phone after leaving the checkout line at the sporting goods store, where she had just finished shopping for new gloves, pants, belts, boots and other gear for her son, Liam’s, upcoming season baseball.
“I texted his dad and asked him, ‘Did we really spend $350 on all this last year?'” Kennedy said.
Sticker shock in youth sports is nothing new, but the onslaught of double-digit inflation across America this year has added an expensive wrinkle to stadiums, swimming pools and dance studios across America. That has forced some families, like Kennedy’s, to reduce the number of seasons, leagues or sports their children can play in any given year, while motivating league organizers to become more creative in devising ways to lower prices and increase participation.
Recent studies, conducted before inflation began to affect everyday life across America, showed that families spend about $700 a year on children’s sports, with travel and equipment making up the largest portion of the cost.
Everyone from football coaches to swim meet coordinators are struggling to find less expensive ways to keep families coming through the door. Uniform and equipment costs, along with facility rentals, are rising — all products of an onslaught of supply chain issues, hard-to-find staff, bus shortages and rising fuel and travel costs that have been exacerbated, or sometimes caused, by the COVID-19 pandemic that has disrupted and sometimes completely canceled seasons. The annual inflation rate for the 12 months ending in September was 8.2%.
Kennedy, who lives in Monroe, Ohio, and describes her family as “lower middle class,” chose Liam out of summer and fall ball, not so much because of the fees to join the leagues, but because “they don’t include all the equipment which you need.”
“And gas prices have gotten to the point where we don’t have the bandwidth to drive an hour or two away” for the full slate of weekend games and tournaments that dot the typical youth baseball schedule each season. The Kennedys rarely stayed in hotels for multi-day tournaments.
A study published by the Aspen Institute, conducted before COVID-19, says that on average across all sports, parents already spend more each year on travel ($196 per child, per sport) than any other aspect of sports: equipment, lessons , registration, etc. Numerous reports state that hotel prices in some cities are about 30 percent higher than last year, and about the same as in 2019, before the pandemic began.
At venues, it costs more to hire umpires to call games, groundskeepers to keep the pitches ready, janitors to clean closed areas and coaches to run training sessions. Even sports that are traditionally on the less expensive side of the spectrum are running into problems.
“You talk to people and say, ‘What do you mean you get paid $28 an hour to be a lifeguard?'” said Steve Roush, a former Olympic world leader who now serves as the executive director of Southern California swimming, whose sanctions they meet. across one of America’s most expensive regions. “The group just went through the roof, and that’s if you can even find anyone. And that accounts for part of the big gap” in swim meet prices today compared to three years ago.
One Denver dance studio director, who did not want her name used because of the competitive nature of her business, said she began looking for new uniform suppliers to keep costs down for families. Some destinations for the two out-of-state contests typical of a given season have been moved to cities with more — and, therefore, cheaper — flight options. Some of these teams go only for the third time, this time to the big competition, if they get a “paid” invitation.
“The cost is just so much that you ask them to travel a third time,” the director said. “And often you don’t know you’re going to get that offer until February or March and you have to turn around and travel to it in April, and that turnaround just makes it more difficult from a cost standpoint.”
At stake is the future of the youth sports industry, which by one estimate generated about $20 billion before COVID-19 sharply reduced spending in 2020.
Also, inflation gives some families a chance to address a problem that first arose when COVID-19 more or less canceled all youth leagues for a year or more.
“There was optimism that maybe families would be like, ‘OK, let’s have a more balanced approach to how we do sports,'” said Jennifer Agans, an assistant professor at Penn State who studies the impact of youth sports. “But until this economic wave, everyone was so excited to get back to normal that we forgot the lessons we learned by slowing down our lives. Maybe this gives another opportunity to reconsider.”
It is a choice that not everyone wants to make, but it is still imposed more on people from the middle and lower classes. Another Aspen Institute report from before the pandemic concluded that children from low-income families were half as likely to play sports as children from higher-income families.
Kennedy said she has long been fortunate to have a supportive family — including grandparents who chip in to cover some of Liam’s baseball expenses. But some things had to go. A spot on the travel team can run up to $1,200, and that’s before gear and travel, “and we just don’t have that much money,” Kennedy said.
However, Liam loves baseball and going away completely wasn’t the right choice.
“It’s the whole parenting situation: ‘I’m going to starve to make sure my kids get what they need,'” Kennedy said. “So if I give up my Starbucks or some little extras for me, then it’s worth it to make sure he can play. But it’s certainly not getting any less expensive.”
