# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The e-mail was harsh, a potential grenade thrown into a young athlete's dreams. Alex Argueta was getting ready to head to a showcase soccer tournament with his club team, where he hoped to gain the notice of college coaches.

But two days before he was to leave for the big event, he was informed that his parents' check had bounced. He wasn't up to date on club fees. If he didn't pay up immediately, he couldn't go on the trip.

"I totally get that you need the money, but what if my father hadn't been able to raise the money?" said his older brother Daniel. "It just isn't fair to drop that on a kid."

An increase in specialization in youth sports, where athletes play one sport year-round, has also increased the popularity of private athletic clubs that charge parents thousands of dollars each year so their kids can play and travel around the country. This trend has altered the landscape of youth sports, turning many into playgrounds for the privileged. As a result, sports like soccer, baseball and volleyball are becoming upper-class sports in America.

"Without a doubt, soccer has become a rich kid's sport," said longtime coach Shane Kennedy of Mill Valley.

The Arguetas, who live in Novato, aren't rich kids. They receive partial scholarships from Marin FC. And their father was able to come up with the money to cover the misunderstanding. His check for registration fees had been written two months earlier, but the club hung onto it before cashing. That kind of cavalier decision can derail families who live paycheck to paycheck. But the Arguetas are fortunate. Most children living in stressful financial conditions are shut out of sports altogether.

Thousands of dollars

Games that in other places in the world are the people's game - soccer and baseball - have become stratified by economic class.

"It cuts out a lot of minorities and people who don't have money," said Mark Merriwether, a Castro Valley resident who runs his own window-cleaning business and whose two sons play baseball. "It's kind of like tennis and gymnastics were years ago. If you don't have money, you can't play. Baseball is looking that way, too."

The costs of paying to play are staggering. Many parents report spending up to $3,500 a year to play summer and fall travel baseball; additional showcase tournaments can cost $500 for a weekend slate of three games. Dues at elite volleyball clubs can run $3,500, with another $3,000 required for travel. At soccer clubs around the Bay Area, the costs are high: Some dues exceed $4,000 a year. Uniforms, equipment and travel to distant tournaments are usually not included.

Those prices begin kicking in when children are still in grade school. Budding athletes whose families don't make that kind of financial commitment at a young age increasingly find themselves shut out of opportunities, even at the high school level, unable to compete against players whose parents have been paying for coaching and travel teams for years.

Some estimates put the costs associated with youth sports at $5 billion and rising. Mark Hyman, author of "The Most Expensive Game in Town: The Rising Cost of Youth Sports and the Toll on Today's Families," calls it "the global warming of youth sports."

Chasing a fantasy

Why do parents pay so much for their kids to play games? One reason is to give them specialized coaching in a highly competitive environment, one that may not be available in recreation leagues or schools. Another is to get them noticed by college coaches, who almost exclusively recruit at showcase tournaments.

That latter goal is too often a pipe dream. Though some private club websites boast of their percentage rates of sending athletes into college programs, parents who spend thousands of dollars chasing a college scholarship are often in for a rude awakening. In college baseball there are only 11.7 scholarships to divide among a team. In soccer there are 9.9 scholarships for men and 14 for women, meaning few if any full rides. Athletes basically divide a full scholarship among themselves. And many athletes wind up going to Division III schools that offer no athletic scholarships at all. Playing sports to chase a scholarship can't be the endgame, experts agree.

"We make it very clear that if your expectation is for a college scholarship, take all your money and invest it in a college fund," said John Doyle, general manager of the MLS' San Jose Earthquakes and director of coaching for the Danville-based Mustangs soccer club, which has 4,600 players enrolled in three different levels of teams.

'Shouldn't have to be rich'

There are many reasons it costs so much to play youth sports: renting fields and facilities, hiring licensed coaches, paying insurance. Merriwether, who grew up playing baseball in Oakland, started his own travel baseball team eight years ago when his son Cameron was 13 so he could give him and his friends a higher level of competition than they could otherwise afford. Cameron will play at Sonoma State. But now Merriwether can't afford to have his younger son, Christian, who is 16, play this year.

"Now there's so much money out there, people are starting teams to make a profit," Merriwether said. "It's gotten out of control."

Merriwether isn't the only one who finds pricing children out of sports to be a deplorable development.

"It's sinister," said former A's outfielder Dave Henderson, a supporter of Coaching Corps, an organization headquartered in Oakland that brings sports to underprivileged youth. "You shouldn't have to be rich to play baseball."

'Alien environment'

The upper echelons of sports are reaping what is being sown at the youth level, struggling for diversity. Organizations like Coaching Corps are trying to address the imbalance. Major League Baseball has outreach programs in RBI (Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities) and Urban Youth Academies, hoping to reverse the trend of American baseball becoming the domain of well-to-do suburban children. Mill Valley resident Noah Jackson runs the First Base Foundation, a nonprofit that subsidizes the cost of his Warriors travel baseball team, which Cameron Merriwether plays on. U.S. Soccer, finding that its development program that culled from elite clubs wasn't improving the sport, has started developmental academies, some of which cover all players' costs. One such club is associated with the Earthquakes.

Simon Ireland, a Bay Area coach who grew up in Liverpool, England, and played professionally around the globe, is frustrated by the situation.

"It can only breed exclusivity," he said. "There's an enormous amount of talent that gets missed. I see kids with potential who can't afford to play on teams or don't even want to attempt to make the transition. It's an alien environment, and a lot are intimidated by that."

When he coached in San Mateo, Ireland spotted a young, talented player named Veronica Perez. She managed to play with a club, thanks in part to the help of Ireland and his brother, along with her mother's sacrifice and the help of other parents. She also played in the Olympic development program, another huge cost.

Perez earned a scholarship to Washington State and now plays for the Mexican women's national team. She knows she's an exception.

"It's really hard for young Hispanics and Latinos to participate in club and (Olympic development program) teams," Perez said. "Financially, it's just a lot of money. Parents might not be that educated as to how the system works."

'So much money'

Many clubs do offer full or partial scholarships. But not many families know that, and too many underprivileged kids view sports as an exclusive club that shuts them out.

"Kids just can't afford it or think they can't afford it," said Daniel Argueta, who also plays for Ireland.

He said that over the years, many of the players on his San Rafael High School varsity team were talented enough to play for a club but were intimidated or uninformed about the process. Argueta believed they were good enough to play in college, but no one noticed them.

Now 17, Argueta, his mother and two brothers arrived from Guatemala when he was 11, joining his father in Novato. He said he benefited from having two parents with jobs, as well as an older brother who played soccer. He and his younger brother knew to apply for financial aid through Marin FC.

"But the transition was very harsh financially," Argueta said. "Simon and the other parents helped me through it."

When dues went up, it weighed heavily on Argueta. He was playing poorly and Ireland told him not to worry, that he would help him out. But many players can't count on a benefactor.

"It costs so much money," Argueta said, shaking his head. "I think the system is shutting out diversity."

Editor's note

Youth sports have changed dramatically over the years, with more athletes specializing in one sport from an early age. In a three-part series, The Chronicle explores the impacts of specialization in youth sports.
Wednesday: Increase in injuries Friday: Impact on high schools
Read the entire package of stories at www.SFChronicle.com.
$5 billion
Estimated cost of the youth sports industry in the United States.
$500
Annual estimated cost of equipment for a travel team baseball player
$275
Annual estimated cost of equipment for a travel team soccer player

$1,500 to $5,000 Average annual costs to play club sports
$500 to $700
Typical cost per player to attend a weekend showcase baseball tournament
Less than 1%
Chance of an athlete getting a Division I college scholarship in most sports

Source: Chronicle research, Columbus Post-Dispatch, Houston Chronicle

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Paying to play is new normal for youth athletes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Alex Argueta was getting ready to head to a showcase soccer tournament with his club team, where he hoped to gain the notice of college coaches. An increase in specialization in youth sports, where athletes play one sport year-round, has also increased the popularity of private athletic clubs that charge parents thousands of dollars each year so their kids can play and travel around the country.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"A family bringing in $50,000 a year could be spending $5,500," he said. "Without being judgy, I'm fine with families spending that kind of money. What's wrong is when that investment brings out some sort of negative parent behavior. Or if the kid says mom and dad are spending $10,000 on me a year, what are they expecting in return? Is it a college scholarship? The chances are slim to none of a kid getting a scholarship."

With travel teams and indoor versions of outdoor sports now in full swing, some former top athletes and even the coaches who feed parents' obsessions are encouraging caution. The willingness to spend heavily - in money, time, emotion and a childhood - needs to be looked at more carefully, they say.

The financial cost is easy to see. This weekend, 135 young quarterbacks from 36 states will fly to Los Angeles for a two-day camp with Steve Clarkson, a sought-after quarterback coach. Parents of these children, from third through 12th grade, will pay about $800 each, not including airfare, hotel and other expenses.

Mr. Clarkson, who had a limited professional career, opened his Dreammaker Academy in 1986 and has since coached top N.F.L. quarterbacks, like Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He also worked with the youngest quarterback known to receive a scholarship offer to a big-time football program, David Sills, who committed to the University of Southern California at 13, though he ultimately enrolled at West Virginia University this year.

In addition to camps around the country and his work with professional quarterbacks, Mr. Clarkson also offers private coaching starting at $400 an hour. Parents pay it and their children attend, even though Mr. Clarkson acknowledges that expectations can sometimes be out of whack.

"What I hope parents understand is that there are some three million high school players and by the time they scale that down to the quarterback position there are a couple of hundred thousand starters," he said. "Then you get to Division I and II, and there are 360 quarterbacks. When you get to the N.F.L. there are 64. When you think about the odds, that's not very good odds."

Even so, he said, football can provide children with opportunities they might not have had otherwise. Mr. Trombley agreed, saying he looked at baseball and football as sports that might get him into a better college than he would otherwise.

"There is no question that baseball got me into Duke University," he said. "I think I lucked out making it a profession. It just kind of happened by accident. It wasn't all or nothing. We stress that with our kids: It's wonderful to play a sport, but it could go away."

Yet today, Mr. Trombley, 47, a financial adviser in his hometown, Wilbraham, Mass., laments that the highest level of youth sports may be out of reach for many children. He said the farthest he ever traveled for a game was a couple of towns over, but recently his family drove hours to a weekend-long high school tournament in New Jersey.

"Some people are not in the financial situation to pay for their kid to do it," he said. "I think sometimes kids aren't playing multiple sports anymore because it's just too expensive."

Financial costs are easy to quantify. There are also the injuries and the psychological scars.

Mr. Amaechi, who was a reluctant athlete until he was introduced to basketball, said he thought parents were misguided when they justified spending so much time and money on sports to teach their children life lessons.

"Sport teaches what we want it to teach," he said. "If you want it to teach about teamwork you can teach that through sports. If you want it to teach about social justice it can. It just takes an awful lot of effort."

Mr. Amaechi cited a study of 4,000 British children conducted by Britain's Child Protection in Sport Unit that found that 75 percent of the respondents reported various types of psychological harm, like feeling diminished or undermined by coaches and teammates. This was compared with 2 to 5 percent who reported sexual abuse.

Of course, plenty of adults have fond memories of playing sports. But Bob Bigelow, who was a first-round N.B.A. draft pick in 1975 and is the author of "Just Let the Kids Play," said many of those memories probably came from playing with friends in unstructured, playground games. The first time he was on an organized basketball team was his freshman year in high school.

"I live up here in ice hockey central," he said of Winchester, Mass. "One of the hockey coaches up here told me there is no more cynical or delusional an adult than the parent of a 16-year-old kid who is pretty good but is not going to get a scholarship. The parents have spent all this money and they still have to pay for college."

Mr. Bigelow, who played for the Boston Celtics and the Clippers when the team was in San Diego, reserves his greatest ire for the coaches and administrators who run the leagues and are often the parents who have the greatest stake in their children's athletic futures.

"The biggest challenge of youth sports in this country is so many of the adults who propagate the culture have no background in child development or physical education," he said. "Their background is they played high school sports somewhere and they watch ESPN. Those are the two worst qualifications, ever."

More qualified coaches would seem to be the answer. But despite all the money and time parents spend on sports, coaches in many communities are held to a lower standard than educators.

"Coaches are allowed to be emotionally illiterate," Mr. Amaechi said. "I've watched as a coach stood screaming inches from the face of a girl and the parents were in the stands and instead of being incensed they continued screaming at her when she came to them.

"All you need to do to see what sport gets wrong is flip that scenario indoors and make that coach a French teacher," he continued. "Your French teacher is inches away from your child's face and screaming because she can't conjugate a verb? Parents would stand by and allow that? No, they'd be incensed."

Mark Hyman, an assistant professor at George Washington University who has written books on youth sports, said that parents whose goal is to give their children the best chance in life or to get them a scholarship to college were not looking at the statistics.

"Parents think these investments are justified; they think it will lead to a full ride to college," he said. "That's highly misinformed. The percentage of high school kids who go on to play in college is extremely small. In most sports it's under 5 percent. And the number for kids getting school aid is even smaller - it's 3 percent."

His advice? "What I tell parents is if you want to get a scholarship for your kids, you're better off investing in a biology tutor than a quarterback coach," he said. "There's much more school dollars for academics."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Rising Costs of Youth Sports, in Money and Emotion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"A family bringing in $50,000 a year could be spending $5,500," he said. "Without being judgy, I'm fine with families spending that kind of money. What's wrong is when that investment brings out some sort of negative parent behavior. Or if the kid says mom and dad are spending $10,000 on me a year, what are they expecting in return?

# data[].attributes.headline
Will students have to start paying to play school sports?

# data[].attributes.subject
Will students have to start paying to play school sports?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When you have a child playing school sports, some costs are expected. You're going to have to buy some sort of athletic gear necessary to the sport. You might have to pay for a practice jersey or warmup suit. And you'll probably be nudged to kick in a few bucks for the booster club.

It seems that in more areas, another cost is expected: a straight fee for merely participating in school sports. The charge is normally referred to as a "pay to play" fee, and it can be required not only to athletics, but also for other extracurricular activities, and even curricular activities such as foreign-language or honors classes.

I've written before about how pay-to-play creeps in every recession, creating conflicts as tighter school budgets wrestle against tighter family budgets. But it seems that with economic hard times lasting a while, especially when it comes to state, local and public education budgets, pay-to-play is moving from a temporary stopgap to a permanent part of school financing. And that sends a clear message to everyone in the school district, a message opposite of that intended by community-supported public schools: opportunities are available only to those who can pay the fee.

While there are no surveys determining the percentage of schools nationally that have instituted pay-to-play, what they charge, and the effect on student participation, plenty of information is coming out that the percentage is higher, the amount they charge varies wildly depending upon perceived budgetary needs, and whatever is charged, it is driving down student athletic participation.

To get a sense of what is going on, let's go to everyone's favorite presidential election swing state, Ohio, where the state's schools are in the middle of a two-year, $1.8 billion cut in state education funding, on top of whatever money is drying up because of reduced property values. Rather than go the route of a local referendum to make up for the loss (an effort that will likely fail, at least on its first try), the school districts that responded to a survey from Policy Matters Ohio (an organization that sees the state cuts as a bad thing) overwhelmingly said they would cut teachers and programs and raise funds from elsewhere -- including pay-to-play athletic fees.

As evidence of how that strategy is spreading, the Cincinnati Enquirer, in a May 2012 survey, found 82 percent of 49 southwest Ohio school districts instituting pay-to-play, while WEWS-TV in Cleveland also counted a growing number of pay-to-play schools in the northeast part of the state. (However, Akron is trying one more time on a referendum rather than using pay-to-play, with the threat that all sports will be cut if it doesn't pass. The district has already cut middle school sports.)

Some of the pay-to-play fees are eye-popping. At Lakota Local School District, between Cincinnati and Dayton, the pay-to-play fee is $550 -- per child, per sport, up from $300 the previous school year. At Riverside Local District in Painesville, outside of Cleveland, fees are charged based on the sport: cross country is $521, golf is $715, football is $783, and tennis sets you back a whopping $933. As a result, participation is falling. According to the Enquirer, Lakota sports participation is down 14 percent, and according to the News-Herald in Willoughby, Ohio, Riverside High in Painesville dropped its freshman football team because of declining numbers.

OK, you might say, those are extreme examples. What about schools that charge only, say, $75 or $100 per child, per sport, or offer waivers to families who qualify for federal free or reduced-priced lunch? As it turns out, the mere existence of a pay-to-play fee appears to be enough for some families to declare their child won't be playing sports.

According to the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, 61 percent of parents surveyed whose children played sports had to pay a participation fee (averaging $93), and only 6 percent got a waiver. The poll said 12% of parents cited a pay-to-play fee as a reason to decrease participation by at least one of their children -- and that rate was 20% for those families making less than $60,000 per year.

Numerous surveys show the benefits of physical and organized sport activity for students, both for their health and for improving their academic performance. And yet, like physical education classes gutted in the name of improving good old book-learnin', sports is getting tossed aside the side in the name of fiscal prudence. Actually, before the sports get tossed aside, first students who don't have the means to pay the fees are tossed aside, just like they're left on the sideline in a youth sports system that gets more geared to elite leagues at elite prices.

Also tossed aside are any students who would just like to try a sport or activity, just to see if they might like it. This is a bit personal for me, because my oldest son, a high school sophomore, decided he wanted to try football this year. For $36 (the cost of a practice jersey and belt), plus $50 for shoes, dabbling came at a reasonable price. But if we had to pay a $550 participation fee? I won't say that he wouldn't be on the football team, but there would be a long conversation about whether it was worthwhile for him to play a sport in which he had previously shown zero interest.

There are schools trying to get rid of their pay-to-play fees, or find creative ways of covering them in order for students to get easier access to the full range of what they have to offer. For example, the schools in Dearborn, Mich., where 70 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, after five years are dropping pay-to-play fees, rolling the dice they can make up the $170,000 in funding through sponsorships, fund-raisers and ticket sales. (If you have more students playing sports, that means more families buying tickets to see their kids.) Other schools, such as Mesa, Ariz., that have considered dropping the fees are instead taking a cue from other districts and putting a ceiling on what's paid by an individual family. And, if your district is lucky, you're like Saginaw, Mich., which charges fees, but had them all covered by an alumnus, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker LaMarr Woodley.

I understand that when times are tight, schools have no choice to come up with budgetary solutions that aren't always pleasant. However, I would hope that legislators, school boards and the community at large recognize that when you start shutting off opportunities to kids in the schools, you're risking doing a lot of long-term harm. At the least, I would hope that districts make sure to drop pay-to-play fees if and when the budget pain stops smarting so much. I'll be shameless here: is America the land of opportunity, or the land of opportunity only for those who can afford the price of admission?
(Note: This piece follows an interview I had with KJZZ, public radio in Phoenix, on the subject of pay-to-play in school sports.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Will 'Pay to Play' Become A Permanent Part of School Sports?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When you have a child playing school sports, some costs are expected. You're going to have to buy some sort of athletic gear necessary to the sport. You might have to pay for a practice jersey or warmup suit. And you'll probably be nudged to kick in a few bucks [...]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For the 45 million children ages 6 through 16 currently participating in youth sports, many parents are having to reach deep into their pockets to cover the rising costs of equipment and sports-related activities.

In the United States, parents spend $671 on average per year to cover the costs of uniforms and the hefty fees charged for registration, lessons and coaching, and at least 1 in 5 ends up spending over $1,000 per child, every year. The result, according to TurboTax's most recent infographic, is that youth sports are no longer an excellent opportunity for social involvement determined by passion and skill, but by the family's financial resources, sustaining a $5 billion-a-year industry.

The graphic, titled The High Cost of Youth Sports, lists the most and least expensive organized sports, based on a survey of more than 1,000 parents with student athletes in grades 6 through 12, and offers several tips on how to keep youth sports expenses under control.

Here's the complete look at the costs of playing organized sports:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For the 45 million children ages 6 through 16 currently participating in youth sports, many parents are having to reach deep into their pockets to cover the rising costs of equipment and sports-related activities.