"When my youngest son decided he didn't want to play football anymore after his first season, I nearly wept with relief. It's over, I thought, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. My three older sons all played football every year of their high school career. They also played rugby, and the oldest two played basketball. I was always so impressed with how dedicated they were, so different from me."
"I used to look at the other parents and imagine their kids were playing sports with all of their fees paid up and just hate myself. Because when my oldest son made the football team in the fall, then the basketball team in winter, and rugby in spring, his fees wrecked me. They were more than my rent payment, which I was already struggling to pay, and kept getting higher. Then his brother joined him on the teams the next year, then his younger brother joined them both two years later. And I was sunk."
"I know now that school sports fees have gotten out of control across the country. There are schools charging a fee to simply try out for the team and then asking parents to pay thousands of dollars for their kids to play. I know now that the average cost for a kid to play sports at a public school is around $1,000 per child in th"
A parent describes relief when a youngest child stops playing football, while older sons remain deeply involved in football, rugby, and basketball. The parent supports games and practices but has limited personal sports knowledge and minimal prior athletic participation. Financial barriers emerge through school sports fees, which rise over time and exceed rent payments. One child’s participation already strains the budget, and adding more siblings to teams compounds the cost until the family is overwhelmed. The parent later recognizes the situation as widespread, with schools charging tryout fees and demanding thousands of dollars for participation, making public school sports expensive for many families.
Read at Scary Mommy
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]