- - The price of youth sports can be heavy. Should you pay it?

Stephen Borelli, USA TODAYJanuary 17, 2026 at 6:03 AM

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Kids' sports have a price.

There are likely millions of parents who will pay it, whatever it is.

“I think youth sports have gotten too intense and I think it could lead to coaches’ depression and anxiety, parents’ depression and anxiety and players’ depression and anxiety,” says Carly Ellman, a sports mom in suburban Philadelphia.

She was speaking in “Beyond Stigma,” a new documentary about mental health in women’s and youth sports.

Ellman, a former Division I field hockey player, wasn’t asked specifically how much she spent for her daughter, Gianna, to participate in the portion of the documentary, one of its producers, Linda Flanagan, shared with USA TODAY Sports.

But consider that Gianna, 8, plays field hockey, basketball and soccer and participates in theater and dance.

“It kills me to sit here and say this (but) I feel that it’s dangerous and I still want my daughter to do (it),” Ellman says of sports. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Our money, and our anguish, is not only fueling a $40 billion industry. In many cases, it's fanning the flames of parent and kids' unease, the opposite effect of what sports is intended to provide.

“I think that we’ve made youth sports too serious for most kids,” Flanagan, who produced the documentry with Villanova University sociology professor Rick Eckstein and others, tells USA TODAY Sports. “This is like beating a dead horse but the stakes are too high for kids, it’s not fun for kids. There’s a reason why kids are dropping out.”

To truly improve the culture, and how we feel immersed within it, it’s going to require us to think more broadly about not only how much we’re spending, but why we’re spending it.

The average U.S. sports family paid $1,016 for their child’s primary sport in 2024, according to the Aspen Institute’s latest parent survey in partnership with Utah State University and Louisiana Tech University. According to New York Life Insurance’s 2025 Wealth Watch survey, parents spend $3,000 annually on all their children’s sports.

“You're talking 3K for one kid for one club sport,” says Christy Keswick, a sports mom in the Boston area who participated in the club sports world. “And if you're playing hockey, it's probably 5(K). And that's one kid. It's easy to spend $10,000 or more. If you have two kids playing two sports, you're over that already. That's just for the fee. Never mind the equipment.”

How much will you pay? It’s a question we can all take more time to consider. It might even give us better guidance as to what exactly we’re buying (or losing).

Where is youth sports leading you? Maybe to a dead end

Keswick is also president of a nonprofit known as Good Sports, which helps provide equipment and access for kids in high-need communities.

In order to get true numbers as to what families spend, she says, we need to split them into two categories: The "haves" and "have-nots." The latter are kids whose families can’t afford, in some cases, to pay $100 to play for a season.

“Never mind traveling to games,” says Keswick, whose organization served nearly 522,000 kids in 2025. “Typically the practices are in some community that is equidistant to a bunch of different towns that these programs are pulling kids from. So, transportation becomes a huge issue in addition to cost.

“The kids that we are serving, unless somebody has identified an incredible talent within the programs that we serve, they might get pulled out and then somebody might cover the cost for them to play in a more competitive league or to play in a travel program. But that's not happening for most of the kids that we serve.”

Much of the travel or club sports world many of us experience takes in our kids, but also our money, to turn a profit. In return, we expect something more than the benefits our kids get just being out on the field.

“Definitely our ego comes into play, whether we want it to, or not,” says Joe Ellman, Carly’s husband. “The kids are in it for the right reasons. They have a great time. When Gianna was on the bench last year, she was having a great time with her friends cheering on the kids. It’s the parents on the sideline who are upset that their kids aren’t in the game.”

His wife, sitting next to him, laughed.

“This year she’s probably one of the best out on the team,” she said. "And again, she didn’t start today. Pisses me off.”

Gianna, who was also interviewed, says she likes cheering on her teammates when she’s not playing. She also talked about someday having to choose between field hockey and soccer for college. Remember, she’s 8.

“This is what I think is so sad about the early specialization and the intensity at a young age, is that it, I think, kills your desire to play for the fun of it when it’s so serious,” says Flanagan, also the author of the book “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania are Ruining Kids’ Sports – and Why It Matters."

YOUTH SPORTS SURVIVAL GUIDE: Pre-order Coach Steve's upcoming book for young athletes and their parents

Adults are controlling the action in youth sports. Let's give it back to the kids. It might save you money.

We think, Flanagan emphasizes in interviews, that our children’s sports success, perceived or otherwise, is a reflection of our own.

“How has sports changed the last 20-25 years?” Neeru Jayanthi, a sports medicine physician and the director of Emory Sports Medicine Research and Education in Atlanta, says in the documentary, which is expected to air this year. “Sports was a child-driven environment where kids determined how much they would play, how often they would play it and what they would play and now it has become adult-driven focus on performance where adults choose for the children what they should play, how much they should play and this includes the whole environment and coaching. ... While there are some perceived benefits of that, by and large, it seems like that it’s hurt the overall experience for young athletes.”

During a recent interview with USA TODAY Sports, Harvey Araton, author of "The Goal of the Game,” a middle-grade novel that breaks down how our obsession with kids sports can get the better of us, said that ours are the “most scrutinized children" in history.

Araton says when his two sons, now in their 30s, played youth sports, parents would hang around watching practices. In my experience, you even see moms and dads doing sideline coaching during those times.

The 2025 Aspen Institute parent survey found the average sports parent spends 3 hours, 23 minutes of their time every day their child has a practice or game. That’s time, according to the research, spent driving and attending activities, washing uniforms, maintaining equipment, preparing meals, talking with their child about their sports experiences, and communicating with coaches and other parents.

A suggestion: The next time your kid has practice, watch him or her for a few minutes at the beginning and end, and observe what they are enjoying and learning without your interference. But leave in between.

“Do not go to the practices and watch your children,” USWNT soccer icon Abby Wambach said last fall on a podcast she shares with former teammate Julie Foudy. They are both sports moms.

“This is their time,” Wambach said. “What is the purpose of practice? It's not for the kid to look over their shoulder and make sure that their mom or dad or parent is sitting on the sideline watching them. Practice is for free play for them (where) there is nothing that's going to encumber them from trying something new, taking a risk, making a mistake, being successful because what we're then doing is we're externalizing all of our motivation.

“ 'I'm only gonna do this because I am now looking over to the sidelines and I see my mom looking at me and being proud,' and then it becomes this thing that that becomes very difficult to actually curate in yourself to have internal motivation, because we want our kids to be self starters and internally motivated and if you're at practice, it outsources that motivation.”

I have learned to drop off my sons at practice and go to a coffee shop or library to work, or even go for a run at a nearby park, finding my own peace and self-satisfaction.

Letting your kids figure out what they like, and don't like, might cost you a lot less, too.

Your personal wealth, and health, could be at stake with youth sports

Good Sports, the Boston-based nonprofit, conducted a 2024 study with The Harris Poll examining how rising youth sports costs are impacting families and participation.

According to the survey, which included families from a variety of income brackets, 75% of parents whose children have ever played sports say they have strongly considered pulling their children out of sports, with 21% citing the unsustainable cost of participating as a reason why.

Meanwhile, the survey found, 23% of parents of minors whose children have ever played a sport say they have taken on additional work to afford to pay for their children to play sports. Eighteen percent have taken on debt to afford to pay for their children to play sports.

Here are some rules of thumb from Flanagan, a former high school track and cross country coach, via Jayanthi, who has extensively studied kids sports, as well as the National Athletic Trainers’ Association.

They are designed to reduce injuries and burnout for kids, but they might also help you reduce cost.

Don’t exceed a child’s age in the number of hours per week they play a particular sport.

The rate of organized to unorganized play should not be greater than 2 to 1.

For No. 2, think of the high-intensity moments of the games when everyone is shouting vs. the times you’re playing with your friends at recess.

Keswick, the co-founder and president of Good Sports, senses the latter when she drives home the carpool of her 15-year-old son, Anderson.

“The kids (are) hanging out and laughing together, picking on coach in the back seat, what their coach did that day,” Keswick says. "And I'm like, 'this is kind of what it's all about.' They're not particularly stressed about it. There's good camaraderie. But they're getting physical and mental benefit from the ability to play.”

You're investing in the experience. It's the only guarantee for your money

Keswick says her son Anderson, who plays three school-based sports, isn’t going to play in college.

If your kid is interested in collegiate sports, don’t think of yourself as investing in it through youth sports. You’re investing in the experience they’re having.

“If 80% of kids are paying for travel and club sports, the recreational programs that were cheaper and in town start to go away,” Keswick says, "because there's not enough kids that really want to play at that level or they can't get towns to play them.

“And that trickle down effect, even in communities that are not of high need, reduces participation. So instead of 100% of those players, you now have 80% of those players playing soccer.”

Parents often cite a fear of missing out as a reason for throwing their time, and their money, into high-cost and high-intensity sports with heavy time commitments from a young age. Sometimes, it’s the same sport.

Wambach, who grew up playing multiple sports, says in the documentary she would have quit if she played in today's "pro system" sports culture at 10 or 13.

In other words, in your fear of missing out with your kid's sports, you might miss completely.

“If you're telling kids they got to specialize when they're 8 years old, we've lost sight,” Keswick says. “I do think about it as an ecosystem. I'm not saying that club sports are bad or travel sports are bad and that there's not a place for it in the system. But we are definitely doing a disservice to the masses if we do not provide kids with the opportunity to play recreationally across multiple sports, for as long as they want.”

We don’t need to have it all figured out. We might just need more perspective on what we’re doing, and what we’re spending.

Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His Coach Steve column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.

Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at [email protected]

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