Apologies in advance if there’s a paywall.
Takeaways:
Nobody plays 21 anymore.
A big reason for the proliferation of European players is that they play against players who are older and better than them.
There’s a huge amount of money from YouTube and Instagram.
Pro sports have long seemed like the closest thing we have to a true meritocracy. But maybe not anymore.
www.newyorker.com
Well, I agree somewhat, The cost of youth sports is a huge factor in kids playing, and getting to certain levels of the game, but to me basketball still one of the three that you don’t need to spend money on to become a really good player.
My athletic director and I and a few other coaches regularly talk about this. In basketball we’ve seen some kids that went on to play d1 and pro in Europe or other places and they never played AAU or had personal trainers. Soccer, basketball and even football seem to be the sports that you don’t necessarily need to play on the high priced select teams to get noticed. Plus for each of those games the equipment needed costs very little to nothing. Those sports mainly require speed and agility or individual ball skills.
The sports like lacrosse, baseball, hockey, etc. are the ones that are leaving lots of kids behind. Go to the store and see what a decent baseball bat, lacrosse stick or hockey stick cost these days.
A bunch of us high school coaches have decided to start doing the anti-travel baseball leagues. This fall, we are starting with different age groups, where we’re just taking kids and we’re changing to where they practice multiple times a week and one game. There’s no trophies at the end or anything like that and we’re not traveling anywhere but rather just using our own high school fields and the baseballs that we already have. We’ve also got a couple bats and aren’t gonna worry about umpires as we’ll just umpire the games ourselves. We’re hoping that after a couple years of this, the parents will realize that two or three practices a week and one controlled scrimmage game will show more development for their kids than no practices a week and three games or more on the weekend. Plus they won’t have to pay over $1000 for a fall baseball commitment.
