A growing backlash is taking aim at youth sports, especially the high-pressure world of competitive travel teams — and Kim Kardashian appears ready to fuel the debate.
Kardashian will debut her new docuseries, “Team Moms: Baseball,” next week, bringing reality-TV drama to the mothers of young players at Legendary Preps Academy in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Preview clips portray heavily made-up moms and dads with outsized dreams for their sons, all while plotting against one another behind the scenes.
The show arrives after a summer of scrutiny around youth athletics: New York magazine featured the strain of children’s sports on its cover, The Wall Street Journal examined soaring expenses, and The Post has chronicled how costly and demanding club sports have become.
The Journal, characteristically, cataloged the eye-popping price of making it through “another year of Little League,” counting everything from “sleek composite bats that cost up to $450” and “the coolest sunglasses” to “gloves, helmets, elbow guards, leg protectors, arm sleeves, sliding mitts” and a long list of other items marketed as essential.
“Also, headbands. Do kids really need a headband if they are always wearing a hat or helmet? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they do.”
No. They really don’t.
What many overwhelmed parents may be overlooking is simple: They do not have to buy into all of it.
Our youngest son was about 3 when we came to an unexpected realization: We had an athlete.
He was our third child, but the first with this kind of instinct: The ball went exactly where he intended it to go, and he could outrun everybody.
The rest of his uncoordinated family watched in awe.
By the time he was 5, he was playing flag football and soccer and, despite being small for his age, scoring most of the touchdowns and goals for his teams.
So we found him more competitive outlets for his sports — recreation leagues when they fit, travel leagues when they didn’t.
At 10, he now plays a combination of competitive rec and travel sports.
No fancy shoes or headbands; he carries his mouthguard and cleats in a drawstring bag he got for free.
The most expensive part of his gear is the water bottle he loses approximately 17 times a season.
One of the key complaints about high-level kids’ sports is that some delusional parents imagine their child will eventually go pro.
This is, of course, incredibly unlikely — even playing in college is a reach.
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It’s a bad reason to have your child in competitive sports.
But that’s far outweighed by the good reasons.
Competition, we’ve seen in our family, is great for kids: It teaches them how to be gracious in winning and a good sport when losing.
They build resilience and learn how to work hard toward goals; they figure out teamwork and work on their skills.
Organized sports also foster community, for parents and kids both.
Our son’s most intensely competitive sport, the one we watch with hearts pounding and nails bitten to the nubs, isn’t his travel soccer league but his rec flag-football league.
It’s very well-organized, led by dedicated volunteer parent coaches.
Real friendships get made on the sidelines, and game days are incredibly fun — I look forward to them all year.
The sun is setting, we’re hoping the September rain holds off, there’s a light breeze, and I’m screaming alongside my fellow parents to get that ball into the end zone.
We worry about kids today lacking community, about spending too much time on screens. A competitive sports league is the antidote to that — and you don’t have to sign up for the traveling kind to find it.
But what about the hectic schedules and endless expense of kids’ sports? Turns out most children’s activities, especially at higher levels, cost money and require effort.
Our daughter’s robotics team might be the most time-consuming of all our children’s pursuits. Nobody tells her she probably won’t be building robots when she grows up; we encourage her to spend time doing what she loves to do.
Our middle son participates in history competitions that have taken our family to international matches in places like Rome and Paris. He’s probably not going to get regularly quizzed on the Napoleonic era later in life — yet there we are, rooting him on to slam that buzzer first.
Kids are expensive, even the ones who don’t play competitive sports. The main thing parents must remember is that they are in charge — and if your child’s sports don’t work for your family, say no.
Competitive sports are a boon for our son, no $450 bats or reality-show catfights required.
“Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you should,” we tell our kids — and that’s a lesson for parents, too.
Karol Markowicz is the host of the “Karol Markowicz Show” and “Normally” podcasts.
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