A Lax Dad’s Lament Part III
Sleep-deprived and largely mad at myself for my just-in-time style of scheduling, I became bitter and started complaining, somewhat conspiratorially, to a friend about the “system” of high school sports in America. “What do you mean by the ‘system’?” he asked, worrying that I was about to crack up. Responding:
>Ha. Yeah – the “system” makes it sound like I am losing my mind and that I’m starting to publish pamphlets in my basement. I haven’t quite reached that point yet but I’m getting there. The “system” I’m referring to is the hierarchy of high school sports that takes complete advantage of the insecurities of the kids and parents to defray the enormous costs of a college education that bear little resemblance to the payoff in many cases. The system that enriches college coaches, club team operators, and tournament organizers at the cost of relatively large out-of-pocket expenses, missed nuclear family time, and the presumption that everyone will always and gladly skip church to attend games and practices. The system that requires 200-300 mile car rides and hotel stays to play teams from 30 miles away. The system that assumes parents can afford or will be allowed to skip work to drive there. The level of training and time commitment for a good high school athlete today is probably on a par with what someone training for the Olympics did in 1980. Trust me. I love sports. I love watching my son play. Athletics teaches many great lessons to kids about life. But, the whole thing has gotten totally out-of-hand and it puts a lot of pressure on impressionable kids and desperate parents. Why do we do it? Jase
I thought about all this and more during a week in which I took a break from the action of work and youth athletics and played the role of hermit over the Fourth of July holiday. Cleaning out the car from a month of travels up and down the Eastern seaboard, I found French fries from restaurants as varied as McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, Burger King, Cinnabon, and Nathan’s along with no less than a dozen half-empty Gatorade bottles in places you’d need a set of tools to find in an automobile. I started to wonder what my travels said about our country and the state of higher education, to say nothing about my own perspective and competence as a father. Well aware of the chaos and catastrophe that life can dish out, does it make sense that I find myself in a Gerard Butler, Law Abiding Citizen-state of rage if I think my son isn’t being given enough playing time or getting enough touches at a tournament where college coaches may be watching? Do other parents feel, as I do, that we aren’t spending enough time with our other kids or our spouses? Do other parents wonder whether it wouldn’t it make more sense if we forced our kids to take a Great Books course somewhere over the summer rather than endure the physical and emotional pain that can result from competitive sports? I suspect (and hope) that I am not alone.
So, why do we do it? Aside from the obvious answers that we love our kids and our kids so enjoy the games they play, I believe many American high school athletes and parents are making such enormous sacrifices for the following reasons in varying degrees:
1) The spiraling costs of a college education. When I was graduated from Georgetown in 1990, tuition, room, and board was roughly $20,000 a year. Grossing that figure up by the rate of inflation, one would presume that the cost of a year at the same school would be about $38,500 a year today. And yet, the full freight is $72,000 for an incoming freshman now. Of course, in those days we didn’t have sushi bars or any of the other amenities that are so common in 2018. (LSU and the Universities of Alabama, Iowa, and Missouri have installed lazy rivers for their students in the past several years - really.) Still, it is difficult to imagine the value of the education one receives would grow so much faster than the rate of inflation, is it not? Has the cost of teaching pimply faced kids Shakespeare, Dante, Descartes, Fra’ Pacioli, or Irving Fisher changed that much in the past 30 years? According to the College Board, tuition and fees at public four-year institutions grew by more than 60 percent in the past decade. Given the fact that the average family income in America is $83,000, the 12.6 full scholarships awarded to each of the only 71 Division I college lacrosse programs have become valuable lottery tickets for many families wishing to send their kids to college. Whether they realize it or not, a lot of kids “turn pro,” in a sense, long before they are mature enough to weigh the costs and benefits of the sacrifices they are making. The opportunity costs make a lot less sense, rationally, for families who have the means to pay such princely sums for college. Facing social or economic anxieties exacerbated by a keeping up with the Jones’ and a 24-news cycle, these families believe their children need some “edge” to attend the “best” schools and will, as a result, endure untold hours of time and emotional turmoil in an effort to get it. Of course, it’s not just sports – it might be chess, Mandarin, the violin, or any one of a thousand preoccupations a kid might actually enjoy if she weren’t forced to be an expert at it. All of this assumes that the more prestigious a college one attends, a different and infinitely better chain reaction of events will lead to greater happiness and fulfillment later in life. The irony is that, for better or for worse, this bears almost no resemblance to the vicissitudes and realities of life.
2) Many parents don’t trust the popular culture. The history and list of strains on the fabric of American family are too numerous and complex to list here. And while it’s been said that it takes a village to raise a child, many of us don’t like or can’t find the cyber-village our kids so frequently inhabit. In a way, your son could be sitting five feet away from you and be under less adult supervision than he might have been 20 years ago. Adults and kids alike are all a bit more distracted than we used to be and know, deep down, that it is, at best, a guilty pleasure that disconnects us from our loved ones and even ourselves. At worst, a rabbit hole of vice, venality, and wasted time. As a result, parents jump at any chance, especially with teenagers, to spend time with them. Although it’s often difficult to get more than a grunt or a nod from a teenage boy, a few hours in the car alone with one’s son seems more precious today than ever before. We hope (we pray) that we will have some chance to influence their attitudes and behaviors before they need to learn the hard way from the frontier justice of independence. Spending more time with one’s kids is a wonderful consequence of the whacky system of pre-collegiate athletics. Still, it would be hard to describe it as more than a rationalization rather than a necessity for families to spend time together.
3) There is no alternative. Ultimately, the most obvious reason why American parents and their kids treat high school sports as so much more than just a game is that there is really no alternative. The decision to participate in sports past the age of 14 is largely binary – in many parts of the country, you’re either totally committed for whatever reason or you don’t play. Few parts of modern life haven’t been professionalized in some way. The high school coach wants to be a college coach and the college coach likely wants a better spot somewhere else. This is human nature. The pressure to win is enormous. Winning requires near full-time devotion to one’s craft. The number of high school athletes playing more than one sport has dropped precipitously over the last generation, largely due to the pressure of coaches on athletes to specialize. What has taken the place of other sports is often a series of other opportunities to play the same sport for teams with which one has almost no connection all year long - club teams, camps, etc. Exceptions will be made for a few one-in-a-thousand athletes. But for others who are merely talented, it’s a little bit like the mafia – you’re either in or you’re out. The “system” rules.
For many of us, the modern cliché that you can only be as happy as your least happy child is indubitably true. Of course, I don’t know but I would suspect that that was a luxury only reserved for the wealthy until recently. My mom was one of eight children. For my grandfather, Fiore, kids’ games were not and could not be in any way a part of his life - he was too busy working. The full measure of his love for his family was likely putting food on the table. “Happiness” for him was being able to provide for his family and perhaps a break with a glass of homemade wine when he wasn’t working as a longshoreman.
The benefits of a college education are difficult to dispute. The data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the unemployment rate is much lower and the lifetime earnings much higher for those with a college degree compared with those without one. Still, one must wonder why, with so many wonderful colleges to choose from in the United States, and the unemployment rate currently at 4%, we’re all so insecure about the future of our children. Can there be any doubt that this insecurity is being reflected in our politics today in some way? As much as I tell myself to keep things in perspective, I will be leaving in a few hours for yet another weekend-long tournament a few hours away, leaving my wife and my daughter to entertain themselves.
