The Word "Elite" Is Completely Ruining Youth Sports
nazar_ab. Getty Images.There's been a picture circulating on social media recently of a kid and his family at a "signing day" for joining a 7U Elite baseball team. Balloon arches and everything.
7U. SEVEN-years-old and we're having signing days. For an "elite" team.
Let me clue you bitches in on a little secret real quick--there's no such thing as an elite 7-year-old. It just doesn't exist. You can have a 7-year-old who is really good. You could have a 7-year-old who is pretty advanced relative to their age. But there aren't any elite 7-year-olds out there in any sport.
But that's not going to stop these youth teams from slapping the word "elite" onto everything they do. Why is that? Well because youth sports understands that the word "elite" is just a free money making machine for them. Because parents are all too dumb to understand that the only thing "elite" actually means in youth sports these days is that you're going to be paying a shit ton of extra money.
I think we've reached a point in society where everybody agrees that private equity has been ruining youth sports in America. They are driving up the prices and making it harder and harder for local community teams to keep up. But PE wouldn't get into the business of youth sports if there wasn't a massive market there full of suckers to take full advantage of. That's the part that people are too uncomfortable to talk about. PE is ruining youth sports, but the parents are the ones who are letting it happen.
Because there's only one reason why your 7-year-old would be playing for an "elite" baseball team. And that's because the parents want to be able to brag about it to all their friends. They want to post on Instagram and Facebook about how great their little Jimmy is. They want the signing day photo to flex about how incredible their little Johnny is, and that it must be a reflection of how great they are as parents. When in reality, it just means that they're a bunch of suckers who are paying a shit ton of money for their kid to play in overpriced meaningless tournaments. No scout is showing up to a 7U tournament looking for the next great prodigy. You're just spending all that money to have the status of "elite" next to your kid to make yourself feel better.
The sad thing is that while there are plenty of families that can afford it, there are also plenty of families out there who become financially strained by these youth sports fees. That then puts a ton of pressure on a little 9-year-old kid to show up and play baseball like its their job for 365 days a year. And then you wonder why kids get burnt out from sports.
At some point you would hope that enough people see through all the bullshit. You don't need to be traveling all across America for your 9-year-old playing tournaments. You don't need to waste the money on an "elite" team when literally none of the kids have even hit puberty yet. You don't need to spend money on balloon arches just because your kid is playing on a new travel team. The moment the word "elite" started to get thrown into everything was the moment that youth sports became more about money than anything else. But as long as parents keep falling for it, I guess the money machine keeps turning.