I started playing basketball in fourth grade. My father has the pictures on his phone to prove it — me, ten years old, sitting on the bench, hands folded under my legs, and my back hunched. Before that, I’d quit dance, theater, and swim team to fully commit myself to the sport that I’m still playing, five years later.
Even at that age, it was evident that I would never be a star. Yet, I stuck with it. Hundreds of pictures of me in action on the court or clipped in a video are evidence of my trials. At least, that’s the visible evidence.
I can’t show you the countless early mornings I’ve spent in the gym alone, with one of my teams, or with a private coach paid for the hour, or the contemplative late nights after tournaments I’ve spent warming benches.
Somewhere along the way, between tip-off of my first game and the $1000 deposits, the question arose: Is it worth it? When I look back, will the years of giving so much of myself, of so much sweat and tears, just for marginal improvements, be worthwhile? And given the number of American teenagers who play organized sports, I’m likely not alone with my existential athletic crisis.
According to the New York Times, youth sports are a $40 billion industry as of 2025. In the most recent year of data in 2023, 55% of America’s youth played organized sports, according to Project Play. Yet, among youth aged 6-17, only 1 in 13 will go on to play in college. And what’s more, only one in 57 will play at the Division I level.
The difficulty of the question “Are youth sports worth it?” is that, looking beyond the realm of childhood athletics and into humanity as a whole, we realize that all people are different. Many children enjoy competition, and sports are a perfect outlet for that. Furthermore, different families invest different amounts into youth sports.
The majority of youth athletes, though, come from middle-class backgrounds. These are families with parents willing to invest thousands and thousands of dollars — or stretch to invest — to join travel teams and play in out-of-town tournaments from adolescence to adulthood. The shift from community-based programs to for-profit club sports is called privatization.
For resource-having, middle-class families, a phenomenon called adultification has been surging over the past few decades. “Adultification is where they’re [adults] so much in control that it’s their show rather than the kids’ show,” said Dr. Mary G. McDonald. McDonald, Ph.D., University of Iowa, is Homer C. Rice Chair in Sports and Society at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I spoke to her over Zoom one morning.
Where youth sports should focus on skill development, parents increasingly see an opportunity to invest in their child’s activities. One common cause is the fear of missing out, deeply rooted in a fundamental ideology of American culture: a focus on winning and competition, she cited.
Adult interference is, of course, not binary. Coaches will always be necessary because, where children fall short in aspects of sport like strategizing, adults bridge the gap, and, to a certain extent, they must organize these sport structures.
But if parents are investing so much money for their child to play on a team where the adults take away autonomy, then the children who aren’t playing to earn scholarships don’t receive the benefits of camaraderie, collaboration, and leadership.
“Those opportunities for growth for kids kind of drop out because it becomes more adult-centered,” McDonald said. Going on to say, “Put the youth back in youth sports rather than trying to make people mini-adults when they’re still growing and developing,”
But some parents, too, believe their child will earn an athletic scholarship or even go pro. That puts a lot of pressure on the children, which can lead to burnout.
A primary benefit of youth sports, McDonald said, is teaching physical literacy, which is the ability to challenge your body through movement in different situations. While sports are a great way for children to learn physical literacy, it’s not the only way, McDonald argued. Activities like marching band also accomplish this.
The bottom line is that “if you’re active when you’re younger, you have developed some of those skills and abilities so that maybe you’re more likely to be active as you age,” McDonald said.
McDonald added that “we also see early specialization, where kids start in a sport too soon and stay with it too long.” Early specialization typically occurs around the ages of 13 or 14.
McDonald also argued that specialization actually opposes the needs of the developing body.
“You should do a broad base of activities when you’re younger because that develops your body in different ways,” McDonald said. Consider Little League Baseball. Until 2007, there was no pitch limit. This increased the risks of overuse injuries that could last a lifetime.
Rising levels of specialization prioritize winning over other benefits of youth sports. This intensity causes burnout, which Dr. McDonald said can be both physical and mental.
“Some of the burnout is actually physical because you can overtrain and then your body kind of gets stale and kind of revolts against you,” she said. At a young age, especially, the body is highly susceptible to this self-revolting.
For me, the fateful day came in seventh grade.
I broke my ankle at an AAU basketball tournament, where I spent most of my weekends. Mistaking it for only a sprain, I never visited the doctor. At only 15, I still get this tingle in my foot every time I step on the court. Only this season did I finally decide to get an X-ray. The picture of the obtrusive bone told me that the discomfort will linger until some intensive surgery and an extensive rehabilitation process.
Dr. McDonald also noted that “if your identity still was constructed as an athlete or if your relationship with your family is to [be] that,” then that creates other stresses as well.
For the vast majority, there are better ways to approach sports. She recommended sampling, where a child tries out many different sports, thereby moving their body in a multitude of ways — the opposite of early specialization.
Perhaps the best thing I took away from my conversation with McDonald came when I spontaneously wondered if sports can still benefit a child who does not enjoy the activity. McDonald’s answer was a simple, emphatic no. That “no,” somehow summed up the whole point of the conversation.
At the end of the day, “There isn’t anything intrinsically about sport that makes you get certain benefits, even though the people who are big advocates of sport will tell you that,” said McDonald. “You can find comparable things in other activities.”
Kari Knotts is a sensation. Kari is 15, 6’4″, and last summer was a member of the USA U19 girls’ national team that competed in the NORCECA Pan American Cup. At such an elite level, her relationship with sports is surely different than that of the majority of youth athletes.
For starters, Kari trains for at least 11 hours per week. Even with the month-long foot injury she recently recovered from, she was still in the gym three days a week for strength and conditioning training with her dad. She expressed that the high intensity of her training is likely one of the reasons she had trouble with her foot. In addition, her training reduces the time she can spend with her friends.
Overall, though, Kari knows that these are just the sacrifices she needs to make to perform at her level.
Couper Wainwright, 15, is an Irish dancer. At the end of March this year, he competed at the CLRG World Irish Dancing Championships. For the past few years, Couper has adopted a packed training regimen, much like Kari. He typically trains over 10 hours a week. Closer to competitions, that number can reach 25.
Although Kari and Couper’s normal weeks are dominated by training for their respective athletics, their goals are very different. While Kari’s volleyball ambitions trend toward Olympic level, Couper likely will not dance beyond high school. After talking to both of them, I was surprised to find that they shared many perspectives and experiences.
Both told me the biggest sacrifice they made was their time. Though Couper reflected that travel and performance costumes are his largest expenses, he decided that, courtesy of his parents, these sacrifices are “not significant.” This seemed to be exactly the trend Professor McDonald explained to me: when the family has the money to invest in their child’s sport, they do it without a second thought. To Couper, those investments are undoubtedly worth it in comparison with what dance gives him.
Because of the time they put into their sports, it is difficult for both of them to keep up with their schoolwork. “Some days we’ll have nine-hour practices over the weekends, and I will literally go home and immediately go to sleep,” Couper said. He then lamented that this prevents him from doing his homework, so he often must ask for an extension.
Kari’s volleyball schedule also impacts her family. Kari has two younger brothers who play basketball, and much like their sister, do so at a high level. “If my mom’s at work, my dad has to take me to my training, which is taking time off my brothers going to their training,” she said.
In addition, her mother may have to miss work for Kari’s tournaments. And Kari may miss the vacations her peers take. While they traveled out of the country for spring break, she was playing volleyball in Texas.
Couper, too, has skipped school breaks to dance. He recalled aborting Mardi Gras plans in New Orleans for a dance competition a couple of years ago. Dance also burdens his social life. “Often I’m not able to hang out with friends,” he said. He noted that he had to reschedule a hangout for the upcoming weekend, due to a four-hour Sunday afternoon practice.
I wondered what kept Couper going when he faced these challenges.
“It was,” Couper said contemplatively, “a choice.” A few years ago, Couper began competing at high-level competitions. Many of his friends quit at that time, deciding that they needed to focus more on school. “But at that point I was really getting into it and really started to like it even more than I had before,” he said. That was when he decided, “This is something I’m going to do for a while.”
Couper and Kari both have received tangible benefits from their respective sports. They were most enthusiastic about the travel opportunities. By now, Couper has been to Scotland, England, Ireland, and Canada for dance. Last summer, Kari went to Canada, and this coming summer, she’ll be going to Chile.
Travel is the most widespread benefit of club athletes. But Kari’s club volleyball experience is unique compared to the vast majority of travel team players. At around 12 or 13, Kari began receiving invitations to college camps. Once she played on Team USA’s U19 team last summer, she knew she had to keep going.
Beyond the camp invites, one of Kari’s favorite parts of her status is inspiring others. She recounted how, at tournaments, girls would recognize her and strive to be at her level.
But some tolls come exclusively with this level of competition. Kari expressed mental challenges that outsiders may not realize. Just as McDonald explained that pressure comes with expectations, Kari said that “the fans and the crowd, they like you when you’re doing good, but when you’re doing bad, they won’t.”
This has actually helped Kari become stronger. From a young age, her father disciplined her so that when others put pressure on her, she could overcome the stress. Now, she’s able to play without letting external pressure dictate her performance.
Kari’s mental fortitude is just one of the intangibles she’s gained from volleyball. “Communication, leadership skills, time management,” she said. Couper shared that sentiment. He said, “I didn’t study a lot in middle school, so it was kind of a … shock.”
“But I used the skills that I learned from dance to be able to lock in for exams,” he said.
Kari is considered a generational talent. To her, the returns on her investments are undoubtedly worth it. “A lot of people want to do it, but they don’t put the work in,” she said. “[You] have to put the work in to get the results you want.”
In Couper’s case, he stated that the financial investment was negligible, and he has developed a somewhat skillful knack for requesting extensions.
If it was too much, he could quit, just like many of his teammates had. But he decided to stick with it, and he certainly feels that he’s received enough returns on his investments to keep jigging. After talking to Couper, it seemed to me that when you can dismiss the time and money you put into an activity, it’s a lot more appealing… who could have known?
To get a parent’s perspective on the pros and cons of investing in childhood sports, I gave a ring to a mother of three youth athletes. Appropriately enough, she was driving her two youngest between sports on a Sunday afternoon. She’d just left Bobby Jones Golf Course, where her middle child had played a round, when she picked up my call. After my dad recommended I speak to her, we worked around a couple of days of school and sports schedules for this time.
If she were to calculate the expenses the three kids siphoned for their sports every year, she said she “would be really sad to add it all up.”
As for the investment of time, she estimated that 90% of their time was focused on athletic pursuits. The mother’s eldest, a high schooler, is an endurance runner and retired national-level mountain biker. Her second child, a middle schooler, plays club lacrosse and golfs. Her youngest is just a 4th grader, and she plays tennis and club lacrosse.
A former college runner herself, she acknowledged that “the reality of them actually going to college and having a scholarship from it is very small.” Instead, she believes the most valuable benefits for her children are learning to be active, gaining teamwork skills, and “understanding what it is to exercise and to work hard.”
The mother seemed to subscribe to what I took to be ‘anti-adultification,’ the same theory McDonald preached. Her kids, she said, were the ones who propelled their sports participation. She and her husband were merely there for support. Which, by the way, comes in the form of unpaid weekends chauffeuring, and full days in sweaty gyms or under the hot sun while the children compete.
She looked at this time investment from a parental perspective as positive, though. “For the travel part, it’s that we get to spend time with our kids one-on-one since we have three,” she said. But she also said that “when you look at what you’re spending versus some of these tournaments and things that we’re doing,” she finds that some of them are not necessarily as worthwhile as others.
With her admission that the financial investment can be a burden, she still advised: “Don’t take it so seriously.” Some may find it antithetical, yet the mother and the two kids she was driving believed that the investment was worthwhile. She had little patience for parents who got heated on the sidelines, and she prioritized her children’s enjoyment over their victories in athletic pursuits.
Because, at the end of the day, “we would never spend the money if they weren’t interested in doing it.”
