It sucks to see the youth sports industrial complex price so many kids out.
What's your alternative?
Well we can do one of two things that work in literally every single country in the world.
We can have the NGBs completely run the sports all the way down to the grassroots level. We are partially there anyway, I have youth sports certifications from US Soccer, USA Basketball, and USA Archery. The NGBs absolutely have influence over the sports and the ability to bring costs way down but they are profiting as well and in this country we've valued greed over equity.
Another thing that's much easier to do, again the NGBs could completely control, is to localize these sports. There is literally nothing to be gained by youth athletes playing in national or even regional events. It does nothing to develop the young athletes, it's just a cash grab for organizers and a glory grab for adults. We put that carrot in front of the kids and of course they want it but if it wasn't there the kids wouldn't be effected in any way. The cost of those national and regional competitions are supplemented through all levels and ages of the youth teams that participate in them. You can say the same thing for the uniforms and the coaches salaries, all of it completely unnecessary.
One other fix is that the professional teams really need to be running these youth sports throughout the country. We let these teams play in taxpayer funded facilities, built on land that we give the owners tax breaks on, then we have ridiculous tax code that owners use loopholes in to pay microscopic tax rates. Again pro sports teams run youth academies in every other country and those teams and owners aren't playing in taxpayer funded facilities.
It's not that we can't cut the profits out of youth sports, they've only existed for 10-20 years, it's just that, like everything else mumped up in this country tied to money, we simply don't want to.
