The price of admission and the price to play don’t equal out

Summer will be on us again - heavy with the expenses of kids wanting and needing to compete in summer camps and programs.

I have raised five children. Four boys and a girl. I know that raising children can be quite an undertaking just from the financial standpoint of things. We can get into the other intricacies and challenges of raising them at another juncture.

For our kids growing up in high schools in Michigan was monumental only because all of my kids were athletes. (Add orthodontia to the mix and you will realize why I never got to pay a house off.)

I can remember the final three, all living at home at the same time. All three following in dad’s footprints as an athlete. But some things had changed from when dad was playing as a child. Apart from the fact that we didn’t have aluminum bats or glass backboards in the smaller schools, we had perhaps only a three-day camp during the summer. The rest of the summer we could enjoy our vacation with things like fishing, travel and family vacations.

Each one of my kids had not only camps to go to, but summer leagues to play in, quarterback camps at Michigan State University, basketball camps in Pittsburgh, overseas tournaments in Belgium, and color coordinated calendars for three kids in three different age groups in three different sports. Had they been in band, I would have had to rent a chauffeur.

We had to set thousands of dollars aside per year so our kids could remain competitive with their peers, enjoy the social fellowship with their friends and hone their skills so that perhaps they would have a chance at college scholarship. Five-Star Camp, $2000, overseas tournament $4600, weekly league play $1000. And on and on. And those were just the fees.

Do you know how much three growing boys eat on the road? Let me rephrase that. Do you know how much it costs to feed three boys on the road? Then there was the gas to go to the AAU tournaments, food for my wife and I on the road, hotel costs and the weekly, “Dad can I get $20?

And do you want to know the silver lining? There was none. Not one of my kids became LeBron James.

I jest. There was a lot of investment, but student athletes learn things that they couldn’t learn anywhere else. The parallels to life while participating in sports would take up more time than I have and my editor already knows I’m long winded.

Here in Platte County, history repeats itself every summer with summer sports programs. Each year the costs are exorbitant. This could be a column about “Where is our money going?” But that was my question to ask and find out as parents – not an advocate or your investigative journalist. Suffice to say – it costs a lot. If you have problems with that, ask questions and get answers.

We set up in our community when my kids were in school and summer extracurriculars, a type of scholarship fund, although some called it a slush fund that would be designated every summer to help out families that had multiple kids playing on sports teams. A fund that would help defray the cost of our kids’ expenses to play the games that all kids grow up with.

It also let the kids play on teams and enjoy their summers without having to be lugging cookies or tins of candy door to door. Every month, there would be a little set aside so that when June came it was a Christmas Club account. It helped more than I could ever tell you. But it took someone in our community with vision and organizational skills, and no, it wasn’t me.

Hats off to the local athletic merchandizer for high school memorablilia who had an idea to help raise money to go toward the kids’ expenses to play ball for the summer baseball program. With every purchase of a hat or sweatshirt, you show your “fan-atacism” and also a portion of what you spend goes directly back to the kids to help them pay the costs.

Now, this was only one team. There were other teams and other kids that had other expenses. I am putting forth a challenge to our county, to our community leaders, to our movers and shakers and to our “think-tankers” to come up with solutions. Perhaps a scholarship fund. Perhaps a defraying of costs with a community fund.

One woman is screen printing and monograming to help. What can the rest of us do?

My kids are grown and I watch the same things going on now with my kids having to fund the summer exaggerations of my grandkids. It is a very real problem and I think the solution just may be the old adage of a village raising a child.

Play ball!