GG Galore: Should Rich Youth Sports Parents Be Fundraising?

It seems like a simple answer, no?

As always, a quick reminder to please subscribe to Good Game if you haven’t already. If you’re all signed up, thank you and I’d so appreciate you spreading the world to your youth sports buddies. Just like watching a freezing outdoor soccer match in the winter, we’re better off bundled together.

Time for another edition of Good Game Galore where I guide you though the latest youth sports news and share a few pieces that caught my eye. We begin in the buzziest city of them all and New York Magazine which this week posted an op-ed titled, Baseball Hustlers: Why are well-to-do parents fundraising to send their kids on vacations to Cooperstown?

I have sooo wanted to dissect this question ever since the presumably filthy rich actress and activist Alyssa Milano came under fire earlier this year for setting up a GoFundMe page to raise money for her son’s baseball. But early 2024 was still too soon. Though only a measly, not-exactly-filthy-rich sportswriter, I was fresh off my own uncomfortable fundraising efforts to help “send my kid” to Cooperstown last summer. Clearly, the root of the question posed by New York Magazine can be translated to the much less poignant : If you can pay for travel sports, why the fuck are you asking me to help fund your sports vacation?

The first thing to understand is there are myriad family situations under the banner of youth sports.

Some families are stretching themselves so thin - often sacrificing in other areas - for their kids to play travel. They might see travel as the conduit to a college scholarship, making the present expenses simply an investment. Or perhaps their local community has been so ravished by the big business youth sports tornado that they feel travel is the only viable competitive option.

Other families can afford it all. Perhaps they joke about how much they spend per year on youth sports, even if they’re too scared to actually crunch the numbers.

Whether a family falls under one of these camps or any other, it’s hard to resist the marketing pull of a week in Cooperstown. A hallowed experience in the birthplace of baseball is billed as a “rite of passage” for 12-year-old baseball players akin to a b’mitzvah or confirmation. The “once-in-a-lifetime” youth sports travel experience is only growing. Unrivaled, a new youth sports portfolio, founded by pro sports owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer bills itself as offering “unparalleled experiences.” The group’s headliners are Cooperstown All-Star Village and Ripken Baseball but also include travel experiences for skateboarders, softball and soccer players.

And this is where the ethics around fundraising come in. As the New York article explains, fundraising is inherently easy for parents with social media, and even easier when you’re blessed with a large family. But when you are not, it’s hard to keep going back to the well. Even harder to answer is the question the anxiety-ridden among us assume everyone is thinking. Again: Why the fuck are you asking me to help fund your sports vacation?

To mitigate those fears and also ensure the aspects of leadership and hard work that are supposed to be among the many lessons learned from playing youth sports, there are several ways to make youth sports fundraising more palatable. It stems with ensuring the kids are giving something back to society.

1. The sports vacation outfits like Unrivaled should add a community day to their festivities. Maybe it’s the kids sorting produce at a local food bank or picking up trash at a local beach. Just something that adds depth to the overall experience and isn’t just another travel tournament in grander form.

2. Not to stereotype here, but stop tasking the moms with ALL the fundraising work. For Cooperstown, the kids are 12. There are many jobs they can do from delivering papers to dog walking to watering plants. Set up a bake sale, a car wash, a garage sale. Not that it alleviated much of the expenses but my kid’s Cooperstown Fund jar included earnings from umping and giving private lessons to younger players. Knowing he had to put in a sliver of effort made me feel better about asking the public to help. Of course guardian figures will likely be the ones doing the majority of the work, but if we do it all, what a missed opportunity for the kids to take a little ownership…and maybe even build some new skills and have extra bonding with their teammates.

3. At the very least, the kids should write a letter making the case to their would-be financial backers. How will this trip help them grow as a person? What does being on this particular team mean to them? What skills have they acquired?

I became quite uncomfortable with the fundraising at a certain point, largely because I have a small family and felt a little squeamish going back to the well. So yeah, I was one of those parents who started buying Super Bowl squares for my pet lizard.

I’m still conflicted on the notion of fundraising for youth sports in its current form, particularly for families who can afford it. But with a few tweaks I think it can become a bit more tasteful. I hope some of the youth sports higher ups take this conundrum seriously.

Elsewhere in the youth sports megasphere:

• David Epstein
  , author of Range and fellow Substacker on Caitlin Clark’s childhood as a generalist. Besides basketball, Clark played soccer, softball, tennis, volleyball, ran track and played piano. Epstein shares a new study that deeply pushes back against specialization, further validating the Roger Federer model he brilliantly lauds in Range.

• For Project Play, Linda Flanagan explores three communities that are working to make youth sports more accessible.

• Here’s an interesting look at the reasons female athletes ate significantly more at risk for ACL tears.

• More evidence that something has to be done to reel in horrific parent behavior.

• Oh look, a new youth sports app enters the fray. Curious what app you all like the best.