Travel Team Invitation - confused
SD15 was invited over Instagram by a coach that is with a girls travelling basketball team. I checked it out online with numerous websites and it looks legit. They also have two female assistant coaches on the team which is good.
I've heard travel teams are an excellent way to get noticed by a university for scholarship. As long as it's safe and worth it to her development as a basketball player I would love for her to do it. I just don't think there is any way for us to afford it. Other families have higher incomes than ours and even they struggle with the cost of a travel team. Supposedly it costs $800 for everything. Supposedly uniforms, shoes, entry fees, and travel is all included. I can't imagine that being accurate. Round trip air fare to 4 different tournaments out of state can't be cheap. Then there is lodging, food, chaperones (my sister had to pay these for her SS soccer travel team), and transportation upon arrival.
Then I get sad and angry. DD8 loves gymnastics and her godfather was generously paying her way until his death last year. (The loss of him was hard for us in many ways but it was the hardest on DD. She loved him very much.) We couldn't afford for her to go anymore. She wants back in so bad and she was progessing so fast. We could afford for her to go now but not with SD's volleyball she decided to do just for fun this school year. SD's camp over the summer cost us for what she didn't put the effort into fundraising. All the gear SD says she needs that has to be name brand but very few of the other players wear name brand and some of the gear she insists she needs isn't even required. Then she has basketball through the school so more fees and more costs for gear. Next she says she's doing track and now this basketball travel team.None of this is including all the other various times she says she needs money. I get it. I understand it. I did it to my parents too.
We are also supposed to be trying to save money out of the little we do have so we can have money to move to a new place and a back up for emergencies. Everyone in the family has made sacrifices in spending except her. This I understand too. She asks her father for money. It's his choice to give it to her or not. What I'm wondering is when does DD get her opportunity with sports or other extracurricular activities? I know it can be hard for a father to keep things as fair as possible but I feel like things are way out of balance.
My daughter is a softball
My daughter is a softball player, they way they do it is a payment plan of $150/ month. That includes all the gear and tournement costs. However it doesn't cover transportation and lodging. When you have tournement weekends there is a lot of travel and no way to go home at night. Don't know if that helps!!
Travel teams
are ridiculously expensive. I would contact the coach and ask about scholarships and fundraising opportunities. My brothers played travel baseball when we were growing up and it meant I made a lot of sacrifices or couldn't do certain things with dance in order to make sure they could play. Now, I was still able to do things but not what I needed to do to progress and it was a point of contention for a long time.
I would get all of the information and speak to your partner about SKid making some choices. For example, she can play basketball but not volleyball.
Why did your dd have to stop
Why did your dd have to stop doing something she had been doing and was excelling at because sd decided to try something out...and additionally gets to add stuff?
No travel ball is that cheap! I know multiple people that do/have done it and the cheapest is $3k a season - and that's LOCAL, so no flights.
Your dd should be able to do gymnastics before sd gets to add yet another thing.
How does your dh explain how this is ok? It's not.
That $800 isn't going to be
That $800 isn't going to be for everything. My parents paid a little more than that for travel soccer, and the "travel" was on top of that. As were the team parties, the coach's gift, the snacks/meals parents took turns providing, the extra sweatshirts, the personal equipment, etc., etc.
Don't join a travel team with the expectation of a college scholarship. Although women's basketball is at least one of the four sports where full scholarships are the norm, there are a gazillion kids playing travel who'd like to get a scholarship. In most cases, parents would be better off socking all those travel sports expenses into a college fund if that's the goal.
If there's not room in the family budget for travel basketball, and other family members are having to give up their activities for budgetary reasons, there is no good reason to sign SD up for a travel basketball team. There are some travel teams that have "scholarships" that they might give to a particularly gifted athlete who they want on the team. You might ask about that, but if you have to pay full freight, in the circumstances you've described I would just say no.
I would disagree that
I would disagree that spending money on SD is DH's choice. No it isn't. You and DH are equity life partners and that makes it "YOUR", the collective "your", choice. In these situations both partners get a veto and if one plays the veto then then the decision is made. If you both agree, the decision is also made.
I shake my head any time that SParents make the comment that it is the SO's choice on spending money on one child or another. Once the marriage license is issued there is no more "your resources vs my resources". There is only "our resources".
While I completely recognize that in blended family marriages one SO or the other usually has CS obligations that are required, anything beyond the support stipulated in the CO is a "we" decision.
I also completely recognize that blended marriages far more often than not include one or more failed marriages from the history of the partners and with that comes a complexity of blended resources, separate resources, partially blended and partially separated, etc, etc, etc....
The models I have experience both from my parents marriage (56 years and counting) and my own marriage (24 years and counting) is that there are only marrital resources. That may make my situation unusally simple and make me unusually naive but that is what I have to work with when processing the money and resource allocation issues.
No to the travel team.
No to the travel team.
I don't understand this travel team obsession in the US now. It wasn't like that when I was a kid.
Kids should not be overplayed. Their tendons and ligaments, bones and muscles are all developing and overstress leads to injury and the end of a playing career before it begins.
Travel team necessarily puts huge amounts of pressure on the family to just be focused on one kid's activities. That's not good for anyone. Everything is a balance.
SD15 was invited over
My bios and steps are adults, and I'm not current with how things are done, but an Instagram invite would give me pause. To me, the old one, it has as much validity as a 'you've won' phone call. When my kid played you might get an invitation to try out, but never an invitation to play. If everyone who has the money makes the team, to me, it doesn't sound like an elite team.
Scholarship? Yes, there are college scholarships available. But, consider the odds. Unless the child already has great talent, playing a travel team is not going to yield a scholarship. Also consider if she can play school sports and travel team. High school coaches may not want travel team players on their roster due to time conflicts. Should a child have a school roster spot if she cannot attend practices and games due to travel team? Or should the roster spot go to the player who will be there all the time? Players can, and do, get noticed by college scouts at school games.
All families have finite resources. Family emergency funds come before travel team expenses.