Money has Ruined Youth Sports

At six years old, our son had friends who played soccer from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday. A six-year-old practicing as much as a Division I athlete. (The parents we know are actually hoping their kid stops enjoying it so much.) I turned six in 1977. Youth athletics then was nothing like this, and I wondered how things changed so much. I started looking at our societal emphasis on sports, using the most tangible metric by which we measure emphasis: money.