The System Is Working. That’s the Problem. A Reflection on Youth Sports and the Costs We Don’t See Until Later.

I know this landscape well because I helped shape it for 16 years. But as the system expands, it’s worth asking: are we still building pathways for kids, or just infrastructure for a marketplace?

Over the holidays, I read testimony from Tom Farrey, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, delivered before a House subcommittee focused on youth development.

The Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program—best known for its Project Play initiative—has spent years advocating for a simple idea: sport should serve kids and communities first. Their work focuses on access, affordability, and keeping young people engaged long enough for sport to actually do what we claim it does—build confidence, connection, and well-being.

Reading the testimony, I couldn’t help but connect it to the broader sports landscape—professional, collegiate, and how those forces eventually seep into youth sports.

Maybe it’s the continued greed and questionable stewardship of FIFA, now rolling out ticket prices for this summer’s Men’s World Cup that price lifelong fans out of what may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Or maybe it’s the chaos college football has become in the NIL and transfer-portal era. And to be clear—I support athletes benefiting from their name, image, and likeness. They should have been able to all along. The issue isn’t compensation. It’s that the system exploded before anyone bothered to put guardrails in place.

The collapse of the Pac-12. The bloat of the Big Ten. Schools scrambling not to be left behind, chasing television contracts and payouts while non-revenue sports quietly absorb the fallout—cross-country travel, ballooning budgets, and pressure just to survive.

The outcome is a consolidation of power. A handful of programs secure their place, while others are pushed to the margins. Access narrows. Doors quietly close.

The result is familiar. More. Bigger. Louder.

Nearly thirty years ago, I read Mike Lupica’s Mad as Hell: How Sports Got Away from the Fans—and How We Get It Back. At the time, it felt exaggerated. Looking back now, it feels more like an early snapshot of where we were headed. The Shift from Community to Consolidation

I could go on as a disgruntled fan. But that’s not really what this reflection is about.

It’s about kids. And what the downstream effects have on our institutions that serve them.

Because, that same consolidation of power, and exclusionary logic is showing up in youth sports—elite leagues with no on-ramps, closed ecosystems, and labels that signal who belongs and who doesn’t.

Farrey captured something important when he said that, "Once you have a child, your

favorite athlete is no longer LeBron James or Bryson DeChambeau—it’s the kid down the hallway. That’s the athlete you invest in most, emotionally and financially. That’s the one you most want to succeed on the field and in life. That’s the one you want to have an opportunity to play."

And when sport becomes personal, the consequences of our decisions become harder to ignore.

Despite decades of research and a growing chorus calling for reform, we seem to be drifting further from healthy, accessible environments—not closer.

Lessons from the Kiwanis Playground

It made me think back to my own childhood.

For 30 years, Bloomsburg Memorial Elementary School was home to Kiwanis Playground. No uniforms, no identification platforms, no fees—just a sign-up sheet and the freedom to play without expectations.

One of my fondest memories is spending summers at Kiwanis Playground, an activity hub for youth across the community. Kids came from all over the county. It was run by Ed Kriner and Dick Osbourne, who organized summer-long leagues—floor hockey, basketball, softball, flag football—along with table-tennis tournaments and sack-it competitions (shout-out to anyone who knows what that is).

There were sign-up sheets where you simply chose what you wanted to play. Teams were formed—without input from participants or parents—and schedules went up. Then a summer of competition unfolded.

No cost.

No uniforms

No parents on the sideline.

No practices.

Just show up and play.

And it wasn’t soft. Competition was real. I still remember a floor-hockey game ending in fists being thrown between me and one of my closest friends. We competed hard. But by the end of the day, all of it had been forgotten.

That environment mattered. It gave us a place to belong, compete, and grow—free from expectations beyond the ones we put on ourselves.

Compare that to what I see now.

Travel teams for second graders.

Private trainers for eight-year-olds.

Parents afraid that if they don’t say yes—to one more team, one more season, one more “opportunity”—their child will fall behind before they ever had a chance to begin.

And sanctioning bodies, while saying all the right things publicly, continue to create a culture that rewards the opposite.

I recently saw a post from our state soccer association celebrating that its Olympic Development Program teams went undefeated at the ODP Far West Championships—presented by WorldStrides Sports, a company that organizes international travel experiences for youth teams.

That caught my attention. But not for the reasons you might think.

What stood out was that U.S. Youth Soccer—while positioning itself as a responsible steward of the game—is still hosting events where eleven-year-olds travel from Hawaii, Texas, and states across the western part of the country to compete in tournaments built around the promise of identification.

I dug a little deeper.

I saw score-lines with ten-plus-goal margins and found myself asking, as I have many times before: What are we doing?

The data below isn't an anomaly; it's a snapshot of a system prioritizing identification and 'exposure' over the actual experience of the kids on the field.

A snapshot from the 2026 U12 Far West ODP brackets. When eleven-year-olds travel across state lines only to face 14-0 and 12-0 score-lines—a 49-2 aggregate across just these four matches—we have to ask if the priority is player development or simply filling tournament brackets.

I’ve pushed back on this hypocrisy for years, sitting across tables from people who say all the right things—development over identification, process over results, do what’s right for the kid.

Right up until external incentives begin to reshape the conversation, often in ways that move us further from what’s best for kids.

I’ve worked with players who went on to play well past high school—and with many others who were labeled “elite” early and stepped away from the game sooner than anyone expected.

Over time, certain patterns become hard to ignore.

Players who struggled to sustain their engagement with the game often found themselves pulled early into systems built around identification and results—programs promising exposure, pathways, and opportunity before kids fully understood what they were being asked to chase.

Those who remained in the game often came through a broader range of experiences.

Farrey also pointed to the physical toll this model is taking. Since 2007, adolescent ACL injuries have increased by roughly 26 percent—a trend he linked to the growing demands placed on young athletes, including early specialization, overuse, and year-round competition with limited recovery.

The outcomes shouldn’t surprise us.

The Business of "Elite" Status

And instead of responding to these warning signs by pulling back—fewer games, less travel, more space to recover—we’ve done the opposite. We’ve built environments that reward more: more matches, more miles, more expense, under the guise of exposure.

I see clubs tripping over themselves to be accepted into “elite” leagues.

In Oregon alone, at least 15 clubs now compete in what are commonly referred to as platform leagues—national, closed ecosystems like ECNL or MLS NEXT that brand themselves as elite pathways and promise visibility, access, and identification.

That’s roughly 17 percent of the state’s 94 sanctioned clubs operating under the banner of being “elite,” in a player pool of about 60,000 kids—most of whom are still in grassroots programs.

At that scale, “elite” stops describing development and starts functioning as a marketing asset. A badge to reassure anxious parents, signal status, and keep families from looking down the street at the club that has one when you don’t.

That dynamic creates fragmentation. Instead of a coherent ecosystem focused on development, we end up with parallel tracks, competing labels, and constantly shifting definitions of what “elite” even means.

Clubs are left with an impossible choice: invest time and resources into long-term development, or chase the patch for the sleeve—and in turn, long-term development struggles to be a priority in a marketplace built on short-term reassurance.

Creating structures like pathways, pipelines, platforms isn't inherently bad. But problems arise when the structure becomes the point and kids become secondary to branding, validation, and market share.

When Participation Becomes a Product

The polish of the modern pathway: We have built environments that look and feel professional at every level, but we have to ensure the soul of the game doesn't get lost in the shine of the infrastructure.

This pattern isn’t unique to youth sports—it’s part of a broader playbook we’ve seen elsewhere.

Over the past two decades, private equity has reshaped entire sectors of our economy—housing, healthcare, restaurants, local businesses—by consolidating infrastructure, scaling operations, and monetizing access.

Youth sports are now following a similar path.

Private capital is buying registration platforms, tournament operators, data systems, and building massive centralized sports complexes. The goal isn’t a better Saturday experience—it’s ownership of the ecosystem.

The video on the sideline may be the most visible piece.

Four or five years ago, it was the exception to see a team with a Trace or Hudl camera set up. Now it’s routine. Between matches, there’s a quiet race—team managers, assistant coaches, the occasional eager parent—each trying to secure midfield.

In many ways, that’s a good thing. As Farrey noted, a child’s entire athletic journey can now be captured on video—hopefully more as a keepsake than anything else.

But that footage doesn’t just sit on a hard drive. It gets uploaded, curated, and placed behind subscription models that families and clubs are now expected to pay into.

That’s where the shift happens.

What started as curation has become data.

And once moments become data, it becomes something that can be leveraged.

What starts as helpful technology becomes expectation. What begins as optional becomes required. And before long, kids aren’t just playing—they’re producing content, metrics, and value inside systems designed to scale.

Farrey named this shift directly in his testimony—warning that the influx of private capital into youth sports is accelerating a move away from kid-centered decision-making and toward growth curves and returns.

When kids become assets, environments become transactional.

And the cost of that rarely shows up immediately. It surfaces years later, in hindsight—when someone realizes they spent their childhood chasing something they never truly chose.

Reclaiming the Goal

I don’t believe the Kiwanis Playground model is something we’ve outgrown. I think it’s something we stopped prioritizing.

Reclaiming the goal: A game of pickup. No refs, no uniforms, and no identification platforms—just a group of kids, including my two (when they were quite small), figuring it out for themselves. It turns out not every activity needs to be organized to be meaningful; sometimes we just need to get out of the way.

The fundamentals haven’t changed. Kids still need space to play, compete, and grow without constant evaluation.

What’s changed isn’t our understanding of kids or development—it’s the system surrounding them.

Governing bodies are incentivized to expand programs, events, and pathways—often under the banner of opportunity and identification—because growth signals relevance, influence, and stability.

Clubs respond by chasing badges, leagues, and affiliations to avoid being left behind.

Parents respond by saying yes to more, afraid that opting out means falling behind.

And private capital responds by investing in the infrastructure that supports all of it—registration platforms, tournaments, facilities, data, and media—because the demand is already there.

None of these decisions are irrational on their own.

Together, they create a system that rewards volume, scale, and visibility. One that nudges everyone toward more games, more travel, more cost—often at the expense of patience, access, and kid-centered decision-making.

Communities still have choices. We can invest in shared spaces and models that prioritize belonging, exploration, and development. Or we can continue outsourcing those responsibilities to systems designed to grow, consolidate, and optimize—because they promise efficiency and relief in the short term.

Somewhere along the way, we started confusing convenience with progress.

The system is working.

That’s the problem.

P.S.

As I was writing this, I found myself thinking more about Ed Kriner and Dick Osborne.

It never really occurred to me at the time how much effort that must have taken—or how much they must have cared. Organizing leagues. Showing up day after day. Being patient and inclusive.

Dick was also my freshman football coach. I wasn’t very good—but I was definitely cocky. He was hard on me, and in the process, he introduced me to humility.

I only played one year of football, so it’s not something I’ve reflected on much over the years. But looking back now, I can see how much he cared—not just about performance, but about standards, effort, and showing up for kids who needed structure.

I recently learned that Ed passed away a few years ago. Dick, if by chance this ever finds its way to you, I just want to say thank you—for caring, for giving your time, and for building something that mattered to more kids than you probably ever knew.