The pursuit of sports and recreation has been described as a basic human right. Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay,” while Article 27(1) says “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community.” Few things define and bond communities and breed pride like the shared love of sports, and one only needs to look back as far as this year’s World Cup to see the sway athletic endeavor can hold.
However, America’s poor and working classes are finding it increasingly difficult to participate in sports, mostly because it’s simply too expensive. A study from the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital found that more than 60 percent of all respondents have paid to participate in middle and high school sports. Of the respondents with family incomes under $60,000, 19 percent listed cost of participation as the reason their children participated less in sports.
With only 15 percent of all sports participants coming from the lowest quartile of the income scale, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, there is a real danger that youth sports participation may see the same attainment gap much of the rest of society is dealing with. Although only 20 percent of the nation’s households report incomes over $100,000, they constitute 33 percent of all school sports-playing homes.
Budget cutbacks in light of the slow recovery from the Great Recession have led many school districts — particularly those in areas with inadequate school tax-bases — to slash spending on all non-academic programming, including extracurricular athletics. This, in turn, has resulted in more schools passing operation costs off onto student-athletes.
“Pay-to-play”
For example, let’s look at a varsity football player. Typically, the player would be required to pay for his personal gear — cleats, mouth and athletic protectors, workout clothing, socks, etc. — and he may be asked to contribute toward long road trips. However, many cash-strapped schools and athletic clubs may now also ask the player and his family to help pay coaching fees, to rent or buy non-personal gear — such as protective padding and under armor, a uniform and helmet — and to subsidize travel costs. Altogether, these costs can add up to thousands of dollars.
“At one point in our history, most recreation programs and all youth sports were subsidized using public funds,” said Daniel Rosenberg, associate professor for the School of Human Performance and Leisure Sciences and coordinator for the Graduate Sports Management Program at Barry University, to MintPress News. “There was a definite shift away from this toward the privatization model. During the post-World War II, ‘Great Society’ era, there was a recognition that public recreation was a basic human right.”
During the Reagan administration, however, the notion of “individuality and non-collective responsibility spread through the nation’s recreation and school systems,” Rosenberg explained.
“It became fashionable to think of youth sports as being the parents’ responsibility, which led to a class divide between those that could afford better coaches and better training and could — in theory — improve their children’s chances for going for scholarships or professional athletic careers and those that can’t.”
Rosenberg defined this difference as “right-to-play” versus “pay-to-play.” As the impetus to raise the capital to play rose, so did the motivation to exploit the system. For example, if a team was to seek sponsorship to support itself, why can’t the team also seek sponsorship for a new field, or better workout facilities, or nicer uniforms? In practical terms, this creates a value system in which those who invest money expect a return on their investments. This, in turn, results in not only the poorest students being unable to play, but it also leaves little room or willingness to teach the game to unseasoned players who have potential. As pointed out by Rosenberg, Michael Jordan — six-time NBA champion, five-time NBA Most Valuable Player, 10-time All-NBA First Team member, two-time Olympic gold medalist and arguably the best defensive and all-around player in American basketball history — was a sub-par player in middle school. Under a “pay-to-play” system, he may have never had a chance to play.
Sports and poverty
This presents a problem. In many poor neighborhoods, school athletics represent the only structured physical activity that many young people may be exposed to.
“What communities think they are saving in making these cutbacks will cost them in the long run,” said Darryl Hill, founder of Kids Play USA, to NBC News. “In the long run, the community is losing because these kids become a health burden and in some cases a societal burden.”
According to the Food Research and Action Council, while obesity rates rose 10 percent for all American youths ages 10 to 17 from 2003 and 2007, rates spiked by 23 percent among low-income children. According to the study, children from lower-income households were more than twice as likely to become obese than children from median-income households, with severe obesity occurring among poor children and teenagers at a rate 1.7 times that of their counterparts from higher-income families.
While some of this may be societal — black girls from wealthy families are more likely to be overweight than black girls from poorer families, for example — much of this is the result of two factors. The first factor is food scarcity. The high price of green produce and fruits and the fact that there are limited options for purchasing fresh food within the inner-city — where most low-income minorities tend to live — both contribute to many people missing at least one meal per week in these so-named “food deserts.” The USDA estimates that 13.5 million low-income Americans live in a “food desert,” described as one mile or more from the nearest market selling fresh foods in an urban area or ten miles or more in a rural area.
For 13.5 million Americans, this means relying on high-calorie, low-nutrition foods or going hungry. This, coupled with the notion of “hunger gluttony” — that the fear of hunger and not being sure of one’s next meal tend to lead a person to overeat when given the chance — have led to an obesity crisis among the nation’s poor.
This is compounded by the lack of facilities — such as parks, community and fitness centers, and medical clinics — in poor neighborhoods. Without any valid means to mitigate the effects of food scarcity, the nation’s poor are left to make due with a limited range of options.
Beyond health benefits, meanwhile, school athletics have been shown to improve academic performance. As most schools demand that students maintain a minimum grade point average to participate in sports, student-athletes are more likely to seek after-school tutoring and other academic services to maintain eligibility. Additionally, as participating in sports consumes large portions of a student’s time, student-athletes are less likely to become pregnant, get involved with drinking or drugs or become criminally-active, per the Kids Play USA Foundation.
“Research has shown youth sport participants have higher levels of physical activity that positively influence physical and psychological health in adolescence and later in life,” wrote Sally Johnson, executive director of the National Council of Youth Sports, to MintPress.
“Youth sports plays an important role as the conduit through which children learn important life lessons, values, compassion and good ethics. It is that relationship between sports skills and life skills that provide our young athletes with the fundamentals they need to succeed both on and off the playing field.”
Dealing with realities
While the idea of “right-to-play” is attractive, it is unlikely to be fully embraced in the near future. Analysts have argued that a focusing of school funds strictly toward instruction is essential, particularly in light of the current shortage of science, technology, engineering and mathematics-trained workers in the nation’s workforce. Increasingly, as argued by Amanda Ripley for the Atlantic in 2013, there should be a divorce of schooling and youth sports in America, with youth sports being handled — as they are in other countries — by community clubs and associations.
“Many administrators are stuck in a system where their schools are evaluated on academic performance and not athletics,” said Rosenberg, of Barry University. “With schools being underfunded, these administrators are forced with the realization that — in order to pay for sports — the kids will have to pay for it themselves. This creates a pragmatization — either it has to be cut out or it has to pay for itself — which has fueled the social class divide in sports.”
While this may suggest to some a breakdown of the amateur system — as these proposed community clubs would require sponsorship and outside funding, which establishes a de facto value for play — some have argued that this may not be a bad thing. The amateur system was created in the late 19th century as a way to keep the lower-classes — which were engaging in sports and forming professional leagues as a result of changes to labor laws — from seriously competing with the upper-classes — who had the leisure to pursue sports on their own terms.
As the current “pay-to-play” system seems to enforce these original notions of amateurism as a device of class warfare, it is unclear if anything short of a return to full public subsidization will help to close the current economic gap in youth sports. In lieu of this, the best possible solution may be to make the best of the situation.
“Certainly, we do recognize the costs of ‘pay to play’ and the financial effects on families,” added Johnson. “One must also recognize that many families utilize the travel team experience as family bonding and vacation time. There are many, many families who make lifetime friends — adults and children alike — through the youth sports experience. Additionally, there are sponsorships and fundraisers to help defray some of those costs.”
Rosenberg, too, said that funded sports and “other programs that have been cut” would be part of his “perfect world.”
“Studies have shown a correlation between academic performance and movement,” he said. “However, unless we have a cultural awakening recognizing athletics as necessary for child development, there is no way to expunge commercialism from the youth sports model.”