Comment by estearum
20 days ago
… why would college athletic scholarship or Olympic/pro athlete be a reasonable bar or something anyone would care about?
Sports should be accessible to kids of all income levels for the sake of playing sports while they’re kids.
I didn't state that it was reasonable but a lot of parents do care. Something on the order of 2% of entering US college freshmen receive at least a partial athletic scholarship at NCAA D1/D2 schools. This can be a major cost savings, plus it allows them to bypass the normal application process. We can argue about whether colleges should give athletic scholarships at all but that's how the system works.
I agree that sports should be accessible to kids of all income levels. And that's true to an extent for certain sports. But the cheaper options of playing on public school or community center teams will only take you so far. The better coaches and higher levels of competition necessary to develop real mastery are often only available in expensive private clubs and academies.
Sorry I guess what I'm getting at is more specifically: why should anyone care if people are priced out of the absolute upper echelons of sports?
I actually think it's probably better that tier of athletics is predominantly (and obviously) a bunch of trust fund babies. It's immensely high risk and low utility (both internally and externally to the athlete themselves) for anyone else to be pursuing those ambitions.
Because, not to be idealistic, but America is supposed to be the land of opportunity. There are no kings, or lords. Every person is equal in the eyes of the law, and the free market is the decider. If we're abdicating that position, and just wanna accept that the rich get everything and everyone else fights for their scraps, well, I mean, everyone's gotta have an ethos, I guess.
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Was reading today that to become an Olympic big air athlete the estimated costs is 200K to 600k USD excluding major injuries.
Because when people sign up kids for sports, the thing they want them to learn the most is competitiveness and hard training. Everything else is basically perceived as being lazy. As a culture, we tend to turn evrything into grand moralization and duty.
So, consequently, sports club that is not trying to win is seen as lazy and bunch of loosers. And quite openly.
I think there's a big gap between "trying to win" and aspirations to be an actual professional or Olympian.
As someone who was quite competitive in several sports growing up, I don't think "not aspiring to be professional/Olympian" was frowned upon at all.
If it is today, that is extremely pathological.