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    #61
    Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
    Soccer is way too expensive here. That is clearly leading to players quitting soccer as rec and town travel teams lose all their top players to premier at very young ages. The players who don’t want to commit to premier at 9 years old for 2500 a year are left with mostly weak town programs with any weaker players remaining. As much as the premier teams want to sell it as a sport that needs tons of technical training etc...soccer is not an elitist sport in any other country. Kids learn on the playground and then the top players and athletes get picked up to play for free academies.

    The scary thing is other sports are now following that model more and more. And it isn’t a winning model Baseball and basketball now with year round aau programs. You really aren’t likely to ever play varsity high school without some sort of travel Experience now. You just can’t keep up without it.

    Long term all it is doing is shrinking the pool of players to the rich suburb kids. Basketball gets saved by the evil sneaker companies that run the free top aau programs.
    That is very true. If you look at the details from Aspen, the largest drops/lowest participation is for families of limited means, while all the growth is more affluent families that can afford pricey sports for their kids. There also is a growing attitude of "if you can't be in the best "whatever" you shouldn't bother.' Like you said kids who just want to play are left with few options that are still decently competitive and affordable. A societal message that just being average isn't good enough isn't helping. Look at how many times town or lower level club programs get trashed on this site. We can't grow the sport (or any sport) with an elitist attitude

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      #62
      Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
      my kids playing aau basketball instead of premier soccer this year. It was mainly because of the cost of the premier soccer that we decided to do other sports instead of focusing on soccer.

      Does that mean the decline in soccer participation is due to cost? Using your logic it does.
      But, you could have played town travel instead of premier and saved a lot of cash for about the same level of coaching.

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        #63
        Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
        That is very true. If you look at the details from Aspen, the largest drops/lowest participation is for families of limited means, while all the growth is more affluent families that can afford pricey sports for their kids. There also is a growing attitude of "if you can't be in the best "whatever" you shouldn't bother.' Like you said kids who just want to play are left with few options that are still decently competitive and affordable. A societal message that just being average isn't good enough isn't helping. Look at how many times town or lower level club programs get trashed on this site. We can't grow the sport (or any sport) with an elitist attitude
        The latest rev of the Adidas Predator cleats cost about $350. That's just way too much.

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          #64
          Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
          my kids playing aau basketball instead of premier soccer this year. It was mainly because of the cost of the premier soccer that we decided to do other sports instead of focusing on soccer.

          Does that mean the decline in soccer participation is due to cost? Using your logic it does.
          If your kids are now basketball players, why are your creeping around on TS?

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            #65
            Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
            That is very true. If you look at the details from Aspen, the largest drops/lowest participation is for families of limited means, while all the growth is more affluent families that can afford pricey sports for their kids. There also is a growing attitude of "if you can't be in the best "whatever" you shouldn't bother.' Like you said kids who just want to play are left with few options that are still decently competitive and affordable. A societal message that just being average isn't good enough isn't helping. Look at how many times town or lower level club programs get trashed on this site. We can't grow the sport (or any sport) with an elitist attitude
            I am not so sure your analogy that "A societal message that just being average isn't good enough isn't helping." is accurate. We have all seen the watering down of youth sports of every level. In some respect, the sports have done this to themselves and rather than believe that folks subscribe to being average isnt good enough, I would state that it is more likely that most youth premier or AAU teams simply are not worth their rising and expensive costs and most parents are now calling them out by ceasing participation in them for their own children ... good for them!

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