Travel Expenses (537)

There are SO many expenses when it comes to sports. Every sport has two seasons. There is a high school season and a club season. During the club season the 'off season' of the high school season begins. This is when lifting, conditioning and open gyms start. These activities cost money too. Once the actual high school season starts there is a food expense for when traveling on the busses, sweat suits, shoes, socks, playing fee, fan gear, and team shirts that are required to be paid when playing a high school sport.

A high school off season looks a lot like a training and conditioning camp. There are open gyms to participate in and if you do so, then you have to pay. The entire point of an off season is to get the rust off the athlete before actual season begins. The strengthening part of off season is probably the most expensive out of it all. This money goes to the coach that works with all sport groups. He gets us physically ready for our upcoming sport. He uses this money to buy new equipment for our weight room. For some reason all this training cost a lot of money for the parents. It doesn't seem like it, but once the season starts and you look at everything you have paid for it all ads up. There are sweat suits that have to be paid for, fan gear to wear to the games, and the players receive a certain shirt for themselves. To me that doesn't make much sense to pay this much money for playing a sport, especially for a school.

Club sports are very understandable for their expenses. The coaches get paid for teaching and getting kids to colleges. At my age in club, it is extremely critical to get recruited, so playing for the right club and coaches cost a little bit more than just average coaching. It also means playing on an elite team, which means larger tournaments that are going to cost more. Playing for a sport team in Iowa, means there is going to be more travel out of state, because that is where you are going to find challenging competition and more colleges will travel to those kind of tournaments. This means hotels are going to be expensive and not just for one night but could be for multiple nights. This begins to ad up in the spring time when all the qualifiers are offered. When traveling that means gas money too and even sometimes plane tickets too. You are guaranteed to go out to eat when traveling and buying shirts or clothes to remember when you go to places.

No matter what sport you want to play there is going to be a price for it. If you want to play it in college than that means you will have to pay even more. My family and I have figured that you pay so much money over the years playing club sports that you end up paying for your college. Your family pays for you to get a scholarship. Basically if you receive a scholarship, you have already paid for college expenses just in a different way.