Following the Jan. 18 Business article “Youth sports costs soar: $50 tryouts, $3,000 teams,” Post Opinions asked readers: “Are youth sports in America broken? What could be done to improve them?” Here are some of the responses.
As a former youth soccer and baseball coach, and a current swim official, I can testify that youth sports are not broken. What’s broken are the expectations and behaviors of athletes’ parents. Before each season, I would bring the parents together and explain that my first role as a coach was to teach the game, teach respect for teammates and opponents, and, above all else, make sure the kids enjoyed their experience whether they started or sat at the end of the bench. Parents would nod, but once the season began, their behavior and expectations shifted. If “Marge” didn’t play enough, I was hindering her chances at a D-1 scholarship. Never mind that Marge missed every practice. If “Bobby” wasn’t starting at shortstop, he wouldn’t make his older brother’s travel team. Never mind that when Bobby did play, his parents would loom behind the dugout dissecting every play and offering expert advice to each child on why we were down 14-1 after the first inning.
Youth sports are for kids and not for unrequited parental dreams of glory.
Michael Faber, Castle Pines, Colorado
I have been to many local basketball games this season, supporting teams from elementary school to high school, and find myself cringing as grown-up coaches act like hotheads and belittle their players.
Coaches need coaching in emotional regulation. Do not dwell on the past; refocus instantly on the next play rather than remaining stuck on errors or bad calls. Offer corrective technical instruction. Focus on what to do next instead of repeatedly asking athletes, “What are you doing? Why did you do that?” When you feel the anger rising and the urge to yell, sit down and drink water.
Constant criticism can shatter a young athlete’s confidence, leading them to doubt their abilities both on and off the court.
Francesca Carregal, Sterling
Sports should provide children the fun they want and need, but adults have made it quit being fun. Thus children quit, typically at 12 or 13. The main causes are parent involvement, plus costs and required travel that means children miss out on other things they like to do. By high school, children should participate in one sport max, and their journey there should be fun.
Children love to play. Let youth sports be play.
Georgiann Roberts, Fort Worth
The biggest issue with youth sports is cost. Meanwhile, American children have an obesity problem. Much of that can be addressed by kids being more active. My suggestion is that expenses on sports — tournament fees, equipment fees, fees for sports conditioning during the offseason — be fully deductible for families below a certain income.
Kelly Buchanan, Langley, Washington
A lot of pressure could be alleviated if we had more community fields and children competed more on the neighborhood level. Some travel would still be involved, but the expectation of driving hours every weekend with possible overnight hotel stays is stressful for parents and kids alike. Make it fun again.
Eric Greene, Annapolis
As a longtime youth sports coach, I advise pushing young children to play sports instead of being on an iPhone. Once young kids get involved, they tend to get hooked on a particular sport and enjoy competing. Ideally, they would then develop and refine their skills by joining a club team. Unfortunately, everything has become about money.
When my son got involved in club sports, some money was required for traveling and participating in tournaments. But it was affordable because there was more voluntary coaching going on. Almost all my coaching has been done for free, and I would hope that older people who loved youth sports themselves would do more volunteering. Yes, it can be demanding to balance a work schedule and home life while giving up your free time. But it can be very rewarding to help more young athletes achieve their goals.
Philip Jordan, Temple City, California
Progress and regress
The Feb. 3 editorial “Little to gain by raising taxes on the rich” was right that raising the top marginal income tax rate will do little to increase revenue. But this is in no small part due to a tax code with many loopholes by which high earners can limit their tax liability, and they will increase their use of such loopholes to keep their effective tax rate flat even as nominal rates increase. Likewise, as loopholes are increasingly exploited to hide otherwise taxable income, real gross domestic product growth may also be hidden.
A chart accompanying the editorial showed that between 1980 and 2022, the top 1 percent of earners doubled their share of total income and doubled their share of taxes paid. I think their doubled share of income is a greater issue than their doubled share of the tax burden.
Closing loopholes and simplifying the tax code are key to ensuring that everyone pays their fair share — and that taxes are cheap and easy for earners to file and for the IRS to process.
Patrick McGregor, Millersville
Bullet holes in the Second Amendment
I agreed with much of the Jan. 28 editorial “A show of Second Amendment principle,” which lauded gun rights groups for standing up to the Trump administration after a Border Patrol agent fatally shot Alex Pretti for protesting while armed. I took exception, however, to the statement that “the NRA has built an increasingly Republican reputation after once endorsing many Democrats, though that is as much because elected Democrats changed their views on guns.”
As a registered Democrat, licensed gun owner and hunter in a blue state, I believe that Democrats have not changed their views as much as the GOP has come to believe that if you can put a bullet in it, you should be able to own it. Even Justice Antonin Scalia, ruling in D.C. v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects individuals’ right to bear arms, noted that the government does have the right to control which firearms we can have. The chasm between the views of Democrats or Republicans started when the NRA became a shill for the gun industry.
Malcolm Wilson, Silver Spring
A family member — a responsible gun owner, avid hunter and expert marksman — called to say that the firearms-owning community with which he associates was aghast at the circumstances of Alex Pretti’s death and the president’s response, “You can’t have guns.” By the president’s lights, Pretti, who was in lawful possession of a firearm and who by all accounts did not threaten federal agents with it, was no longer entitled to his constitutional right because he was protesting the occupation of Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Thus the president is essentially rewriting the Second Amendment, to wit: “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, unless they be enemies of the state.” In turn, the cherished belief that roughly 400 million firearms in private possession would constrain or mitigate a tyrannical government has been exploded.
Muskets in the hands of patriots in 1775, a shotgun in the hands of a Black father whose home was surrounded by Klansmen in the 1920s, rifles in the hands of members of the French Resistance in the 1940s — are all valid examples of guns being a necessity when confronted by organized violence and there is no other option.
But in the United States in 2026, I urge protesters to leave their guns at home. Their Second Amendment rights might not apply.
Eric Radack, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Following the Feb. 1 letters package “Flirting is trickier than ever. Here’s how to approach it.,” Post Opinions wants to know: How soon do you bring up politics when getting to know someone? Is a first date too soon? Share your response, and it might be published as a letter to the editor. wapo.st/discuss_politics
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