Paying To Play

Some parents in Northwest Arkansas point to better competition as the main reason their children play sports in travel leagues. Others want to expose their children beyond the local level in the hope they will get to play in the collegiate ranks and beyond.

Travel teams often come with a hefty price tag. Parents will spend hundreds and often thousands of dollars each year so their children can journey throughout the state or across the country to play basketball, baseball, softball, soccer or volleyball.

Not all parents believe athletic achievement should come with a blank check.

“I’ll be the first one to tell you it’s a shame,” said Robin Wright of Bentonville. “It’s a shame that kids have to go and pay money to be on a competitive team and play ball. How can we change this mold?”

‘Ton Of Money’

Wright’s 9-year-old son, Drew, just completed his second season with the Travelers, a competitive baseball team mainly comprised of Bentonville-area players. This came after he spent one season in Bentonville Youth Baseball.

After that season, Wright and her husband, Dan, decided their son needed something different when it came to developing his baseball talents. Dan Wright is a former college pitcher at Arkansas and played professionally with the Chicago White Sox. He’s now a scout with the Philadelphia Phillies.

“Drew needed something a little bit more challenging,” Robin Wright said. “I like to use the word challenging because he just needed a little more up-tempo in the games.

“So we went to travel ball, and it was a great learning time.”

Each player paid an initial cost of $350 for the season. The money was pooled and paid some of the team’s tournament fees. The team never traveled farther than Conway, the only place where an overnight stay was needed.

Other expenses, such as the cost of gasoline, meals for players and families and admission to tournament games piled up on Wright and other parents as the season progressed. She said she spent $8 admission, the amount for a reserved ticket to a Northwest Arkansas Naturals game, each day to watch Drew play in a recent three-day tournament.

“Drew will go through white baseball pants like no other kid in the world because basically he plays third, first, pitcher and catcher,” Wright said. “But that’s on my dime, not the kids’. I would say personally, we’re getting above $500 to $700 spending on Drew for him just to play baseball.

“I hate to say it: We want Drew to be in this competitive league, but it sickens us to see parents and kids have to pay the money to be in a competitive league. There has to be a middle ground somewhere between the recreational league and this highly competitive league where kids can learn their fundamentals and be able to play ball for free.”

Where Does It End?

Price tags can get larger — much larger.

Players with the Ozark Junior Volleyball Club in Fayetteville paid from $550 to $1,400 in initial fees last season, depending on their age and skill level. Three area players who played this summer on the Springfield, Mo.-based Midwest Nationals 18 Blue baseball team — Carson Shaddy of Fayetteville High School, Jayme Lovelace of Rogers Heritage High School and Winston Rasmussen of Springdale Har-Ber High School — had an initial cost of $2,500 to join.

Joseph Lenac, a licensed sports psychologist in St. Louis, said fees can be even more. He has seen parents spend $20,000 for children to play on youth hockey teams that journey across the United States and Canada. Those players who have reached the Club Select hockey or soccer teams may have to pay as much as $40,000 per year.

“That is what youth sports have morphed into,” Lenac said. “It has become a national trend, and that’s the way it is in major metropolitan areas.”

Donovan Willis wanted to avoid those kinds of expenses when he began an Arkansas Select soccer team for players younger than 14. Each of his players paid $650-750 for club fees, which were all-inclusive and paid for uniforms and tournament fees.

“We were cheaper than some of the other clubs, but we wanted to be a good travel team, too,” he said. “We played in a Kansas City league because it was closer than Little Rock, and we kept our tournaments to just Memphis, Little Rock, Dallas and St. Louis — mainly in a five-hour radius.

“We took care of everything except the travel, the meals and the motel rooms for the families. We minimized our costs, though, by car pooling and spreading it out among some of the parents.”

How much is too much? Lenac suggests that a different question might need to be asked.

“I think the main question we should ask is for the kids: ‘Did you have fun?’” he said. “As long as they’re having fun, then we need to motivate them so they can continue to enjoy the game and develop their skills.

“Parents have to also realize that only 1 percent of Division I athletes go on to pro sports, and only about 2 percent of parents get back that money. They can’t be mad if they don’t get back what they invested, and there’s always those who eventually get burned out of a sport and are ready for a change and do something different.”

Success doesn’t always come with a heavy financial obligation. Arkansas Tech volleyball coach Kristy Bayer just wanted to promote her sport in the Arkansas River Valley when the Golden Suns Volleyball Club was formed in Russellville in 2007.

It started with two teams that year and has grown to 10 teams in ages 10-18 this season. Its 16-year-old team reached the national tournament this year, and finished 11th in the country, and its players only had to pay $40 per month to participate.

“It’s totally a nonprofit club,” Bayer said. “We just wanted to make it where the players can get good coaching and be affordable to them at the same time.”

Need To Keep Up

Shannon McKnight recently completed her third season in club volleyball and her second in the Ozark Junior Volleyball Club, where she was a member of the Ozark Juniors 15-3 team.

As a regional team, each player had an $800 initial fee that covered tournament fees. Her mother, Debbie, however, said the family spent another $1,200 during the time Shannon played club volleyball.

“There were volleyball shoes and certain equipment that players don’t get from the club,” Debbie McKnight said. “Then there are two practices per week and the private lessons with the coach, especially if a player is working on a certain spot. Shannon was learning how to be a middle blocker and an outside hitter this year.”

That extra time and money a player spends on club volleyball is essential if Shannon, who is about to start her sophomore season at Bentonville High School and hopes to join the Lady Tigers’ volleyball team this fall, wants to play at higher levels.

“Without this, you’re not going to make the high school team and keep up with the skill level of the other players,” Debbie McKnight said. “With the team practices and the individual practice, which was at least an hour with the coach, that’s five hours of practice that players that aren’t in club volleyball are not getting.

“You also see all those college coaches hanging around at those tournaments. I didn’t think it was a big deal until we went to a small dinner at Arkansas-Monticello and talked to the coach on how much time he spends at tourneys. The competition is much higher there, and it wasn’t just meant for fun. If you just want fun, go play in the sand pits.”

Traveling to Travel

Local players sometimes leave the area to gain the development they desire. Haylee Zimmerman, an incoming junior softball player from Rogers High School, is spending the summer as a first-year member of the Oklahoma Firebirds, a 16 and older team based out of Inola.

Zimmerman, who has played on four travel teams since age 12, just returned after seven days in Denver, where the Firebirds played in the Firework Softball Tournament. She planned to play this weekend in another tournament in Plano, Texas. The reason is simple: The talent she will face in these tournaments is much better than local leagues, said her mother, Lisa Zimmerman.

“Arkansas travel ball is a little farther behind than Oklahoma as far as development,” Lisa Zimmerman said. “So we go over there for better competition, and the main reason is college recruiting. She wants to go to a good school where she can play and get a good education.”

The Zimmermans paid a full team fee of $900 despite the fact Haylee only gets to play about half of the season, which ends the first week of August. Oklahoma softball players can start playing on travel teams in March, but Haylee couldn’t play until the Arkansas high school softball season concluded in May.

The fee covers tournament fees, player insurance and much of the equipment. Lisa Zimmerman was responsible for the other expenses, including a four-hour round-trip ride to Inola once a week for practice, and she estimated those would reach $5,000 before the season ends.

Reaping Benefits

The rewards can increase along with the price.

Payton Henson capitalized on his Amateur Athletic Union basketball success as well as high school ball in November when the Siloam Springs standout signed a national letter of intent with Tulane University and began classes at the New Orleans campus soon after his high school graduation. A four-year ride at college would be worth far more than the almost $9,000 Chris and Joy Henson spent last year so their son could play in tournaments in St. Louis, Dallas and Orlando, Fla.

“That was a dream of his,” Chris Henson said. “We just let Payton make the decisions, and the more he played, the more exposure he received and the more interest people had in him.”

The younger Henson played on a Springdale team called the Breakers for three years beginning in the sixth grade. That eventually grew into an opportunity to play for the Arkansas Hawks, followed by an invitation to play for the Arkansas Wings.

He then spent his final AAU season with the Clarksville-based Nolan Richardson Arkansas Mustangs, a team that won the 11th Grade Silver Super Showcase last summer.

Adeline Williams’ goal became reality when the incoming junior soccer player at Har-Ber was offered a scholarship by Oral Roberts University. She has already made an oral commitment to the Tulsa school following a year of extensive travel.

“She’s going to get a scholarship worth $90,000, and that was something she wanted ever since she was 9,” said her mother, Jill. “It kept her in better focus because of it, and she’s always been the type of person who knows what she wants.”

Adeline Williams was invited and encouraged to play on an Elite Club National program last year, but it meant she had to forfeit her freshman soccer season at Har-Ber. It also came with a demanding travel schedule. She flew to Dallas once a week, either on Tuesday or Thursday, for team practices with the Dallas Texans. Then she returned to Dallas that weekend to meet with the rest of the team for a tournament. This arrangement ran for five months in 2012.

“Her father, John, would pick her up at noon from school and drive to Tulsa in order to fly to Dallas,” Jill Williams said. “They would rent a car there and drive to practice. They would then fly back to Tulsa after practice, and they wouldn’t get back home until 1 a.m.”

Catching Coach’s Eye

Coaches know how important travel teams have become in the collegiate recruiting process.

Doug Estrada has spent the last eight years with the NWA Lightning 95 Black soccer team, which is mainly comprised of Northwest Arkansas girls.

Besides the $55o in club fees, Estrada said each player probably had to pay from $5,000 to $6,000 in other expenses as they traveled to Atlanta, Dallas and North Carolina for tournaments. He said some of them didn’t have the money, but he provided a little assistance by putting the minimal monthly salary he receives as a coach back into the club.

“I’m not going to deny a player these type of desires,” he said. “We were also fortunate enough that we had some coaches and other parents that were willing to help pick up some of the costs.

“Not many college coaches, with the exception of football, recruit at the high school level any more because their seasons are going on at the same time. They are now going to these tournaments and showcases where there are a lot of quality players. That is why you’re seeing a lot of the top players commit to a college by the end of their sophomore year.”

Estrada’s biggest reward is seeing his club players go on to bigger and better things. Eleven of his players signed letters of intent with colleges this year, including his daughter, Tayler, who signed with the Univerity of Kansas. Seven others had offers but declined in order to just become college students.

The numbers are even more staggering for Randy Merryman, who is the coach for the Midwest Nationals Blue travel baseball team. Since he began the program in 2001, he’s had 259 players sign with colleges and 52 players drafted by professional teams.

All but three players on this summer’s roster, which also includes the three local players and others as far away as Fort Smith and Bixby, Okla., have signed with colleges. One of those players, third baseman Drew Bridges, recently signed a deal with the New York Yankees.

“I think the purpose of the organization is doing well,” Merryman said.

College coaches find the recruiting process much easier during travel league tournaments and club tournaments because the high school and college seasons in those sports coincide. It’s one reason why Bayer, as well as many other college coaches, can often be found in attendance at these tournaments.

“I may not go somewhere every week, but I may go somewhere every other week,” she said. “Volleyball is still rather young in Arkansas, so I normally go out of state. However, it’s important that girls play on club teams and in leagues so they can get that exposure.

“What a lot don’t understand is that a very small percentage of high school and club players go on to play at the collegiate level. It’s a big financial risk because the percentage is so small, but parents are still going to do it. They are going to take that chance because everybody else around them is doing it, and they want their kids to stay competitive.”

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