New summer, new sports

I apologize for not posting this blog in a while. It's not lack of interest on my part, it's the feeling that once again I am trying to make it up as I go along.

The end of last summer, interest in soccer plummeted. It was as though we were back in year 1 of the four year run that summer soccer had at Trinity Lime Rock. There were at least two Sundays when we were back to the levels of that summer: a couple of kids, one parent, and me, looking at each other, wondering what was wrong and where everybody was.

Anyway, once the summer was over, I asked the kids in the Sunday School (not that there are all that many of them; this is New England, after all) what they thought about soccer, summer sports, etc.

The girls (ages 10 - 14) were initially diplomatic to a fault. Oh, yes, of course they just love soccer, and the summer soccer program, but something had come up that kept them from attending. (like for four straight weeks?!)

Then, when I asked them if they would rather have a different sport, the whole mood changed. YES! Not much question about what had happened. They had voted with their feet.

It took about five minutes before the older girls had settled on volleyball as their sport of choice. That, we can do -- and we will do in August.

The younger boys (small parishes do tend to have these bifurcated age/gender groupings, and you do have to cope with them) initially wanted cars -- like motorized vehicles -- but when they learned that this was not in the cards, fairly quickly they settled on some sport involving a bat and a ball. Maybe tee-ball, maybe something more advanced -- we'll see.

This year, due to a whole rash of major parish activities in June, we're starting the program the first Sunday morning in July -- the middle of July 4 weekend.

Let's see how it goes. In the next few posts, I want to talk about how to organize alternative recreations to be prepared for whoever might happen to show up.

Today's Parents -- #2 (Finances)

Let's take the differences between this generation of kids' parents and their parents. Item #1 (and here's the list of differences again, for your reference:)

QUOTE
There are several ways the current generation of parents is different from those who came before. Here are a few of them:
--Family finances
--Demands on time
--Priorities
--Educational backgrounds
--Attitudes about church/religion
--Alternatives
--Expectations
END QUOTE

Unless the kids you are ministering to come from the top one or two percent of the nation in terms of family income (in which case, you're wasting your time here -- the children of the Masters of the Universe exist on a different planet), their parents are POORER in terms of real income than their parents were. (You can look this up if you want to, but any reputable economist can show you the statistics to support this contention).

While organized youth soccer, for example, was not a major financial burden for the kids of a generation ago, it usually is today. Thus, families that want their kids to play it find that it chews up a larger portion of their disposable income (if any) than it did a generation ago. Ditto any other organized sports activity.

This creates an opportunity for church sports to serve as an alternative that is more family-friendly and, most importantly for squeezed families, cheaper. The risk -- and the reason the church venue may not succeed -- is that church sports are viewed as significantly inferior to for-profit youth sports, either in quality or in cachet or both.

The current generation of parents is poorer than their parents were, but they have not consciously accepted this knowledge yet (the older generation always poor-mouths and talks about how they walked to school five miles uphill in the snow both ways, so why should the less-inquiring of their children recognize that they were raised in considerably more prosperous circumstances than their parents were?) so they are particularly sensitive about being perceived to have accepted the cheaper alternative for anything.

Target your program at "the unfortunate" and you will get the least fortunate end of that population. You will completely miss the middle class. They simply do not yet realize that they, too, are unfortunate.

Today's Parents #1

There's an old saying -- an axiom, really -- in the military establishment that armies are always equipped and trained to fight the last war.

When we gear up to deal with today's parents, we are always at risk of doing exactly what generals normally do. We view the wants and needs of today's parents based on our own experience with parents of a generation ago, or, if we take an academic approach to things, based on what has been written about soccer moms and the like.

Suffice it to say that, by the time a term like "soccer mom" has reached a level of popular acceptance that a spin-off term like "hockey mom" can be a key component of a vice presidential campaign, the train has already left the station with regard to soccer moms as we understand them.

A new generation of parents is solidly in place, and it is the children of this new generation who are the beneficiaries of any church sports programs out there that are not oriented toward adults. (I'm not disparaging church-based sports programs for adults; in fact I think they are a super idea and that more churches ought to be supporting them. It's just not what this blog is about.)

There are several ways the current generation of parents is different from those who came before. Here are a few of them:
--Family finances
--Demands on time
--Priorities
--Educational backgrounds
--Attitudes about church/religion
--Alternatives
--Expectations

Over the next few posts I'll look at these differences and try to project ways they affect parental attitudes about church and kids and sports.

Today's Parents....

With this title, you're expecting what we used to call a jeremiad -- a litany of complaints, a catalog of things that are wrong, a set of dire predictions for the future -- but you would be wrong, at least a little bit wrong.

Yes, today's parents are not like the parents of a generation ago, and that generation of parents was not like their parents. In those years, the nation has come from being one in the tail end of the Great Depression, gone through some wars, had a whole lot of social and cultural and technological change -- and currently seems to be headed back into a new Great Depression. (Maybe in a few years we'll be referring to Depression I and Depression II, like we refer to the World Wars. I hope not.)

So parents today are different.

For the next few posts I am going to talk about such topics as what today's parents (seem to) want from sports programs for their kids, what they actually (IMHO) want, why they want what they want, and how church-based sports programs can address all of it.

Interestingly, these issues do NOT just affect church-based sports programs.

When families ask about college sports....

Fact is, if you are involved in youth sports at all -- whether in a school, club or church environment -- the subject of college (and college sports) is almost guaranteed to come up at least once per season.

In an earlier post, we provided some cautionary information about the possibilities of Division I college athletic scholarships, and the burdens they impose on their fortunate (?) holders.

However, for kids with only moderate talent, there's an echelon of college sports that falls between intramural and intercollegiate that you should know about -- and that's club sports.

Thanks to the New York Times for bringing us this update! It's good background information even if the question of college sports never comes up in your organization.

Genetic test for children predicting athletic success

This will be controversial, and those of us with an interest in church and kids and sports will need to think about its ramifications.

Anyway, here's the link to the NY Times article on the subject today.

More to follow....

You need to look outside the church....

I think we are going to get a little wonky for a while on this blog, for one big reason: the need to figure out sports sometimes in their larger context.

One issue is historical and quite location-specific.

In New England, the birthplace of the "Park and Rec" movement in the United States, any church sports program you create will likely be competing, directly or indirectly, with a taxpayer funded sports program in your town or city.

As I indicated, the reason is historical, and likely due to the historical importance of the Congregational Church in New England -- and their rather narrow (as they, themselves, would acknowledge today) historical view of the role of the church. You can read the history yourself; let it suffice to say that this was not exactly a tolerant and fun-loving community back in its formative days. The term "Puritan" is not pejorative today for no reason!

In this under-served area the Park and Rec movement was born and developed, beginning with the Boston Common in 1651, the Boston YMCA in 1851, the Boston Sand Gardens in 1886, and the New England Park Association in 1898. Today, every New England town but the very smallest has at least one full-time employee in the Park and Rec department whose basic job is to run recreational services for the townsfolk.

Furthermore, these services are not trivial. In 2007, the Town of Salisbury, CT, the northwest-most township in the state, and entirely rural, offered the following activities via their Recreation Department: lap swimming, strength training, paddle tennis, youth soccer, basketball, indoor walking, ice skating, clinics for lacrosse and field hockey, volleyball, aerobics, Latin dance, baseball, an Easter egg hunt, a track and field clinic, sailing, kayaking, swimming lessons, swim team, tennis lessons, sailing lessons, and lifeguard training. Other organizations in the town offer travel soccer, ice hockey, and ski jumping. The Appalachian Trail runs through the town, and the town also hosts three private boarding schools (Salisbury, Hotchkiss, and Indian Mountain) with extensive athletic facilities that are occasionally available to residents, and Lime Rock Park, the auto race course. Under separate departments in the town of Salisbury are the departments that deal with elder activities and the department that runs the Town Grove, which includes picnicking facilities, boating, swimming, et al.

The annual budget of the Salisbury Rec department is $86,736 (2006).

I suspect that over the state line in New York, the offerings are a bit skimpier.

One really needs to consider the competition -- and whether the church views the town Park and Rec department as competition or not, it very much is -- when one structures a church sports program. I'll say more about this process in future posts, but this is a good place to start.