This is for everyone here and not only for the person I responded too.
You folks use figures that are way low if you have a serious player.
Our experience: My daughter started playing travel at U8 in Michigan. She played there through U11 and considering all fees, travel, wear and tear on the car/SUV, lost vacation, etc I budgeted $10,000 per year and easily spent all of that each year. U11 I spent almost $13,000. Moved to Nevada and had the benefit of a lot of tournaments in town. Still, out west every trip is a plane ride. Playing at the top level with ODP, training, club fees, auto, etc and it was still $10,000 year for U12 and $12,400 for U13. Moved to Charlotte area/ live in SC at U14 and spent $8,600. Played ECNL in U15 and spent $14,200. Disney is at least $3000 for no other reason than you have to take everybody in the house. Skipped U16 age group and played her grade with U17 and spent $11,400 so far this year. You guys need to remember that driving 1000 miles at .52 a mile adds up real quickly. Drive 10,000 miles and that is $5200 right there. Some people play games with this but I have done the math on numerous cars we have owned and it is a very good number. But when you trade in or sell the the $30,000 car with 100,000 miles on it that is 4 years old for $3,000, that is what $6700 year?
I also pay for High School with property taxes, vehicle taxes, and sales taxes to the tune of approximately $5500 per year. All four colleges that my daughter wants to attend are at the ECNL/showcase event, and none at a preseason HS event. Pretty easy to figure out which one to go to, because you pay to go to ECNL/showcase events whether you go and play or stay home. I realize that many of you are very attached to HS sports, but the reality is for the level of player we are talking about is HS has nothing to offer the top players but fun and hopefully an injury free season. What you want is the bragging rights of a victory for your own purposes at the expense of what is best for the player with 10 years of hard work. For HS coaches to punish kids for making this decision is the dumbest most selfish idiotic thing I have ever heard of.
ECNL is expanding and the clubs are going to keep the teams so busy that the players discussed here will not have the choice much to play both, and it will be the HS teams that will lose this level of player. So this issue will be solved for you in the near future.
