Soccer ROI on my DD

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

We've had two kids play a sport at different P4 colleges. The first kid was in a different sport (not soccer), used the sport to get into a high academic school that would otherwise not have been able to get into and got very little scholarship money.

This is a big benefit that people overlook.

Even if you don't get money, having a school and acceptance locked up by summer between junior and senior years while rest of the kids are applying to 15 schools and stressed about it all fall of senior year into spring...

I can't put a dollar figure on that as it means different things to different families but seeing friends with older kids deal with this (college admissions) and the stress... vs one where she committed and signed (softball) and did none of that... that sounds like a win to me.

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

I'm in LA. Raised a kid in soccer here. Helped start and run a club. Very familiar with the demographics and economics of youth soccer in SoCal.

My only point was that spending money on youth sports in order to optimize your kid's DI/NIL/pro payoff is not, to me, a healthy way to think about it--for you or your kid. You can't control where their athletic ceiling will be, injuries, or whether they'll always share your sports dream. But if you can find an affordable way for them to play soccer and see how far they want to take it, there are lots of great outcomes: from a national team to a college club team. As long as the game was a positive part of their development, that's a win.

Now, even if it's affordable, spending $18k a year on private coaching, a tournament in Spain, and a Real Madrid camp for a 10-year-old is not a choice I would (or did) make, but I wish you and yours the best.

This is 1000% correct.

I've mentioned it before but this shouldn't be thought of as a monetary ROI type of situation. Then it'll never make sense.

You're paying for your kid to do something he or she loves to do. You'd spend some of that money in something else anyway if they weren't doing club soccer. You're not saving 100% of what you're spending in youth soccer even if they quit soccer. They're going to get into some other hobby where it might even actually cost more than soccer...

In the end, if that gets them into a college where they would not have without soccer... or maybe even some scholarship money... or just a great life lessons along the way and great time with family on those game days and road trips... well then the "ROI" might be worth it.
(The trick is not to get FOMO and throw every available and unavailable resource at it thinking your kid is going to be a pro... they're not...)

If we are strictly trying to think about ROIs, lock your kids into a room and teach them to be AI scientist... Facebook was paying $100,000,000 signing bonuses for top AI researchers...