The Pay-to-Play Childhood - (link to article)

Jamisfoes said:
Do they consider the parent’s income when scoring “real jobs”? If parents are making close to half a mil and the kid working at McDonald’s won’t make sense.
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No. They like that the kid is working at McDonald’s for the responsibility and experience. They’ll punish you if your dad is a lawyer and you go to his firm to work as an intern.

ps few teenagers work at McDonald’s at least in California…the minimum wage is too brutal and adults actually want to work there as a result…they don’t like to train people for summer only to lose them…they need people to be flexible in scheduling including school hours…the rules surrounding minors 16 and under are too limiting. There are a few fast food restaurants that still look at young hires like chick fillet. But the days of working at hot dog on a stick at the mall are over at least in Cali. If you can actually land a job at McDonald’s as a high schooler and keep it it’s actually pretty impressive now days.
 
Jamisfoes said:
A few Sunday league teams I looked into are charging a $120-150 monthly “training fee” and you have to pay even if you don’t plan on going to the training. That’s almost half the cost of the club.
The level of competition is a mixed bag. The really good teams are full of club players. You aren’t gonna find a really good player there that has fallen through the pay to play crack. If a kid is good, they are already playing club for free. However I find it interesting that some of these kids getting free rides are only playing for a club’s second or third team. Maybe someone can explain that to me.
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Coaches even in Sunday league like to win. They also like money as spare change. YMMV 🤷‍♀️
 
Grace T. said:
No. They like that the kid is working at McDonald’s for the responsibility and experience. They’ll punish you if your dad is a lawyer and you go to his firm to work as an intern.

ps few teenagers work at McDonald’s at least in California…the minimum wage is too brutal and adults actually want to work there as a result…they don’t like to train people for summer only to lose them…they need people to be flexible in scheduling including school hours…the rules surrounding minors 16 and under are too limiting. There are a few fast food restaurants that still look at young hires like chick fillet. But the days of working at hot dog on a stick at the mall are over at least in Cali. If you can actually land a job at McDonald’s as a high schooler and keep it it’s actually pretty impressive now days.
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My kid has a weekend morning job at a local mom and pop restaurant. He would not be able to do that if he was still playing club. Maybe he could have been a D3 recruit if he really tried but he is aiming for the top half of the UC's and he wants to have a college life experience. He and most of his friends are not aiming to attend most of the CSUs or community colleges where the recruits around my area seem to go to (and even those seem to be dwindling in numbers). We know one kid on ECNL, is a standout player, and has great academic stats so it will be interesting to see where he ends up. Since he is still playing and training, soccer takes up the majority of his time he has less total extracurriculars.
 
Jar!23 said:
My kid has a weekend morning job at a local mom and pop restaurant. He would not be able to do that if he was still playing club. Maybe he could have been a D3 recruit if he really tried but he is aiming for the top half of the UC's and he wants to have a college life experience. He and most of his friends are not aiming to attend most of the CSUs or community colleges where the recruits around my area seem to go to (and even those seem to be dwindling in numbers). We know one kid on ECNL, is a standout player, and has great academic stats so it will be interesting to see where he ends up. Since he is still playing and training, soccer takes up the majority of his time he has less total extracurriculars.
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If a rich kid works at McDonald’s just to look good for college application, how is that different from fake charities? Give the admission points to kids who actually need to work to help out his parents. I have a cousin who is a practicing neurosurgeon. He writes on his clinic’s website that he chose to become a doctor because he had to take care of his sick grandma. My grandma had never lived with his family. :) Too many try hards and liars in this world.
 
Jamisfoes said:
If a rich kid works at McDonald’s just to look good for college application, how is that different from fake charities? Give the admission points to kids who actually need to work to help out his parents. I have a cousin who is a practicing neurosurgeon. He writes on his clinic’s website that he chose to become a doctor because he had to take care of his sick grandma. My grandma had never lived with his family. :) Too many try hards and liars in this world.
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The difference is it's a real job you can get fired from it if you don't do well and show up on time, which given where the Zers are, it's what they are looking at. The fake charity is literally just that, a fake charity your parents throw money at or you organize your friends to do. the UCs, CalStates and Ivies do take hardship into account. In fact one of the UC prompts is the hardship prompt where you can complain about being poor, being discriminated against, being learning disabled, etc. But no one is going to sit there for an extracurricular on an application the reader spends 5 minutes on to try to figure out if the particular extracurricular was needed to make ends meet, get tuition money, buy a car, because your parents thought it would be good for you, or because you want it for your application. The assumption with the fake charities was, especially when the private schools began to mandate service hours, everyone was being forced to do it.
 
Jamisfoes said:
If a rich kid works at McDonald’s just to look good for college application, how is that different from fake charities? Give the admission points to kids who actually need to work to help out his parents. I have a cousin who is a practicing neurosurgeon. He writes on his clinic’s website that he chose to become a doctor because he had to take care of his sick grandma. My grandma had never lived with his family. :) Too many try hards and liars in this world.
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Well I don't give my kid an allowance, so the job is how he gets his spending money. I don't think most of the kids I know who work do it just to look good for college applications.
 
Grace T. said:
The assumption with the fake charities was, especially when the private schools began to mandate service hours, everyone was being forced to do it.
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It continued to spread much further than that. The public high school near us required a certain number of volunteer/service hours in order to graduate. Still, the hours threshold is probably lower than the assumed minimum when applying to a highly selective college.
 
High level soccer is a time drain. Close to 2.5 hrs a day, four days a week spent on going to practice/ conditioning. On game days 4 hours on warming up and actually playing the game.
I have already told my kid, if he is ever benched, I’m quitting soccer. When I’m quitting that means he is quitting.
 
Jamisfoes said:
High level soccer is a time drain. Close to 2.5 hrs a day, four days a week spent on going to practice/ conditioning. On game days 4 hours on warming up and actually playing the game.
I have already told my kid, if he is ever benched, I’m quitting soccer. When I’m quitting that means he is quitting.
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What are you going to do if your kid gets benched for a player whos parents bought the entire coaching staff new clown suits?
 
Jamisfoes said:
We will go dominate at AYSO extra.
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That stops being fun when the opponents arent very good. I get what youre saying but true talent wants to compete against players their level.

This is what leagues teams coaches clubs hide from other talented players. Play by their rules or dont play against other talented players. Its exploitation of a rare asset.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
That stops being fun when the opponents arent very good. I get what youre saying but true talent wants to compete against players their level.

This is what leagues teams coaches clubs hide from other talented players. Play by their rules or dont play against other talented players. It’s exploitation of a rare asset.
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What you are describing is the mentality of a champion. Seeing how happy my kid scores goals against AYSO core kids, I think he will be just fine playing Extra.
 
Jamisfoes said:
Do high school coaches care if you quit club after you had joined the high school team? Let’s say my kid made the team as an ecnl player freshman year and then he quit ecnl to get a job at Macdonald.
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Id say it depends on if the high school coach also coaches for whichever club your kid used to play at. If they dont then it probabaly doesnt matter.

The problem with soccer is college coaches typically arent recruiting players that just play in high school. But that doesnt mean you cant attend college id camps and get noticed that way.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
The problem with soccer is college coaches typically arent recruiting players that just play in high school. But that doesnt mean you cant attend college id camps and get noticed that way.
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100%. My child was banned by the US Soccer Federations own pay to play soccer league because she wanted to play with her friends and community in high school. The Feds League and most college coaches said girls were not allowed to play High School Soccer and that all girls would have to kneel for a race, support and 100% agree in solitude that a man can be a lady or you will be banned and you must take all vaccines or no invite to precious camp or full ride in college to better one's life. Good luck everyone🙏
 
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Jamisfoes said:
Do high school coaches care if you quit club after you had joined the high school team? Let’s say my kid made the team as an ecnl player freshman year and then he quit ecnl to get a job at Macdonald.
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Ayso extras stops in most regions (that still even have them…some don’t want to dedicate volunteer hours like refs and admins to it) at around 12 (the economic problem is that the parents in extras which is just a handful of teams isn’t enough to staff the volunteers required). Ayso has an alliance program that’s intended to replace United that will play coast in SoCal but it’s unclear right now how that’s going to work.

The issue with the ecnl player that gets to freshman year and then quits depends also on how much of a skills degrade happens. The high school season is short. There aren’t very many practices. If the players program isn’t very competitive (meaning there are ea or SoCal players on the team on boys side), if the player is a private school player and does fall intramural or Latino league (ayso is not a convenient option at this age), or if the player is self motivated about their conditioning and supplements with private training, they might be ok. Otherwise they’ll get lapped by players that are just working harder at it.
 
Grace T. said:
Ayso extras stops in most regions (that still even have them…some don’t want to dedicate volunteer hours like refs and admins to it) at around 12 (the economic problem is that the parents in extras which is just a handful of teams isn’t enough to staff the volunteers required). Ayso has an alliance program that’s intended to replace United that will play coast in SoCal but it’s unclear right now how that’s going to work.

The issue with the ecnl player that gets to freshman year and then quits depends also on how much of a skills degrade happens. The high school season is short. There aren’t very many practices. If the players program isn’t very competitive (meaning there are ea or SoCal players on the team on boys side), if the player is a private school player and does fall intramural or Latino league (ayso is not a convenient option at this age), or if the player is self motivated about their conditioning and supplements with private training, they might be ok. Otherwise they’ll get lapped by players that are just working harder at it.
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Good point on the conditioning concern. Maybe track and field in spring and cross country in fall will help. But again maybe none of these so he can focus on academics and other passion projects.
It’s a little sad that I’m thinking about an exit strategy. My son’s self identify is wrapped around being a soccer player in a top league. It wont be easy to quit when that time comes.
How does college admission score being on an average ecnl/ pay to play MLS next HD team vs working at McDonald’s?
 
Jamisfoes said:
Good point on the conditioning concern. Maybe track and field in spring and cross country in fall will help. But again maybe none of these so he can focus on academics and other passion projects.
It’s a little sad that I’m thinking about an exit strategy. My son’s self identify is wrapped around being a soccer player in a top league. It wont be easy to quit when that time comes.
How does college admission score being on an average ecnl/ pay to play MLS next HD team vs working at McDonald’s?
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Different admissions officers and colleges will score differently. But for sake of argument on a 1 to 5 scale 1 being lowest and 5 being highest, on academic not athletic route, being on an average mlsn hd team/doesnt do high school or mlsn championships and not captain 2 (captain or champion team 2+ or 3-). Working at McDonald’s for a long time and getting an asst manager slot or employee of month is very impressive. 4+ (again McDonald’s is near impossible for high school kid…working Saturday morning at your local diner 3+, camp counselor 2+, your dads office or babysitting 2-) Playing high school varsity team and making captain and all cif 3 (player of the year 3+). Ayso rec 1. Intramural soccer club 1. Founding the intramural soccer club. 2+. That’s for the one activity. Rest also get scored, some strictly some loosely. There are Instagram videos of admin officers doing this scoring activities. On 1-5 scale they tend to cluster around 3.
 
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Macdonalds managers make 50-80k

Macdonalds franchise owners make 150-450k

You need to work around 20 years as a manager before McDonald's will consider you for a franchise owner. Which you'll need to buy into so the 150-450k amount for franchise owners is subjective. But if you can work your butt off for 20-30 years and probably even after that your kids and grandkids will likely be set.
 
Jamisfoes said:
Do high school coaches care if you quit club after you had joined the high school team? Let’s say my kid made the team as an ecnl player freshman year and then he quit ecnl to get a job at Macdonald.
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You might be able to get a good idea about the caliber of players at your target high school by looking at the high school's roster and doing some digging on social media. Looks like ECNL has rosters on their website, don't know about MLSN. It probably is very school dependent. On my kid's HS team, only 2 or 3 kids were still playing club (usually ECNL) by their junior year, the ones trying to be recruited athletes. If the coach wanted only club players, he wouldn't have a team. I know that there is a goalie a year up that didn't play HS at all, stayed with a pay to play MLSN club and went D1.
 
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