Pay-to-play sports keeping some kids on the sidelines

Implications

School sports offer children an opportunity to improve their physical fitness, develop teamwork and problem-solving skills, enhance their self-confidence, and establish a meaningful connection with their school. These results from the National Poll on Children’s Health indicate that the high cost of school sports is limiting children’s opportunities to reap these benefits.

This poll found that middle and high school students from households earning <$60,000/year participate in school sports at substantially lower rates than their higher-income peers – a disparity consistent with our previous National Poll on Children’s Health (May 2012). In fact, sports participation among lower-income students decreased by 10% from our 2012 report. The impact of cost is further seen in the 15% of lower-income parents who reported that they decreased their child’s sports participation, such as limiting the number of sports played.

Many school districts work to minimize the decrease in participation by offering fee waivers for students in low-income families. In this poll, waivers for sports participation fees were received by 12% of lower-income sports participants – certainly helpful to those families, but still not enough to offset the participation declines among lower-income students.

Of note, nearly 10% of parents from higher-earning households (>$60,000 per year) reported a decrease in sports participation due to cost – nearly double the rate found in 2012. Moreover, only 3% of this group received a waiver for participation fees. This presents a challenge to schools that base participation fee waivers on eligibility for income-based programs (e.g., Medicaid, free or reduced lunch), which may exclude working families who earn too much for program eligibility but not enough to afford the additional cost of sports fees.

A unique finding from this Poll is among parents whose children did not participate in school sports during the 2013-14 school year, 1 in 7 cited cost as the reason for discontinuing sports. Many school athletic administrators struggle to balance the reality of budget constraints – and the push to charge participation fees – with the risk of losing students from the athletic program. This poll documents that the risk is very real.

Sports participation fees can create the expectation that a student is guaranteed a certain amount of playing time, particularly at the high school level; this is suggested by the common term “pay-to-play” fee.  As fees increase, parents may have increased expectations about playing time; both coaches and athletic administrators must be prepared to address these concerns.

The key message is that schools should continue to work to minimize the negative impact of sports participation fees by communicating the rationale for participation fees, ensuring that low-income families are aware of waiver options, and developing options for children who do not meet waiver criteria but are at risk of dropping out of sports.