‘Can’t do it’: Jake, Spike weigh in on skyrocketing costs of youth athletics

Families have recently raised concerns about the high cost of youth sports, with one family sharing that they spend roughly $16,000 a year on their son’s baseball team.

Jake Skorheim and Spike O’Neill, co-hosts of “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio, both noted that it’s tough to gauge whether a child is cut out for the next level or not, but also claimed the “investment” aspect has gone too far.

“You get to the point where you’ve got to make the decision. It’s about choice. Do you invest in your kids? If he’s obviously got the talent to qualify for a select team, a travel team,” Spike said. “I was never a college football player type of athlete, and I knew it. My folks didn’t invest in camps and nutritionists. We got to travel a couple of times, but that’s it.”

The price of chasing an athletic scholarship

Spike also retold a story about his niece, an Olympic-level swimmer who is looking for full college scholarships. The one caveat is that each competitive-level swimsuit costs nearly $800 and lasts only about three weeks before it negatively affects a swimmer’s time and performance.

While one family made the choice to invest in their child to play competitive baseball, many other families may not be able to afford the thousands of dollars in equipment needed to even put a kid on the path to competing in professional athletics.

“I can’t do it. He’s going to have to work out really hard in the backyard by himself,” Jake said. “There are ways that you can help them build their athletic skills, and not have to spend all day, every day of the weekend, every weekend, and every dollar.”

Jake noted that, at the end of the day, some kids are gifted with talents they can naturally build on, while others trail far behind, trying to prop them up with large expenses that end up nowhere.

“I feel bad because, especially when you’re that age, if you have so much intensity following you around from your parents, you might actually think to yourself that you have a future in professional sports,” Jake said. “There is a thing in professional sports where some kids have it, and some kids don’t. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on them.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.