PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. — 630 miles from their homes in Prince William County, the Snyder Bucks 16U baseball team took the field at the LakePoint Sports Complex in Emerson, Georgia just outside of Atlanta.
“Most of us were traveling about a nine-hour trip,” said Mike Lillard, whose 16-year-old son Weston can hit 90 mph on the radar gun.
Teams from D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia all made the trek for the 16U Prep Baseball Report National Championship in June, hoping to showcase their skills at one of the premier youth sports facilities in the country.
The long drive, all part of the price to play travel baseball.
“Generally speaking, travel baseball at this age group is somewhere in the neighborhood between $2,500 and $3,500.”
That’s per player. Per summer season. And that only covers coaches pay and tournament registration fees.
“You got your lodging,” Lillard continued. “You’ve got your meals down here.”
Then, there’s the travel. Over the course of the summer the Snyder Bucks traveled to tournaments in Richmond, Cincinnati, Boston in addition to LakePoint.
Just across that same baseball complex, the Prime Time Aces from Alexandria were logging their miles also.
“We started out in New Jersey-Philly,” said assistant coach Carson Pinkney.
“This is pretty much our second tournament down here in Atlanta,” added Cheryl Focht of Alexandria, who’s son Jeremy plays third base. “And then next weekend we will be in Richmond.”
“And then we go to Detroit,” Pinkney said.
“And then two weekends after that we go to New Jersey I think,” Focht said. “Or maybe that’s South Carolina? I’m not really sure. Its very hard to keep track of.”
According to Wintergreen Research, travel sports has become a $39 billion a year industry, and is expected to climb to $72 billion by 2029.
“And I think last year you know I probably spent about $15,000 just on travel ball,” said John Morris, a travel baseball parent from Louisville, Kentucky.
Morris’s team is one of 154 programs who traveled from across the country to play in the LakePoint tournament. Parents, cheering on their players, hoping they might just be good enough to earn an athletic scholarship. But it’s an expensive gamble.
NCAA rules limit schools to the equivalent of 11.7 Division 1 baseball scholarships a year. That tuition money is typically split up across an entire 40 player roster, meaning most D-1 baseball players end up with about 30% of their tuition paid for, although that number can be supplemented with academic scholarships too.
Division 2 is limited to nine baseball scholarships. Division 3 schools aren’t allowed to offer any athletic scholarship money at all. Statistics show just 7% of high school baseball players are good enough to make it to college ball.
But travel sports is a much safer play for LakePoint Sports, a sprawling campus that includes a baseball pavilion with eight major league size baseball fields, a 170,000 square-foot indoor basketball facility and a beach pavilion with 10 beach volleyball courts.
There’s even a wake park.
“We drive about a $100 million economic impact,” said Mark O’Brien President and CEO LakePoint Sports.
O’Brien pushes back against critics who say the travel sports industry has gotten so big it’s actually hurting youth sports in general by pushing out some kids.
“I’d say to the contrary to that,” O’Brien said. “I’d say travel and youth sports is a needed opportunity not only in our communities but in society that really brings families together. They are able to travel together. They are able to turn their travel trips into team vacations.”
“I think you're seeing some challenges in communities around the country with rec leagues and how rec leagues are managed or funded or executed, that there's a void,” O’Brien continued. “And so we're looking at how do we fill that void?”
But Jon Solomon, editorial director for the Aspen Institutes Sports and Society Program in Washington, D.C. said part of the problem is that so many families have left rec leagues for travel sports, the travel industry has helped create the void.
“You have fewer volunteers, you have less capacity, you have less resources and finances,” Solomon said.
Rec sports, or recreational sports, cost a fraction of travel sports and is all about participation, improved physical fitness. And just having fun. Not impressing college scouts.
“I understand people wanting to play travel sports, there's not necessarily anything wrong with that,” Solomon said. “But it has had a detrimental effect on the community-based leagues, there's just fewer options for kids to play.”
Solomon knows that that firsthand. His 14-year-old son Josh, a baseball fanatic, only has one rec league option in their hometown of Urbana, Maryland.
In fact, with the exception of Arlington, WUSA9 found nearly every city or county run parks and rec department in the D.C. Metropolitan area offered limited options at best for youth rec league sports.
Research from the Aspen Institute found nationwide, 3 of 10 youth sports parents said their child’s community sports program either closed, merged with another organization, or was reduced in size in recent years.
“It's hard to tamp down on capitalism once it gets rampant,” said Lillard, who hopes this is the summer his son gets a college scholarship offer after years of investing in his future through travel baseball.
“I don't like the expense,” Lillard said. “I wish we could do it for a lot less. It feels to me sometimes that we're boxing out families based on economics, and haven't quite figured out how to make that better.
Even as she cheers on her son Jeremy at Lake Point, Focht, who works as a pediatrician serving low low-income families, said something needs to change.
“No, my patients can’t do this,” Focht said. “And that is very much unfair.”
The most recent research from the Aspen Institute says things are improving. With the number of children playing community-based sports on the rise since in the last two years.
But the number of kids playing travel sports doubled in that same time period.
Lower cost options in the travel baseball world are rare, but they do exist, like the Blue Ridge Titans in Fauquier County. But that organization ends at age 14, meaning after that, even those parents have to dig deeper in their wallets, to keep their kids baseball dreams alive.