BY MATT STOUT
It’s a Sunday afternoon in late January, and Colleen and Bob Nagri plan to eventually settle in for the night to catch the New England Patriots’ playoff showdown with the Indianapolis Colts.
Their Dodge Durango – its back windshield plastered with eight metallic silhouettes of different athletes, representing the sports their children, 10-year-old Alex and 9-year-old Kyle, play – sits idle for the moment. Soon, they’ll drive Alex to her soccer practice, and hopefully make it back in time for kickoff.
Tomorrow, she’ll have a lacrosse clinic to attend, while Colleen plays in her Monday night women’s soccer league. In the days to follow, Kyle will run from a travel hockey practice to one for basketball – recreation or travel, take your pick. Alex will also train with her basketball team, and if Bob hadn’t blown out the same knee twice years earlier, he’d have a men’s league basketball game to look forward to. Then it’s games the following weekend.
But it’s not too bad. It’s winter – “kind of that offseason,” Colleen said – and the typically busy week comes after what Bob called a “light weekend” of four practices and three games.
Of course, it didn’t compare to a weekend earlier in the season when Kyle and Alex, between two jamboree soccer tournaments, two basketball games and two hockey games, combined for 10 contests – on a Saturday.
“Half our friends think we’re nuts,” Bob said, referring to the Salem family’s demanding sports schedule, mapped out event-by-event in an oversized day planner. “And the other half is doing the same things.”
With the growth of options and demand in youth sports, the Nagris’ story isn’t uncommon.
At a national and local level, single-sport youth athletes have become more uncommon; neighborhood and regional organizations, better organized than ever before, are accommodating more and more kids; the attraction of higher levels of play, such as those offered by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), has intensified.
From the popularity of events such as the Little League World Series to the growing sums of money families pay to play, there’s no denying youth sports have become a different beast than 15, 10 or even five years ago.
How some of these families juggle it all can be an art in itself. Why they do it can be as abstract.
Youth sports, parents and coaches assert, keep kids active, teach them life lessons of succeeding and failing, and, for a select few, provide an avenue to bigger and better opportunities. For some, it’s fueled by competitive drive; for others, it’s a way to meet and be with friends.
“But other than that, I don’t know why,” said John Riehl, president of Goffstown Junior Baseball and father of 14-year-old Matt and 10-year-old Timmy, who play sports year-round. “I think we’re all crazy.”
‘The Life’
For Marianne and Todd Philbrick, the introduction to youth sports – or “The Life” as Marianne called it – started when now 13-year-old daughter Ellie signed up for cheerleading at 7. It began with five practices a week in August, three to four during the fall season, before her schedule ballooned with intensive lessons at the Bedford Dance Center.
Then Ben, now 12, started playing sports. He tried baseball and currently plays for the AAU’s Black Flies. He also enjoyed hockey and competes for a travel team out of the Manchester Regional Youth Hockey Association. Along the way, he picked up football, lacrosse and basketball.
Next, 9-year-old Rachel found soccer and gets her kicks playing for the Bedford-based New Hampshire Classics, in addition to taking dance lessons.
“It was more like it kind of crept in our day-to-day living,” said Marianne, a Bedford resident. “In the beginning you stay through every practice. You just stay and watch. And then you can’t because child No. 2 has their own stuff, and you have to bring them there. And then two years later, child No. 3 comes along. And before you know it, they’re all in elementary school with a hugely busy schedule.”
The Philbricks are not alone. Desiree Casey, also of Bedford, said between her three children – 12-year-old Ryan, 10-year-old Andrew and 6-year-old Carly – the family covers six sports in football, hockey, lacrosse, softball, swimming and tennis. She didn’t include skiing and snowboarding.
Scott Sprague of Hooksett has two boys – Austin, 11, and Devon, 9. Each plays travel soccer, travel hockey and baseball.
“I think Easter Sunday was the first day in over a year that neither of my kids got out of their PJs,” Sprague said. “It hasn’t happened much, but they got up and Devon goes, ‘What do I have for sports today, Dad?’ I go, ‘You have nothing.’ And he says, ‘What? I don’t have any games or anything? Oh man.’”
As a result, families like the Philbricks, Caseys and Spragues have helped spark some interesting phenomena.
One has been pure growth at the local level. Organizations such as the Hopkinton Youth Sports Association feature roughly 300 kids in baseball, 200 in soccer and 200 more in basketball, all kindergartners to eighth-graders, said president Darren Winslow.
Though there aren’t exact numbers on how many of those kids play multiple sports, that’s 700 registered athletes from a town of 1,544 households, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.
Salem girls softball is another example. Based in what’s always been considered a “softball town,” said president Ann Gubellini, the organization shifted from Little League to Babe Ruth last summer, added several travel teams and saw registration swell from 360 to 440 girls.
The attraction of playing for those travel teams in Amateur Softball Association (ASA) tournaments was a huge draw, Gubellini said, as the opportunities in the sport, from facilities to available leagues, have grown.
“In this area,” she said, “it’s just spun out of control.”
That’s at the local level. Mix in travel teams, and schedules become more hectic.
The juggle
When sports overlap, which parents agree happens most often in October between fall and winter sports and March or April between winter and spring, conflicts arise and the multi-sport athletes are left with decisions.
The general rule is, Marianne Philbrick said, when two events conflict on the schedule, her family and others she knows tend to stay loyal to the sport concluding at the time. When an early April hockey playoff series interferes with a baseball tournament, hockey comes first.
Some coaches are more flexible than others.
“In lacrosse, they (the coaches) said, ‘If you’re trying out, we expect that lacrosse is your primary sport,’” said Desiree Casey of Bedford. “Andrew made the decision that he wanted to try out and that he didn’t want to play baseball. And that’s OK with him. At least the expectations were up front.”
As children get older and the competition become more serious, different choices have to be made – which sports stay and which go.
Marianne Philbrick said her son, Ben, has experienced that, giving up lacrosse and basketball when his AAU baseball commitments became too much at age 10.
Bob and Colleen Nagri of Salem said the same thing about their daughter, Alex, who stopped participating in gymnastics when that clogged her growing schedule.
These decisions are nothing new. Children needing to choose at an earlier age, however, is a recent trend.
“And I’m kind of torn on that, and I think a lot of other coaches are, too,” said Bill Gahara, president of the Hooksett Youth Athletic Association. “But it seems once they become 12 or 13 years old, kids are starting to specialize and are starting to play that one sport year-round.”
That, in turn, has led to even more changes.
The next step
At 12, Jay Yennaco, a Red Sox third-round draft pick in 1995, played 15 games of Little League baseball and a handful more for his town’s all-star team in 1988. He had at his disposal private instructors – perhaps a parent who used to pitch or a high school coach who worked with talented youngsters.
Baseball was the Windham native’s primary sport, and these were his options less than 20 years ago.
“Today, if I was 12 years old, I can play a 70-game AAU schedule. Today, private instruction is run by college coaches, past professional players or at minimum, college players. It’s really an expertise,” said Yennaco, who offers private lessons mainly to high school and college-age players but has had parents of youth players approach him.
“I’ve worked with 7-, 8-year-olds,” he continued. “But I think there are parents out there who would have a 4-year-old come, although I necessarily wouldn’t encourage it.”
Yet, that is the reality for families whose children have chosen to take their athletic abilities to the next level.
With individualized lessons on the rise and more chances to play on a regional or national stage, many families willingly devote the extra time and money, and do so far more than they used to.
Ed Skovron, president of the New England AAU office, said the organization was home to 15,000 regional members when he took over roughly six years ago.
Now, with the addition of more sports like lacrosse and diving, New England AAU features roughly 25,000 members, Skovron said.
The biggest growth among the more established sports has come in baseball, up to 4,000 from 2,500 four years ago, he said.
“That’s what’s happened – kids that have that type of ability, the parents want to see the maximum ability that they have,” said Skovron, who’s been involved with AAU since 1990.
Today, Skovron agreed, families are more concerned with realizing their young athlete’s potential.
“Absolutely,” he said. “All you need to do (to understand why) is go down to Disney World when
they run the (AAU national championships) down there, and you’ll see 375 Division I coaches watching kids there play basketball.”
The draw of earning a college scholarship is strong for many talented athletes, but not every AAU athlete is after that.
“I think you have to play AAU basketball if you want to make the school team or to continue to play,” said Chrissy Sylvain, a Weare native who started the Weare Lady Generals 14-and-under AAU girls basketball team this year. “Even if you want to play (junior varsity), you have to play AAU. If you don’t play, you’re really behind everyone else.”
That’s where many coaches and parents feel youth sports have moved. And it’s not cheap.
Marianne Philbrick, for example, said her family pays $1,500 for Ben to play AAU baseball with the Black Flies.Yennaco, who also serves as the Nashua Pride’s pitching coach, said private instruction for baseball players, depending on the instructor, can run from $30 to $45 for a 30-minute lesson and $55 to $75 for an hour.
Rob Day, goalie coach for the Hooksett-based New Hampshire Jr. Monarchs and co-founder of Puckstoppers goaltending, said private instruction in his field can range from $80 to $100 per hour and, in some cases, up to $300 per hour.
He also estimates there are eight to 10 legitimate goaltending instructors in New Hampshire alone.
“The day of the three-sport guy is pretty much gone,” said Day, who has 139 athletes in his database and added 65 in the last two years. He said he’s worked with some as young as 8. “The bar has been raised quite a bit. There are more opportunities for kids, but everybody’s always looking for that little edge.”
The sacrifice
When Bob Nagri drives through his neighborhood, he sees driveway basketball hoops and hockey nets. Much like in his home, he knows there are buckets of balls and sticks in neighboring garages and basements.
Rarely does he see kids playing with them.
“When I was a kid, we’d rush home, get our homework done and get out there playing as a group until the lights went out,” Nagri said. “Now, they do their homework, and they have a half an hour before they have to be at practice.”
It’s just another subtle change in the landscape of youth sports. The costs, which several families estimated were $5,000 to $15,000 annually, stand out.
The miles do, too. Scott Sprague and his wife, Lisa, whose two sons play travel hockey, bought a sedan a year and a half ago for better gas mileage on tournament trips to Canada. The car, new then, now has 36,000 miles on it.
Steve and Kelly Kirkpatrick, Bedford residents with four boys who play year-round sports, have two minivans to make the travel easier.
But maybe it’s the small changes – fewer family dinners, lazy Saturday afternoons that are no more, extinction of family vacations taken on a whim – that stand out most.
“Family life in general has changed,” said Steve Kirkpatrick. “It’s more accepted that parents take their kids one direction or another a lot of different nights, and they give up family dinners and stuff like that.”
In the end, these are changes they embrace.
“My life is around my kids,” said Colleen Nagri. “So if they want to do it, I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen.”