No
Quote Originally Posted by Johnson85 View Post
Still lots of business owners that would love to hire somebody that will regularly show up for work for $12 an hour, even if it's just for the summer. And something like 30% of teenages still work. Even if 8-5 is not the norm, I would assume a lot of those jobs cross over some time between 8am and 11am. Looking back, I will say most jobs my friends worked were probably either early in and early out or late in and still out by 6, but late would have been more like 10am, not 1pm.


Working part time in high school seems more like kids being kids than playing travel sports year round. It was fun working and then going out and having a little money to spend. I enjoyed playing sports but would not have wanted to spend every weekend driving and playing baseball in a different place but not really getting to enjoy it. And again, working is probably going to help them develop more than having a set time to do workouts or collecting a few dozen plastic "championship" rings. For the really affluent families, sure, do whatever. But if you aren't financially independent, why not have your kids work 15-20 hours a week and have their own spending money? When I was in high school, I would not have felt good about not working at all in the summer knowing that my parents were somewhat stressed about money. Surely a lot of these high school players are in the same position.

Not exactly related to the question about football, but I see families spending the equivalent of college tuition on travel ball and private lessons when they probably don't even have paid for cars. I think if I were their kids I'd probably rather have college paid for than spend 15 different weekends in the comfort inn on whatever interstate exchange is closest to the ball fields that particular weekend.
I just was raised differently. My “summer job” was playing baseball. We played about 60 games in the summer of legion ball. And that’s in the mid-80’s. I was not allowed to work until the summer after I graduated HS. It paid off as my 1st 2 years of college were free thanks to my ACT score and a baseball scholly.