Benched: The Crisis in American Youth Sports and Its Cost to Our Future

Congress Finally Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Dec 18, 2025

They said it. In a congressional hearing room. On the record.

“Private equity is turning what was once an affordable public good into a profit extraction machine.”

Those aren’t my words. They’re from Katherine Van Dyke, testifying before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education. Under oath. Into the congressional record.

I’ve spent the last year documenting exactly this—how private equity has transformed youth sports from community asset to financial instrument, how they’ve monetized parental love, how they’ve built sophisticated data collection systems that treat childhood as a marketing opportunity. I’ve been called dramatic, hyperbolic, anti-business. I’ve fielded emails from coaches telling me I don’t understand how the industry works.

And now Congress is saying it too.

The hearing, titled “Benched: The Crisis in American Youth Sports and Its Cost to Our Future,” laid out numbers that should terrify every parent in America:

70% of children quit organized sports by age 13

EDITOR'S NOTE: The widely-cited "70% quit by age 13" statistic from the National Alliance for Youth Sports lacks robust documentation. Recent data tells a more nuanced story: high school sports participation hit an all-time record of 8.3 million in 2024-25. Kids aren't quitting sports entirely—they're transitioning from expensive club teams to school programs or shifting from regular to casual play. However, the core problem remains: regular participation among younger children (ages 6-12) has declined from 44.5% in 2008 to around 37% in 2023, and the income participation gap has widened to 20.2 percentage points. The industry's exploitation of families is well-documented, even if the specific "70% quit" figure oversimplifies the reality.

Average family spending: $1,000 - $3,000 per child (at least a 46% increase since 2019)
Youth sports industry revenue: $40 billion annually (more than the NFL)
Private equity firms: billions poured into acquiring clubs, facilities, leagues
Health consequences: 1 in 3 youth overweight or obese, $173 billion in annual medical costs
Screen time: 8 hours per day on average
Kids who benefit from sports: millions being priced out

The chairman called it a crisis. Multiple representatives used the word “monopoly.” They talked about “profit extraction” and “captive consumers” and “predatory tactics.”

It’s everything I’ve been writing about. Validated. Confirmed. Made official.

So why don’t I feel relieved?

What They Got Right

Let me be clear: I’m grateful this hearing happened. Getting Congress to pay attention to youth sports is no small feat. And some of what was said was exactly right.

On the extraction mechanism:

Van Dyke laid out the private equity playbook with precision. “First, a private equity firm acquires competitors through hundreds of small acquisitions. Next, it eliminates competition through vertical integration. So it controls the whole ecosystem. Finally, it extracts maximum profits from captive customers.”

That’s 3STEP. That’s LOVB. That’s exactly what I documented in “The Financial Engineering of Childhood” and “The LOVB Playbook.” She even used the same example I did—Varsity Brands monopolizing cheerleading “from bow to toe.”

On the false promise:

Multiple witnesses highlighted the scholarship lie. 83% of parents believe their child can earn an athletic scholarship. Only 2% actually do. And most don’t cover full tuition.

This is the core deception I exposed in “The $40 Billion Industry Built on Lying to Parents.” The entire system runs on this gap between aspiration and reality. Private equity didn’t create the lie, but they’ve perfected its monetization.

On the void they filled:

Representative after representative acknowledged that the 2008 financial crisis devastated parks and recreation budgets. COVID delivered another crushing blow. Community programs disappeared, and private equity filled the void.

This is the context I’ve been trying to provide. Private equity didn’t invade a healthy system. They colonized the ruins of one we already abandoned.

On the health crisis:

The statistics they cited—obesity rates, medical costs, screen time, mental health challenges—these are real. Youth sports participation matters. The decline has consequences.

This part, Congress got right.

What They Missed

But here’s what they didn’t say. What they couldn’t say. What would have required them to look beyond the surface-level symptoms to the deeper disease.

The data extraction machine:

Not a single representative mentioned what happens after sign-up. The comprehensive behavioral profiling. The AI-powered psychological manipulation. The sophisticated CRM systems designed to identify your family’s “customer lifetime value.”

In my article “After the Sign-Up,” I documented how organizations like 3STEP and LOVB don’t just collect registration information—they build detailed profiles tracking your payment patterns, your engagement metrics, your price sensitivity, your likelihood to upgrade. They use this data to optimize extraction at every touchpoint.

Congress talked about high prices. They didn’t talk about dynamic pricing algorithms designed to find your family’s breaking point.

The vertical integration flywheel:

Van Dyke mentioned vertical integration, but she didn’t trace its full implications. When Black Bear Sports owns the rinks, runs the leagues, controls the rankings, and serves as league commissioner, they’re not just eliminating competition. They’re creating a closed loop where every dollar you spend feeds the same machine.

LOVB took this further. They own youth clubs, run tournaments, operate a professional league, control the streaming platform, and sell merchandise. Your daughter doesn’t just play for LOVB—she watches LOVB, wears LOVB, dreams of becoming LOVB. Every level of her volleyball journey generates revenue for the same private equity investors.

This isn’t monopoly. It’s ecosystem capture.

The normalization of extraction:

Nobody asked why families have accepted this. Why parents look at $5,000 annual costs and think “that’s just what youth sports costs now.” Why we’ve collectively decided that childhood sports participation is a luxury good.

The answer is sophisticated psychological manipulation. Private equity firms have learned to reframe extraction as investment. They’ve convinced parents that saying no to elite training means failing their child. They’ve turned financial prudence into parental neglect.

I wrote about this in “The Parent Trap”—how the industry monetizes love by making it feel like betrayal to opt out.

The college recruiting industrial complex:

Representatives mentioned the scholarship lie, but they didn’t mention the entire recruiting evaluation ecosystem built to perpetuate it. The showcase tournaments. The ranking systems. The recruiting services. The skills camps where college coaches never actually show up.

These aren’t bugs in the system. They’re features. They generate billions while keeping the dream alive just long enough to extract maximum value.

The locally-owned alternative that already exists:

Congress talked about school programs and parks and rec like they’re the only alternatives to private equity. But they ignored an entire category that’s been doing this right all along: the small, locally-owned clubs that never sold out.

These clubs exist in every sport, in every community. The gymnastics studio that won’t expand beyond one location. The volleyball club that keeps total teams and rosters small because quality matters more than quantity. The baseball program run by the retired teacher who just loves the game and charges $300 for the whole season.

They’re not trying to be the next 3STEP acquisition target. They’re not building “pathways to college.” They’re just teaching kids to love their sport while keeping costs reasonable and maintaining real connections to their communities.

These clubs offer what families actually need—affordable, quality instruction from coaches who know every kid’s name, who encourage multi-sport participation, who measure success by retention not recruitment. They prove that youth sports can be both excellent and accessible.

But nobody in Congress mentioned them. Because they don’t make headlines, don’t attract venture capital, and don’t fit neatly into either the “public sector solution” or “private sector problem” narrative.

The coach capture problem:

And nobody mentioned what happens to local coaches when their independent club gets acquired. How they’re forced into scripted interactions, given quotas for athlete retention, required to push expensive add-ons. How the coaches who built volleyball communities brick by brick watch helplessly as their life’s work becomes a revenue optimization problem.

This is personal for me. I’ve watched coaches I respect either leave the sport entirely or stay and slowly die inside as every decision gets filtered through a corporate ROI calculation. I’ve watched small clubs that were doing everything right—affordable, community-focused, developmentally appropriate—get acquired and transformed into extraction machines within eighteen months.

The myth of reform:

Congress proposed solutions: more public funding for parks and rec, stronger antitrust enforcement, breaking up monopolies, banning vertical integration, eliminating forced arbitration.

All good. All necessary. All insufficient.

Because the problem isn’t just that private equity controls youth sports. The problem is that we’ve accepted their premise—that elite development requires elite systems, that early specialization is necessary, that only expensive programs can create skilled athletes.

The problem is we’ve forgotten how to let kids play.

The Deeper Pattern

Here’s what Congress couldn’t say, because it would require admitting complicity:

We created this.

Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But through a thousand small decisions over decades, we built the conditions that made private equity’s youth sports takeover inevitable.

We gutted public schools:

No Child Left Behind made test scores the only metric that mattered. States slashed PE programs. School sports became the first thing cut when budgets tightened. We created an entire generation of families who have no option but private leagues because their schools don’t offer sports.

Representative Bonamichi acknowledged this. “What happened… and I’m urging us not to go back to those days where we put test scores in a place of acting as a punitive tool... what happens when there’s too much emphasis on test scores is that all of the courses that are not tested are cut.”

But nobody proposed actually funding school PE programs. Nobody suggested that maybe, just maybe, we should reverse the very policies that created the void.

We accepted the college sports arms race:

We let college athletics become a multi-billion dollar industry built on unpaid labor. We let scholarships become so scarce and so partial that chasing them requires financial desperation. We created a system where the promise of college sports is just credible enough to extract maximum value from families.

The chairman asked witnesses not to propose college sports reform without considering the downstream effects on youth sports. But he didn’t ask: What if the entire college sports model is the problem?

We privatized childhood:

We built a society where children can’t play outside unsupervised. Where community spaces have been locked behind access codes. Where liability concerns mean no pick-up games, no neighborhood soccer in the street, no kids just... playing.

We created a generation of parents who literally don’t know what unstructured play looks like. So when private equity offers “structured development,” we think they’re providing value rather than monetizing our collective amnesia about what childhood used to be.

We chose efficiency over community:

We optimized everything. We consolidated schools. We eliminated neighborhood programs that served dozens to create elite programs that serve hundreds. We decided that excellence at the top mattered more than access for everyone.

Private equity just applied this same logic to sports. They’re not the disease. They’re the symptom.

What Congress Won’t Do

Let me be blunt about what’s going to happen after this hearing:

Not enough.

There will be some antitrust investigations. Maybe a few high-profile cases. Perhaps some legislation around vertical integration in youth sports. Possibly increased funding for parks and recreation programs.

All good things. All necessary. All insufficient.

Because the political will to actually fix this doesn’t exist. Representative Adams said it perfectly: “My worry is that this administration’s efforts to defund public schools and their protection of corporate interest all but guarantee that children’s extracurricular activities will be outsourced to private equity.”

She’s right. And Congress knows she’s right. And they’re going to vote for those defunding efforts anyway.

They won’t ban private equity from youth sports entirely. Too much political power. Too many donors. Too much “free market” ideology to overcome.

They won’t fund public alternatives at the scale needed. We’re talking billions in sustained investment. That’s not happening in this political environment.

They won’t challenge the college recruiting industrial complex. Too many jobs. Too many programs. Too many vested interests.

They won’t address the cultural normalization of extraction. Because that would require admitting that we’ve collectively lost our minds about youth sports.

So we’ll get some reforms. Some guardrails. Some limitations. And private equity will adapt. They always do.

The Questions Congress Didn’t Ask

Here are the questions I wish someone had asked:

To Van Dyke: You documented how private equity uses hundreds of small acquisitions to build monopolies. But what percentage of parents even know their local club has been acquired? How many still think they’re supporting a community organization when they’re actually feeding a private equity portfolio?

To the witnesses promoting community alternatives: If we build better public programs, how do we compete with organizations that have spent millions on branding, facilities, and creating the perception that they’re the only pathway to success? How do we fight sophisticated marketing with volunteer enthusiasm?

To everyone: Why is nobody talking about despecialization? About letting kids play multiple sports? About valuing participation over performance? About measuring success by how many kids still love their sport at 18 rather than how many make the pros?

To the chairman: You mentioned the Healthy People 2030 goal of 63% participation. But that goal assumes the current model can be fixed through better access. What if the current model is fundamentally broken? What if increasing participation in a broken system just creates more victims?

What Would Actually Work

Forget what’s politically feasible for a moment. Here’s what would actually address this crisis:

Ban private equity from youth sports entirely. Not regulate. Ban. No PE firm should own youth sports clubs, facilities, leagues, or tournaments. Period. If you want to invest in youth sports, it should be donation-only through nonprofit structures with transparent governance.

Protect locally-owned clubs from predatory acquisition. Create right-of-first-refusal laws that give communities the option to purchase local clubs before they can be sold to private equity. Offer tax incentives for clubs that remain locally owned and cap enrollment to maintain quality. Make it expensive to sell out and profitable to stay small.

Triple funding for school PE programs. Make them universal, daily, and staffed by qualified professionals. Not just for athletes. For all kids. Every day.

Mandate multi-sport participation through age 14. Make single-sport specialization before high school a liability issue. Let kids be kids.

Cap youth sports costs. $500 per child per year, maximum. Everything else—travel, tournaments, “elite” training—is optional. Base participation should be affordable.

Break up the vertical integration. You can own facilities OR run leagues OR control rankings OR serve as a governing body. Not all of them. Not even two of them.

Eliminate the scholarship recruitment model entirely. Make college sports truly amateur or make it professional. Stop the charade that lets exploitation hide behind amateurism.

Invest in free play infrastructure. Open fields. Neighborhood courts. Pick-up game facilitation. Places where kids can just play without registration, fees, or adult supervision.

Sue for consumer fraud. Every organization that promises a “pathway to college” without disclosing that only 2% of participants will receive any scholarship should face legal consequences.

Would this happen? No. Of course not.

But these are the interventions that would actually work. Everything else is just nibbling at the edges of a fundamentally extractive system.

The Real Cost

Here’s what’s heartbreaking about this hearing: Congress finally acknowledges the problem, but they still don’t understand the full cost.

It’s not just the kids being priced out. It’s not even just the health crisis or the debt or the family stress.

It’s the relationship between parents and children warped by pressure. It’s coaches forced to become salespeople. It’s communities fragmented by travel teams that pull kids away from neighborhood friendships. It’s the normalization of treating childhood as an investment portfolio.

It’s watching 12-year-olds burn out on sports they once loved because “elite development” means year-round, single-sport specialization under coaches who measure success in college commitments, not joy.

It’s parents who genuinely believe they’re failing their children if they can’t afford $10,000 per year in sports costs. Who take second jobs, drain college funds, go into debt—all to keep their kid in programs designed to extract exactly that desperation.

It’s the coaches I know who built beautiful local programs over decades, only to watch private equity buy their club, triple the prices, and transform community into commodity. Who either leave the sport they love or stay and watch their life’s work become a ROI calculation. Who watch the club they built with their own hands—where they knew every family, remembered every kid’s first serve, celebrated every small victory—become just another revenue unit in a private equity portfolio.

It’s watching those locally-owned clubs disappear one by one. The ones that charged reasonable fees, encouraged multi-sport participation, and measured success by how many kids still loved the sport at eighteen. They get acquired, rebranded, and transformed. Or they close because they can’t compete with corporate marketing and facility access. And with each one that goes, we lose not just a program but a model—proof that youth sports can be both excellent and accessible.

It’s the collective amnesia about what youth sports used to be. When kids played pick-up games until dark. When seasons lasted three months, not twelve. When parents dropped their kids off and actually left. When “travel team” meant the next town over, not tournament circuits across multiple states.

It’s the quiet acceptance that childhood itself has become a market segment.

That’s the real cost. And Congress can’t legislate that away.

Where We Go From Here

The hearing happened. The problem is official. Now what?

Here’s my take: Don’t wait for Congress. Don’t wait for regulations. Don’t wait for someone else to fix this.

Choose differently.

Find the local club that hasn’t sold out. They exist in every sport and every community. Look for these signs:

The owner-coach knows every kid’s name (and remembers their siblings who played five years ago)
They cap enrollment to maintain coaching quality, not to create artificial scarcity
They encourage multi-sport participation because they actually believe it’s what’s best for kids
They offer sliding-scale fees without making families beg or prove hardship
Growth isn’t the goal—serving their community is
They’re small on purpose
When you pay them, your money stays in your community

These clubs prove that excellent coaching and affordable access aren’t mutually exclusive. They’re not trying to build empires or create pathways to college. They’re teaching kids to love their sport while keeping it accessible. The volleyball club that charges $800 for the season instead of $8,000. The baseball program where the coaches coach because they love the game, not because it’s their job. The gymnastics studio that’s been in the same location for twenty years because they’re not interested in franchising.

They don’t have flashy facilities or sophisticated marketing. But they have something private equity can never buy: they actually care about the kids. And they’re not going anywhere—as long as we support them.

Support coaches who prioritize joy over results. Who measure success by retention, not recruitment. Who talk about development timelines in years, not months.

Ask questions before signing up anywhere:

Who owns this organization?
Where does my money go?
What percentage of your athletes receive college scholarships? (Demand real numbers)
Do you encourage or discourage multi-sport participation?
Can families who can’t afford full fees participate?

If they can’t answer these questions clearly, walk away.

Choose school programs over elite clubs when possible. Choose recreation over travel. Choose local over regional. Choose multiple sports over specialization.

Tell other parents about alternatives. Share this article. Forward it to your team chat. Post it in community groups. The only way we change this is by refusing to participate in the extraction system.

And to coaches: Keep fighting. Keep building programs that prioritize kids over profit. Keep knowing your athletes’ names. Keep measuring success by how many kids still love volleyball at 18, not how many make it to the next level.

The system wants you to believe you’re behind the times. That elite development requires corporate systems. That community programs can’t compete with private equity’s resources.

Ignore them. You have something they can never buy: You actually care about the kids.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Here’s what I haven’t said yet, what makes this whole thing even more complicated:

Some of the people running these private equity-backed organizations genuinely believe they’re helping kids. They think the elite training, the sophisticated facilities, the “pathway to college” rhetoric is actually creating opportunities.

They’re wrong. But they’re not villains.

The villain is a system that makes extraction look like opportunity. That makes profit-seeking indistinguishable from development. That turns childhood into a financial instrument while convincing everyone involved they’re doing what’s best for kids.

The villain is us. All of us. For accepting that this is just how things work now. For not asking harder questions. For not demanding better. For sacrificing our children’s joy at the altar of their hypothetical future success.

Congress had a hearing. They said the quiet part out loud. They acknowledged the extraction machine.

Now we need to actually dismantle it.

One Last Thing

I know some of you reading this work for private equity-backed organizations. You’re good coaches. You care about your athletes. You’re thinking: “But my club really does help kids. We really do create opportunities.”

I believe you. And I’m not asking you to quit your job.

I’m asking you to be honest about what you’re part of. About where the money goes. About what your organization optimizes for. About who gets left behind.

Because somewhere in your organization, someone is running numbers on customer acquisition cost and lifetime value. Someone is calculating pricing elasticity. Someone is designing marketing campaigns that target parental anxiety.

You didn’t create that system. But you’re part of it.

What are you going to do about it?

The Clubs That Never Sold Out

Before we talk about what parents should do, I want to celebrate something Congress completely ignored: the clubs that are already doing this right.

They exist in your community. I promise you they do.

The volleyball club that’s been run by the same two coaches for fifteen years. They field maybe six teams total. Their fees are $600 for the season—not $6,000. They practice twice a week, play local tournaments, and encourage every player to run track in the spring. They’re not a “feeder program” for anything. They’re just teaching girls to love volleyball.

The baseball program run by the retired high school coach who misses the game. He charges $250 for the whole season. He knows every kid’s name. He knows their parents’ names. He remembers coaching their older siblings. When a family can’t afford the fee, he finds a way. When his best pitcher wants to play football too, he helps coordinate the schedule.

The gymnastics studio that’s been in the same strip mall for twenty-three years. The owner could have expanded. Could have opened multiple locations. Could have sold to one of those private equity roll-ups that have bought up hundreds of gyms nationally. She said no. Because she knows every child who walks through her door. Because quality matters more than quantity. Because she measures success by how many kids still love gymnastics at sixteen, not by how many level-tens she produces.

These clubs aren’t romanticized nostalgia. They’re current reality. They’re proving every single day that youth sports can be both excellent and accessible. That good coaching doesn’t require corporate systems. That kids can develop real skills in environments that prioritize joy.

They’re not perfect. They don’t have the fanciest facilities. They can’t offer the sophisticated video analysis or the sports psychology consultants or the strength and conditioning programs. Their tournaments are local, not national showcases.

But here’s what they do have:

Coaches who chose this work because they love kids and love their sport
Fees that working families can actually afford
Real community connections where coaches see parents at the grocery store
Multi-sport encouragement because they’re not afraid of “losing players”
Sustainable models that don’t require constant growth
The freedom to make decisions based on what’s best for kids, not ROI calculations

And here’s the thing private equity doesn’t want you to know: These clubs develop athletes just as well as the expensive elite programs. Maybe better. Because kids who love their sport stick with it longer. Kids who play multiple sports develop better athleticism. Kids who aren’t burned out at fourteen have more years to develop. Kids who feel like humans instead of revenue units actually want to keep playing.

The scholarship statistics? About the same. The college placement rates? Comparable. The injury rates? Lower. The dropout rates? Lower. The debt load on families? A fraction.

These clubs are the proof that private equity’s entire premise is a lie. You don’t need their systems. You don’t need their pathways. You don’t need their extraction machine.

You need good coaching, affordable access, and environments where kids can play.

These locally-owned clubs provide exactly that. They’ve been doing it for decades. They’re doing it right now. And they’ll keep doing it—as long as we support them instead of the corporate alternatives.

So before you sign up for that flashy elite program with the college recruiting promises and the $5,000 fees, ask around. Find the local club. The one that’s been quietly developing players and building community for years. The one that doesn’t advertise because their reputation speaks for itself. The one where the coach still shows up to your kid’s high school games even though they aged out of the program three years ago.

They’re there. And they need you.

Because every family that chooses the local club over the private equity program is a vote for a different future. A vote for community over commodity. A vote for joy over extraction. A vote for what youth sports was supposed to be all along.

Support them. Celebrate them. Tell other families about them. Protect them from acquisition. Fight to keep them local.

Because when they’re gone—when the last locally-owned club finally sells to private equity because they can’t compete with corporate marketing and facility access—we’ll have nothing left but the extraction machine.

And our kids deserve better than that.

For Parents: What Now?

If you’re reading this and feeling overwhelmed, here’s what to actually do:

This week:

Have an honest conversation with your co-parent/partner about your family’s youth sports spending and stress level
Make a list of what your child actually enjoys about their sport (not what you hope it leads to)
Research local recreational leagues, school programs, AND locally-owned clubs in your area
Ask other parents: “Who runs the best program that doesn’t cost a fortune?”

This month:

Visit a practice at that local club everyone recommends but you’ve never checked out
Attend a game/practice and just watch your kid—are they having fun?
Talk to other parents about organizing community play opportunities
Ask the owner/coach of local clubs: “Who owns this program? Where does my money go?”
Read “The $40 Billion Industry Built on Lying to Parents” and share it with three other families

This year:

Consider stepping down from “elite” programs to recreational ones
Encourage your child to try a second sport
Support local coaches and clubs that prioritize community over competition
Vote for school board members who support robust PE programs
Advocate for parks and rec funding in your municipality

Your child doesn’t need private equity’s version of sports. They need a ball, friends, and the freedom to play.

That’s still possible. But only if we choose it.

Congress finally acknowledged what’s been happening. That’s step one.

Now comes the hard part: actually changing it.

Are you in?

This article builds on previous investigations into the private equity takeover of youth sports, including:

For the full congressional hearing transcript and witness testimonies, search “Benched: The Crisis in American Youth Sports” House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Resources:

Congressional Testimony:

Full hearing available through House Committee on Education and the Workforce
Katherine Van Dyke’s testimony: American Economic Liberties Project
Statistics cited from Aspen Institute Project Play 2024 report

Organizations Fighting for Change:

Project Play (Aspen Institute) - Data and advocacy
American Economic Liberties Project - Antitrust analysis
Changing the Game Project - Coach and parent education
Your local Parks and Recreation department
The locally-owned club in your community that you’ve never heard of because they don’t spend money on marketing

What Coaches Can Do:

Join or build networks of independent coaches
Share scholarship reality data with parents
Prioritize multi-sport participation
Keep programs accessible and affordable
Resist pressure to become salespeople
Stay local and independent—resist acquisition offers no matter how tempting
Connect with other local clubs to share resources and resist corporate consolidation

What Parents Can Do:

Question ownership before signing up
Demand transparent pricing and scholarship data
Choose community over corporate programs
Support school and rec league funding
Talk to other parents about alternatives
Actively seek out and support locally-owned clubs—ask around, they’re there
Share information about affordable alternatives in community groups
When you find a great local club, tell other families about it

The Bottom Line: Private equity turned youth sports into a profit extraction machine. Congress finally acknowledged it. Now we have to actually fix it—and that starts with individual families choosing differently.

Have you found a locally-owned club that’s doing youth sports right? Share it in the comments—other families need to know these alternatives exist.

Beyond the Drill

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?