I started off by reading about youth sports and how there should be more of a push to have a greater amount of coed teams. Today I wanted to broaden my scope a little bit to see the full scale importance of youth sports and on how many levels it could change our society. I read an article from NBC titled "Lower-income students getting shut out of sports" by Kelly Holland. http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/lower-income-students-getting-shut-out-sports-n164941. It was a pretty short article that was straight to the point but I think that I could use this topic to come up with a cohesive argument about youth sports. In the article it talked about a father whose daughter played on an elite soccer club in Florida. That season they spent a little over $18,000 dollars on that team, including the many tournaments she had to attend. A lower class family would have no way of supporting a child that was fit to go through one of these programs. As the youth sports industry gets more and more popular the prices for getting to play keep rising. Of course the state budget cuts for schools and districts forces the sports teams to make pay-to-play a reality for almost all teams, the author proves that there are side effects that we don't clearly link together. Sports keep students busy, they keep them out of trouble, and create a somewhat stable environment for a student to exist in. This is key for kids who come from less than favorable situations. Kids who live in rough neighborhoods will be at a higher risk for dropping out of school and getting into trouble with the law because they cannot afford to play sports. What many inner city programs are trying to solve is obesity. Kids who come from lower class families can't afford to play on the organized sports teams so often times they don't end up getting enough exercise. In either scenario the kids are becoming a burden on society and it prevents them from doing well in school and from being a healthy human being. In the article Holland sites data that says that girls who play sports in high school in inner city areas are more likely to not get pregnant and stay in school.
I think that I could make an argument using the two elements of youth sports that I have found and create a paper that shows the benefits of organized team playing from a young age.
I wouldn't worry too much yet about forming a coherent argument for a paper you don't have to write for months and will have to read a couple of books and a lot more articles about... But this is interesting stuff. I am worried about the cost of all this. I was upset when BHS starting making kids pay to play (do they still do that?).
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