In the Beginning
It was late October, 2008 in Oakland, California, -the Oakland Athletics just finished another frustrating season with a strong starting pitching staff and a not so great offense to support them and my four year old daughter Mia and I were watching the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series when she turned to me and said she wanted to play baseball.
While I can’t say I was entirely surprised, I had bought her a Dora the Explorer cardboard baseball bat and baseballs when she was three—–what really won her over was seeing her first Athletics game at the Oakland Coliseum -the food, the atmosphere, my intense focus and excitement about what was happening on the field. In retrospect, even at four, she had made a calculation to become part of something that was so important to her father
So, the next day, she and I went out into the street in front of our house, and we played our first game of catch -and soon it became a regular experience where father and daughter would go out into the street and throw.
Where Are the Kids
But being busy with work commitments after two weeks and hoping to offload this new commitment to someone else, I turned to Mia and said – “You know Mia -it takes 17 other people to play this game—–where are your friends? Mia looked at me with surprise and then quickly retorted— “Dad-there are no kids who play outside on the street”
And while I had no reason to doubt her, -I replied – “That can’t be right—since that was not the case when I grew up.
But her comment resonated with me because my experience of playing sports was on the streets, side lots and backyards with neighborhood kids ———and that was not what I was observing in 2008. Even though I knew there were a lot of preschool and school age kids in our neighborhood , I would only see children playing at parks when a parent was nearby a swing set or jungle gym or several parent/coaches instructing 12 to 15 children about how to play a sport.
After several weeks of trying to find kids to play baseball with my daughter, I realized that something had changed in our U.S. culture since I had grown up that changed how kids play
The realization was that the most parents in my East Bay neighborhood (and as I later learned throughout the U.S.) assessment of children’s risk and safety has changed dramatically over the generation and half since I grew up from no significant adult supervision during play (unless we burned a house down or murdered someone) to one that now required parent presence in almost every aspect of childhood play under the age of 14.
Sports Leagues
Soon after that realization, when I would attend an occasional pre-school pot luck or recital, I would talk to parents about sports and play —and they would all shrug and say -they hadn’t really thought about it until I met a father with sons who explained to me “Look Mike if you want your kids to play sports they need to join a league” and while I had played occasionally in sports leagues when I was younger –I asked him to explain to me what a league was—-so he explained—“Mike-it’s a parent run volunteer organization, that forms team, schedules games and fields and insures that play”.
In other words, what he was really saying that sports play had migrated from the streets, side lots and backyards that I played on to highly structured, parent run sports leagues where parents had the assurance that their child would be supervised by an adult while they were playing.
So, I signed Mia up for a sports league and I volunteered to coach to support my daughter knowing this was primarily a male sport. The league was El Cerrito Youth Baseball (ECYB)
El Cerrito Youth Baseball
If Hollywood were to produce a film about American baseball tradition –the opening day of El Cerrito Youth Baseball would be the first place I would recommend that they go to film a U.S. youth baseball opening day.
The El Cerrito High School Marching Band would lead a parade of players from ages 4-14 to march from the High School to the Cerrito Vista field where all the players were introduced and cheered by their families and friends -speeches by the El Cerrito Mayor culminating in feast of Hot Dogs, Soda and Chips and a lot of hellos and how are you’s between parents, sons, daughters and friends .
Unless you were Baseball Scrooge, the opening day experience was so positive it was like baseball rocket fuel launching the kids and families enthusiastically into the baseball season and the anticipation of fun for that coming season was palpable.
And initially, it was very fun- seeing a 4 year old alternate between intense focus and picking daisies in the outfield -seeing their joy of running down first base (sometimes to third base) when they got a hit off a batting tee with a bat that was way too big for them or having a tug of war to pick up the ball that haphazardly rolled toward them.
Let’s Get Serious
But by the second year, the joy of playing baseball, getting a uniform and playing with your friends seemed to quickly transform from everybody plays into a highly structured play experience with drills, waiting your turn and asking the kids to keep it down with three parents supervising a practice-and worst of all rationing play time for games to only some of the players.
My assessment of the play experience that it wasn’t really playing baseball but a baseball class –not unlike what kids experience in school six hours each day and very quickly baseball playtime was becoming just another school like ritual with all the dogma that goes along with it.
As part of the parent /coaches, I initially went along with it -because I thought to myself –“ I guess they know better than I do” but I was shocked out of that mindset when by beginning of the third year -we lost about 1/3 of the kids who had previously participated in the league in the first two years and that pattern continued for the remaining 7 years that I coached.
Gone Forever
Since there is no other place to play other than a league, when a child leaves the league – they have not only given up the sport for that year but have effectively given it up for life
When I was growing up, if one of my friends announced they had given up baseball for life, I would have thought he was crazy. And while we did get bored with baseball as the seasons turned, we would play something else that would interest us like basketball or football or building a fort which again eventually bored us and baseball would seem fresh and interesting again.
But that’s not possible today-since kids’ outdoor play is only parent structured play
6 and 7 Year Olds Are More Rational than Their Coaches
After the major drop off at the beginning of the third year, I asked the kids who I previously coached why they left the league and almost uniformly the response was “Coach Mike –it’s just not that fun”. And while the response was informative -it was not enlightening-so I asked their parents the same question and the parents really laid into me.
Their response when to something like this –“Mike, you are asking my son or daughter to commit to 2-3 practices a week -and by the way they don’t like practices—-but they endure them because they like playing the game at the end of the week with their friends.”
They continued “so before they even play the game-they have to endure 6-9 hours of an unfun time commitment (1 hour for travel back and forth and the actual 2 hour practice) which typically culminates in one game each week-which is about another 3 hour play experience”.
“If you compress the actual play time for the kids who are starting —-its about 1 hour and 15 minutes if the kids who are not starting -and frankly if you are asking my kid to endure a 10-12 hour unfun runway for 15 minutes to 1 hour play reward -they just as soon go home and play digital games”
And while I didn’t like hearing it- I knew their kids were making a very rational assessment of play time and choose activities that generated the most play time which seemed to jive organically to what I had experienced growing up. As a child, my friends and I had complete control of our play and there was no concept of practice or adult supervision— and we played the games we loved because we love to play games.
My assessment is that kids today are making a more rational choice to play more. The digital world has become their new playground –because they love learning how to play by playing the games —versus an adult telling them how to play better. In other words, digital games are popular because there is no such thing as digital game practice, and they can play whenever they want -when they want –with unlimited opponents— and most importantly no parents.
Digital Play Vs Physical Play -Why Even Care About the Issue
After talking to the parents -I began to think more deeply about the issue. I asked myself —-“Does it really matter if a child migrates play from the physical world to the digital word?” –or am I just unable to adapt to changes in our culture?
Or did it have something to do with me and how I coached and made organized sports play unfun?
So I started searching for answers -and like most people – I hit the internet and quickly came to some key revelations
According to a Washington Post article https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2016/06/01/why-70-percent-of-kids-quit-sports-by-age-13/?noredirect=on , most kids were out of organized sports play by age 13 (and in my personal experience that was more like 11)- and in today’s culture -that means really out -because there is no other place to play other than through organized sports today
Considering that most of my friends played through 18 and many through college-that means in about two generations -sports play in the U.S. has declined by as much as 35%.(and in El Cerrito its more like 50%)
There is another study that shows that kids that play sports through age 18 provides have less stress and better mental health as young adults. Sports and Mental Health | Newport Academy
In my opinion, what “less stress” means is kids that play sports through high school have bettered mastered adult skills that lead to less stressful learning in their adult life like
o If you are physically fit at 18, in my estimation, you are more likely to continue to have some level of fitness during your adult life -which helps you live a longer and heathier life.
o Sports teaches how to handle winning and losing -and let face it most of adult life is mostly about losing with a couple big wins sprinkled into that 60 year span of adulthood (your first job, marriage, kids, promotions etc.)
o Team sports teaches you how to work with others to achieve a team objective—which is a fundamental concept in most of the business and professional world — which may be attainable in the digital world but as most of us has learned during the pandemic –it’s not quite the same as physical face to face contact.
o Finally-at its most broadest —sports encourages social tolerance -and is an important tool to transform our country of immigrants into Americans –“I don’t care where your from or what language you speak-if you can hit a fastball -you’re on my team”.
So in other words, the purpose of sports in our culture, is not to get a D-1 scholarship or a shoe contract, but to provide fun way to learn some great adult skills that are not nearly as hardcoded into a child if they leave team sports at age 13 (vs age 18)
Less Practices/ More Games
So after developing a better focus on the purpose of sports play, I committed to create more opportunities for kids to play (not practice) sports.
So I went back to ECYB and proposed that we practice less and play more games
The league leadership was not open to that change since they viewed themselves as a teaching league and that it was their role to teach kids how to play safely and to avoid injury. While I felt that injury was low risk if most kids are leaving sports by age 13, from a baseball context that does make sense -you don’t want kids injuring themselves so that they no longer can play (i.e.-throwing curve balls before age 14), so I backed off on that suggestion.
Tiger Woods Syndrome
After the practice objection, since it turned out the kids who left each year were the kids who were not on the first team, I suggested that we should play two games a weekend (versus the typical one game), the first game would be the first team players and the second game would guarantee that the kids who had not started the first game started so that all the kids got some significant reward for a week of practices
Almost uniformly, the response by the league parents and coaches was no because I suspect that ultimately that would jeopardize a team chances to win the age group league championship—-which is fun for the kids who actually get to play a lot . When I told them I didn’t care who won the 10U or 12U championship-most of the league coaches responded that winning championships helps kids learn that the best players get more play time – and the better players are better because they practice more .
In other words, they felt that the best players on their teams should play more since that rewards them for extra effort and ultimately they may become elite players -which is a is a long held belief popularized by Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers https://www.mytpi.com/en/articles/swing/10000_hours_of_practice_really that 10,000 hours of practice and play time is required for expertise (based on what he believed responsible for Tiger Woods golf expertise)
Based on my coaching experience, that theory has some merit-like practice more and you might play more is a fundamental life lesson, but the leagues simply don’t provide the play time to support that model, even for the kids who were starting, and the only way for a player to achieve that model is to want to find other ways to play since the league process significantly limits play.
Why the French Won the World Cup
So the coaches and the parents objections to only play the best players-stumped me for a while until I read an article by the Aspen Institute called “How France Really Won the World Cup” https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/how-france-really-won-the-world-cup/. The focus of the article was the following -Youth Soccer in the United States is one of the top three most popular sports-so why can’t the U.S., a country of 360 million people, create a men’s team that can qualify for the World Cup (or barely qualify in 2022).
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The question became even more compelling when compared to France, a country of 90 million people, qualifies for the World Cup every 4 years and they not only qualify but they go deep in the tournament (quarterfinals, semifinals and finals)
According to one of the developers of the French Soccer program- the key factor in France creating winning soccer teams is to initially not focus on the winning part. In the Aspen Article, he explained France’s approach — “Everyone wants to win games. That’s good,” he says. “But how do you win? If you’re too focused on winning games, you don’t learn to play well. You get too nervous because you’re always afraid to make errors.” The French system recognizes the value of unstructured play. And that innovation and passion bloom when children are given the time and space to create games on their own. Without uniforms. Or league standings. Or game clocks. Or emotionally invested adults. It’s an inspired place in which improvisation rules, rewards are intrinsic, playing personalities are developed—and a child learns to see things that don’t reveal themselves as readily in formal games.”https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/how-france-really-won-the-world-cup/
To me, the logic is simple—– if kids play more they have more fun-which means they develop better playing skills and most importantly play longer——— which gives them better skills to be successful as an adult -which ultimately is the objective of sports.
So if your objective is to create elite players –the best chance for your community to create elite players is to give kids as much unstructured fun play time to as many kids as possible to develop their skills—which is counterintuitive to most coaches who I have coached with.
And while our parenting culture of never letting our kids out of our sight seems here to stay-the best way to achieve the goal of keeping kids in sports longer -is to at least create as many opportunities to play as much as possible -even if it’s a more structured experience-kids still like to play games (not practice).
And for those coaches who think they can predict who will be an elite player at 9 or 10- Michael Jordan did not make his high school varsity basketball team until he was a junior in high school—thank goodness he didn’t quit when he was 13 even though he wasn’t the player that he ultimately developed into. Michael Jordan Didn’t Make Varsity—At First (newsweek.com)
Not Enough Fields to Play More Games
So I went back to ECYB and argued for more play time —- to their credit-my arguments for more games resonated with them-in fact they helped me develop sports camps that focused at least half the time on unstructured play time.
But the more game argument (two vs one game in a weekend) -went nowhere because the conversation went something like this — ” Mike —we support more games for the kids but if you want to double the number of games, that means twice the fields —and if you want more fields-we have no interest in that”
When I asked why -they said one or two parents spend about 80-120 hours each year to coordinate and schedule fields –and now I wanted to double facilities used—which meant that their time may double. Which was time that these parents didn’t have since they had lives outside of the league and they were not willing to sacrifice even more time -no matter how much it would benefit the kids.
When I asked why it took so much time, the explanation was that process is primarily a manual process that included coordinating 10-15 fields in competition with other sports leagues like soccer or football -which requires coordination with those schedulers as well as the city and school district officials, negotiating cost if the fields (i.e.-some fields can be as much as $300 per hour to rent) —and while its digital (you email a PDF application to reserve a facility) it’s not that digital.
And while I understood the problem—– considering that we are 20 miles from Silicon Valley and 10 years into the Airbnb and Uber reality—it seemed the solution demanded a digital solution but no one really took the time to figure it out or build, even though hundreds of thousands of hours are spent by U.S. leagues each year that could have been redeployed into creating play opportunities for kids more effectively.
Finally, what was particularly frustrating were that the fields in El Cerrito ( and throughout the Bay Area) were mostly empty and unused. I could walk five miles in any direction and it seemed that most municipal athletic facilities that were mostly unused-so whatever the leagues and the local municipalities were doing wasn’t creating the desired effect of more play.
Let’s Play Other Leagues
Being just one coach in a small community league in an ocean of Northern California sports athletics, I eventually accepted that I could not change the facility reservation process and increasing play through more fields was not realistic until one day, I realized that I drive by at least two other youth league practices who had reserved other fields on my way to ECYB practices and games.
So if field reservations was an insurmountable issue for ECYB-why don’t we set up scrimmages with the league up the road or down the road–on a day that they had scheduled a practice—-which translates to no additional field scheduling time, increasing play time and no impact on league standings for the win-win-win attitude that most parent coaches had
The prospect of more play with other league seemed promising since, based on my daughter’s participation in travel sports (to be discussed later), I knew that California has thousands of leagues (every 2-3 miles down the road -there is a another league ).
When I proposed this solution to ECYB -they said they had two problems with that idea
First problem -they didn’t know how to get a hold of those leagues —I was surprised to hear that considering most of us drove by these other leagues’ practices or games on our way to our league practices or games. I proposed that we stop our car and a walk over to one of the coaches and arrange a scrimmage.
The explanation by the league was that to formally arrange scrimmages takes time-and time is our enemy since the leadership turnover in these leagues is almost 100% every 12 months—-so by the time that the leagues arrange the scrimmage process-everyone who remembers that process leaves.
The next year no one remembers the arrangement -and the process fails-so ECYB viewed this effort as an exercise in futility
· Second Problem – one of the key purposes of leagues is to assure parent coaches that if injuries happen-they won’t be sued. The problem with the leagues scrimmaging on fields that are not their own is that the league insurance policies typically only covers the leagues traditional fields and games based on their league rules
So if a player is hurt on a non-league facility-they could be sued and have an uncovered lawsuit settlement against the league.
10 Years of Frustration-Building a Solution
As a coach for over 10 years-I realized that even with the best of intentions —due a change in the parenting culture, parent and municipal involvement in the process—-youth sports was generally discouraging kids from participating in sports by limiting play and the statistics show that in less than two generations that had reduced play time by as much 33% (50% in my case) .
And while I knew -I could not change the culture of sports play back to when I was a child—I realized that to change the declining trend of youth supports, the sports community needed digital tools that would encourage more sports play based on the following assumptions:
· Parents prefer parent supervision during playtime
· Kids don’t like practice but love playing games
And it seemed based my coaching experience that to create more play is defined by three variables
o Availability of facilities to play on
o Finding Teams to Play and
o Insurance to Play to Protect Against Legal or Vandalism Risk*
*Most municipalities require a $2 million dollar general liability policy to rent their facility which is a significant barrier to play if you are a soccer parent trying to find a way to find a scrimmage with another local team.
To me, based in the change in assumptions of sports play —the solution was not unlike Airbnb -where Airbnb digitized a large unstructured real estate database- put an app on top of it and flooded the market with travel lodging which may travel easier and less costly.
In addition, finding teams to play was more like Uber -where we put two coaches together to create a play opportunity (vs ride sharing)
Finally, insurance seemed to be a significant barrier that inhibited play -and if we able to insure all facilities under one product——-so that insurance coverage was no longer a league or team concern (it was part of the built-in features of our product) -we could fix the insurance issue related to play.
In June, 2019, myself and two other parent coaches formed GamePlay to build those digital sports solutions and we called the company GamePlay.
Are There Enough Fields
If you ask any coach in Northern California if he or she thinks there are enough athletic facilities to support more play -almost uniformly, I think the answer would be no. I believed there was an abundance of facilities but not easy to find or access them
So the first question that we had when we began developing a digital solution was “ Are there enough fields to support additional play in Northern California?” We performed a facility study for the entire Bay Area and found that there were thousands of athletic facilities within 5 miles of every major Northern California City -and primarily unused.
However, when we talked to cities and school districts –most cities and school districts believed that they that their utilization was actually closer to 75%-100%. One city between Palo Alto and San Francisco claimed to be over 100% utilized and they were turning away teams or leagues requesting more facility time.
The next weekend-we went to that city’s facilities and did an actual hour by hour count of the number of times that their facilities were occupied —and the result was that they were only 23% utilized.
Rented Not Used
The primary reason for that disconnect is that cities and school districts assume that facilities rented means used and the teams using those facilities were primarily soccer, baseball and basketball leagues.
Based on our review of the outdoor facility schedules, the local soccer leagues and baseball leagues appear to have been renting the facilities but were not using the facilities -which meant there was disconnection between the value or pricing charged by the city for those facilities and their actual use.
Based on our outdoor field use research, it appeared that the facility pricing was so low for local soccer leagues and baseball leagues —–they rented the facilities in 3-5 month intervals for every hour of every day and there was no real marginal cost to overbook facilities-to the point that the facilities although rented were being used only 20-50% of the time.
The cities and school districts justified the rental of these facilities to the local leagues at low prices since the league parents were residents and voters already paying property taxes and could not justify charging market rate for these facilities to residents who are already paying thousands of dollars in property taxes, in part, for parks and recreation services or providing an education to their children.
The Real Cost of Not Properly Allocating Use of the Facilities
While city or school district residents who could use the facilities may be frustrated by the facility reservation process—in particular new leagues or teams, since they are typically blocked out of facility rental by the legacy local leagues, most just accept it since they assume this is the best possible performance at a pretty low standard set for most government services.
While we see some leagues elevating complaints to the School Board or City Council-I would say it seems pretty rare if those concerns get elevated to that level since ultimately the leagues through a significant investment of time seem to manage through it.
Parents don’t seem to complain since we are now into the 2nd-going on 3rd generation of this trend and, it’s my belief, they have lost the generational memory of the role that sports had played in their lives and don’t really understand the costs or impact of this trend.
However, in my opinion the costs are significant in terms of dollars and the impact to our kids development
And while I have no problem with cities prioritizing use to residents—— the overallocation of these facilities to local leagues causes significant costs to local communities -which seem counter intuitive to what I believe are the missions of the municipal officials or the local leagues that they serve.
· Since most facilities in California can be used 12 months a year -we estimate most communities facilities have approximately 2800 hours of availability ( Weekends & Summer averages about 8 hour per day/ with the rest of the year 4 hours per day ) -and based on our review of most Northern California cities -the utilization rate (and this is generous) is about 20-50% of the year -which means about 1400 hour per year -athletic facilities on average are unused
· Since the average hourly cost to rent these facilities in Northern California is between $20-$50 per hour –let’s say that only half those hours can be rented to non-local users at $35 per hour for 700 hours per year -that is about $300k in field rentals over 60 months and if the city or school district has six facilities -that results in about $1.8 million dollars in lost funding that could be used by the city or school district to defray costs or reinvest back into youth services which may in turn reduce cost for other services like as policing or facility maintenance. While the field quality varies significantly, we estimate that out of our 40,000 facilities in the Bay Area, at least 2000-5000 of those facilities could generate that kind of funding like:
· For the kids who want to play more -there is only a very high cost alternative of travel ball (which costs families hundreds or thousands of dollars per month just to create more play). This is particularly frustrating to hear when there are over 200,000-400,000 baseball basketball and soccer teams within a 30 mile range of anyone living in Northern California that would be happy to play another team near their local community —travel sports which changes the additional play cost model from hundreds to thousands of dollars per child annually
· Low prices and lack of transparency in the reservation process ( in California-the soccer and baseball leagues seem to dominate this space) encourage leagues to buy up all the access for months on end, even if they don’t have use the facilities most of the time which prevents other leagues or families informally organizing and offering additional play opportunities, In addition, there are hundreds of hours of league time that is devoted to this process -which are hours that could be more productively invested in supervising actual play for the kids.
· Furthermore, almost all the facilities require insurance coverage before they can be used —which is best managed centrally (a significantly lower cost) as compared to forcing individual leagues and teams to bear that cost -which further raises the cost to create play opportunities for kids
· Most importantly, our kids are retreating to the digital world -which makes them less capable and prepared to thrive in their adult life.
It’s Too Hard to Be More Efficient
When we ask the leagues why they overcommit facilities -the feedback is that most municipalities reservation process are not transparent or flexible regarding scheduling and they rather overcommit, since the cost is so low, rather than lose fields that could limit their members play.
While I understand that issue, I find it hard to accept when digital tools exist that can provide the leagues field time they need and they can return excess field time that municipalities can rent on a just in time basis to generate funding for the cities by embracing the following best practices:
· Leagues could be better at estimating the actual hours by using a simple equation —-like if we have 700 players with a 20 weeks season and there are two practices and one game a week that works out to be about 5600 hours for practice and play and reservations for the league should be limited to the projected hours plus 10% cushion for estimate errors or about 6200 hours for that season
· Cities and school districts need to provide a more automated just in time model to allow leagues ample time to operate but to not exceed or hoard facility time which frees up time that allows local and nonlocal players, leagues and organizations to use their facilities to generate funding for additional youth services .
· Most cities and school districts complain that no such system exists (or if they do they are not responsive to these issues) — but there are several systems that provide that functionality that allows municipalities to be fully transparent in scheduling, while generating additional funding and creating low cost play opportunities for kids –like GamePlay —- the digital solution that we have developed.
· In particular, GamePlay provides the priority system for local users and the flexibility of the hours allowing leagues or teams to reserve or return unused facilities easily plus the market place for cities and school districts to sell hours to other nonlocal teams and leagues to help monetize the unused time and provides a built in insurance solution that significantly reduces cost of play and increase the available playtime for kids
For coaches and leagues a good digital solution will also allow them to find and play games locally by including them in a large digital community like Uber to help teams find other teams and fields to play on locally in minutes—versus days weeks or months-and a very low cost/
Conclusion
Playing catch in your backyard with your friends. Indeed, this type of image is one that our media has cultivated, and one that many like to think exists today. Many factors such as parental concerns, digital distractions, and increasingly cautious legal practices mean that the youth sports scene is now vastly different.
Youth sports nowadays is an organized system of teams and leagues that can introduce children to sports while alleviating parents’ safety concerns by constantly having supervisors present. This type of organized sport play, however, comes with many concerns of its own and is in no way a perfect system as it stands.
Despite the existence of youth leagues across the country, kids are turning away from organized sports at startling rates due to significant change in the U.S. culture regarding child safety and disconnect between what motivates kids to play and the cost of play.
While organized sports seems to be a necessity in the United States, the organized sports community (leagues, municipalities and parents) doesn’t seem to understand that kids don’t necessarily want to hone their skills for future achievements; they join because they like to play.
As a result, many kids are now turning to the world of digital games as a less regulated replacement for old fashioned play. However, sports have a tremendous amount of well-documented benefits including increased physical and mental health that video games just can’t provide.
Maintaining and increasing participation in youth sports is vital for the health of this country. Sadly, changing the overall culture that impedes participation is a monumental task, that seems too big for parents, leagues or municipalities to tackle -but in reality the same digital world that is decimating youth sports -may actually hold the solution.
Digital solutions, like GamePlay, can better navigate a complex interconnected system of cities, school districts, leagues, teams, and coaches-more than anyone parent, league or municipality to reconnect users and sellers with thousands of athletic facilities and teams within a 5-10 mile radius of each household in the Bay Area that and drive out cost while handsomely rewarding all of the stakeholders in play time or funding.
Thankfully, this is not an unfixable problem and the parents, leagues and municipalities that are the key stakeholders need to be willing to adopt the digital solutions to fix these issues. By digitizing scheduling facilities and finding teams to play with a low cost insurance component like GamePlay, we will be well on our way to a future where youth sports is once again ensures that kids get the play time they need to become happier and healthy adults.