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[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Yes and no. And this may just be my experience, but the parents of kids on suburban teams say shit like, "Well, if they really want their kids to be good, they should pay the extra to have them on a good travel team." Explaining how travel teams have taken something that everyone used to be able to do and have fun with, and monetizing it to give rich kids yet another advantage doesn't fucking compute. I've also heard "This is one of the city teams where the kids are all from bad neighborhoods," talking about fucking 9 year olds. This shit is constant. My ex-wife and I spend all of our time talking to just each other at games because the parents are so awful. So, that's saying something (although, we're pretty good friends, so maybe it's not.)

It's the isolation that's the problem. It's a manufactured, sheltered experience in which stereotypes and bad experiences one person had with a black person that one time become gospel and shared and re-shared until there is no tolerance for people who look different at all. These are the people who carve the black people they know out of what black people are allowed to be in their minds because they're different somehow. How someone feels comfortable enough with me to talk about how awful the neighborhood is they had to drive through to get to a tournament is beyond me. I look at them like they're fucking crazy, but they don't get it.

Most of my conversations with my fellow suburban parents about travel teams revolve around how expensive they are and how it's just a way to make $$ off our kids. And what a weekend waster it is for all involved. A lot of these programs have 3 or 4 teams from the same town for the same grade(s) based on skill, so your child is either on the A,B or C team. Maybe the A team kids get to play lacrosse or soccer in college, but those B and C kids likely won't and are basically subsidizing the A teams.