Are You Choosing Sports Over Academics?

Children’s extra-curricular activities aren’t cheap. Parents pay for lessons, teams, clubs and sports because they believe their children will benefit from these experiences.  An informal parent survey in 2017 provided the typical, minimal costs of several popular activities. Most are significanly higher in today's dollars.

·         Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts: $600 per year

·         High School team sport like soccer, baseball, football, tennis: $600 per season

·         Club Basketball: $2,000 per season

·         High School Band: $1,000 per season

·         Skiing: $1,200 per season

·         Club Swimming: $2,400 per year

·         Cheer, martial arts, gymnastics and dance lessons $2,500 per year

·         Club Ice skating and Ice Hockey: $3,000

·         Private music lessons: $4,600 per year

·         High School Cheer or Pom/Dance squad: $5,000 per year

If your child is involved in a sport at a competitive level (versus a recreational level) those expenses skyrocket.  Competitive programs require extra funds for private lessons, specialized equipment, travel, and uniforms. Ten thousand dollars per year, or more, is common for children competing at the competitive level or playing on more than one team.

Cost of Mathnasium of Littleton

Mathnasium of Littleton families have several different options available. We have 25- and 35-session summer memberships, year-round memberships for 7, 12 or 18 months, college board test prep, and private tutoring. Most of our prices range between $38-$50 per hour.  For example, if your 5^th grade child came twice a week during the 9 month, academic school year and continued over the summer (12 months) the total cost would be about $4100 including registration, 96 hours of math instruction, ongoing assessment and reevaluation, all materials and help with your child's current math homework. If your 10th grader came in twice per week to work on honors geometry and prepare for algebra II, a 7-month school year membership would run about $2700. Comparing the cost of Mathnasium to sports and other activities, Mathnasium is on par and if you consider the lifetime benefits of being good at math (scholarship opportunities, the chance to test out of college courses and better paying jobs after graduation from either high school or college), a Mathnasium membership is quite reasonable.

Financial Benefits from Sports

Kids benefit from sports and activities by increased confidence, character building, sportsmanship, improved health, and great friendships. Do any of these activities have a direct bearing on their adult earning power? That’s difficult to say. Some say these skills do translate to better jobs, but the correlation is complex.

Financial Benefits from Mathnasium

Math achievement does have a direct impact on earning potential. Even students who drop out of high school earned $1.66 more per hour if they have completed geometry or algebra II than if they had dropped out having only taken pre-algebra or algebra I. Of course, doing well in high school makes getting into college and completing college easier. College has a huge impact on earning potential. You can read more in this blog point #1.

What About Scholarships?

Sports scholarships are difficult to get and challenging to keep. If your child will not get recruited by a Division 1 school for their chosen sport, any scholarship they get will only be a partial scholarship. Full ride scholarships are only given to the top men in football and basketball and the top women in basketball, gymnastics, tennis, and volleyball. Keeping their althletic scholarship often depends on maintaining a certain grade point in college.

Academic scholarships are easier to get and keep than athletic scholarships. Colleges and private foundations annually award $50 billion in academic scholarships versus $3 billion of athletic scholarships.

Cost of NOT Getting Academic Help

No colleges require minimum athletic abilities to graduate. Most colleges do require minimum math skills to enter. Students lacking these skills end up in expensive remedial courses.

Your Choices

Investing in our children’s well-being and future success requires choices. Constraints in time and money limit children from participating in every beneficial opportunity which arises. How you choose to invest in your child now impacts their future.  We thank the many families in Littleton, Lakewood, Morrison, Bow Mar and Denver for trusting us to prepare their children for a great future.

Give us a call today if you would like to find out how we can make a positive impact on your child's future! 303-979-9077 (call or text)

Outside resources referenced to write this article include:

http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=parkplace

http://www.businessinsider.com/high-school-math-performance-may-predict-your-future-salary-2013-11

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-college-impacts-earning-potential-2014-10

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/8-things-you-should-know-about-sports-scholarships/