Open Discussion - Program
Share Scouting Topics here.
Subforums
-
- 815
- posts
-
- 2.8k
- posts
9616 topics in this forum
-
- 3 replies
- 705 views
-
- 25 replies
- 2.6k views
-
- 9 replies
- 1k views
-
- 5 replies
- 1.3k views
-
- 37 replies
- 3.1k views
-
- 9 replies
- 1k views
-
- 11 replies
- 1.1k views
-
- 28 replies
- 2.4k views
-
- 11 replies
- 1.1k views
-
- 14 replies
- 1.1k views
-
- 9 replies
- 938 views
-
- 10 replies
- 1.2k views
-
- 0 replies
- 794 views
-
- 2 replies
- 712 views
-
- 29 replies
- 2.7k views
-
LATEST POSTS
-
You may be missing the whole "community" aspect of the travel sports lifestyle. You are more than a family, your child is an (insert sport here) athlete. Yes there is time, but no real planning other than financial commitment. You drop them off for practice, pick them up. Go to games, hang out, head home. You hang out with the other families and commiserate on how much time all this takes up. Kids also get burned out and the casual participation declines considerably after 8th grade. Also good observation in that if the fees for travel (can be $3k or more per season / 2 seasons annually) were to be put into standard investments college would be paid for over some years. -
Few to virtually none of my troop's parents attend every monthly campout. Instead, we have a pool of adults that are able to go every other month or less and still have enough adult supervision. Frankly, the scouts seem to enjoy the campouts more when less adults are in the way. Many of our adult leaders take work with them to summer camp. They work in the adult leader lounge while the scouts are in MB sessions. They don't put in anything close to 40 hours that week, but they are able to knock out some work hours on WiFi. -
This mirrors my observations in my area: There is a big hole in the program, the bubble is currently at the age of crossover scouts. These kids missed the first years of Cub Scouting during Covid lockdown. Then when these families returned to activities, they limited themselves. Some chose to stick to sports or other activities, so they didn't consider scouting. So fewer kids made it up the ranks in Cub Scouts. It doesn't effect younger scouts as much: Lions, Tigers, Wolves... because they began school/activities after lockdown. Families are in a crunch. It takes more and more commitment to choose an activity. Especially sports are not one season anymore. It gets really competitive starting in middle grades: there is off-season training and competitions that last more than one season, etc. Whether it is fall baseball, indoor soccer in the winter, etc. They feel left out if they only play one season of a sport. Not to mention all the costs involved. So if the kid chooses a sport, it doesn't leave much room for scouting. Even though there are fewer scouts remaining, it means the scouts that continue in the program are more committed than ever.
-
What am I missing with the "travel sports" thing? It seems far more time stealing and financially draining to me. And few of the kids ever will go beyond to make a living, though perhaps it will help some gets scholarships. Again though, I missed most of those options as a youth due to the time period of the late fifties. Local sports groups often were very selective, or developed on civic lines. In my case, while I wanted to do Little League, I could not, as we lived in an L.A. County area surrounded by the city of Azusa, and my address did not allow me to join. Of course, that was before the onset of so many other sports and parental fanaticism. -
" Folks spend way more time figuring our how to game the system than, well, I don't know, going camping." Triple plus star for this. And that applies to most of the more popular and consistent parts of the program.
-
-
Who's Online (See full list)