Last Sunday, I drove to Andover, Minnesota, to speak to that community’s boys’ basketball association parent meeting. This was the second year I have spoken to that group. I talked about basketball rules that parents and coaches often don’t understand and talked about the importance of sportsmanship and a positive experience.

For the first time, I also encouraged youth basketball parents to talk a “day off” during the season. The Andover teams will participate in 10 tournaments. Assuming most of those are two-day tournaments, what is wrong with sending your kid with another parent and either having the day for yourself as a person or as a couple or with your other (non-basketball) kids. Seems to me that 19 out of 20 is still outstanding attendance.

I was visiting with a guy after the meeting who purchased BasketCases. He was a dad who was coaching a junior high “C” team because no one else would volunteer. I stressed the importance about making basketball a positive experience, and he agreed.

One statistic he told me was very interesting. He said one of the Andover parents estimated how much money their family spent on youth basketball from 4th grade through the senior year. The price tag: $15,000 dollars.

That is a lot of dough. But when you add up fees to play during the season and during the spring, entrance fees, gas, hotel rooms, food on the road, etc., you can see how easy it is for basketball to become an extensive proposition. That’s why, at $20, I think a copy of BasketCases may be the best value in youth basketball. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 10th, 2009 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Officiating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.