The Price of Playing

When Peter goes out for an elite team, the competition is fierce — and so are the hidden costs. (Part 11 of Poverty and Privilege)

This is the story of Richard, a man with generational wealth, and Lauren, a single mom struggling to keep her household afloat. The twist is they both have Ivy League educations but life has turned out very different for each of them. The story is true but names and certain identifying details have been changed.

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If you’re new to Poverty and Privilege, you’ll want to start with Part I here.

Youth sports are valued for the life lessons, team-building skills and college-application advantages they provide, but they often end up being yet another thing that separates poor and wealthy children.

The high costs in both time and money can be beyond the ability of poor and working class families. Yet doing well in a sport can offer students the ability to distinguish themselves and can even boost the chances of gaining admissions and scholarships to elite colleges.

Sports are not just child’s play

Competition at Peter’s new school can be fierce: academically, athletically, and in terms of social acceptance. Peter (See Part 9, Intelligence and Education Are Not Enough) is a strong budding scholar — particularly in English, art and foreign languages — and has a wardrobe befitting a well-established prep school student, thanks to Richard’s help.

Strong academics and an appropriate wardrobe have helped Peter fit in with his wealthier classmates, Lauren said.

But succeeding in sports is, well, another playing field entirely.

Peter badly wanted to make the team

But he had never been tested athletically, at least until team tryouts began at the beginning of August. He had played recreationally, but this was the first time he would be judged on his athletic ability and work ethic against other boys.

It was a team sport he’d never had the opportunity to play formally before. And with more than 80 boys competing for just 24 spots, the odds of a new freshman making the school team were long.

He had spent much of the summer following a demanding training regimen and learning as much about the sport as he could.

“Thanks to Richard, Peter was able to attend a weeklong athletic summer camp,” Lauren said. That helped him prepare, but she wondered if it would be enough.

Peter showed up for tryouts excited but apprehensive. Was he up to the challenge? Where did he rank in terms of the competition? How would he, a scholarship kid without the advantages of years of private coaching and training, stack up?

“Private schools, which upper-class families prefer to call ‘independent schools,’” Richard said, “run the gamut in terms of athletic competitiveness.” (He noticed the irony of wealthy families preferring to avoid the term “private schools.”)

Some schools have a “no cut” policy in which everyone can participate. Other schools are highly athletically selective and able to compete with the best public and parochial schools in the state.

“Peter’s new school falls on the most competitive end of the spectrum,” Richard said. “With state championships to their name and extensive travel schedules, the student athletes there go on to compete at the college level and beyond.”

Following nearly five weeks of daily workouts — sometimes two in one day! — the final list of two dozen student athletes was posted this week. Peter made the team!

Congratulations flowed in from family members, friends at other schools, school alumni and, of course, Richard himself.

Lauren, however, had a very different reaction. “I viewed his odds with tempered optimism. I figured it wasn’t terribly likely for him to make the team, but felt he had potential,” she said.

“Many of my concerns were, and still are, about him having a work-life balance. He’s in the challenging position of having to juggle about 30 hours of the sport each week, plus a full academic load, and another 12 hours of commuting. It's daunting, but I also know that performing well in the sport will give him a chance to be part of a team and can open doors for him.”

For Lauren, her sense of pride was diluted by her own apprehensions about her son’s ability to balance his sports and studies, not to mention the potential economic and time costs to the family.

Having nurtured several student athletes of his own, Richard was acutely aware of the pressures — emotional and physical — together with the added time commitment and financial costs of competing at such a level.

Opportunities come with costs

While Peter was flying high and proudly attaching team stickers to his laptop and the family car, Lauren began worrying about the money and time being on the team would require. She reached out to the coach, who assured her that many of his players faced similar demands, and that he would keep a close eye on Peter as he juggled his athletic commitment and rigorous academic load.

At a meeting for team parents, Lauren learned just what would be required. The school provides uniforms, equipment and transportation for players to games and tournaments. But if she hoped to see Peter in action, the travel costs for the rest of the family would come out of her limited budget.

“I texted Richard photos of the team roster and bumper sticker,” Lauren said, “and Richard pledged to help us travel to see Peter play.”

The costs of attending an out-of-state tournament are beyond the means of a family like Lauren’s that is still struggling to emerge from poverty. A single tournament can easily run as much as $800 in travel, lodging and food costs, and until Richard recently hired her as a consultant, Lauren was keeping her family afloat by doing DoorDash and Instacart deliveries.

Besides the monetary costs is the time commitment of sports travel. Lauren’s other children have activities and needs, and as a working mother she has professional responsibilities at the consulting business she helps Richard run.

For now, she is taking a close look at her calendar, and, as always, her checkbook. Both she and Richard hope they can meet up at a tournament that is about halfway between their two homes.

For Peter, the sticker on his laptop meant triumph. For Richard, whose financial support helped make it possible, it meant pride. For Lauren, it meant both — but it also meant added anxiety and a new line item in a budget already stretched thin.

Read the continuing series:

Part 1, Unlikely Allies in an Unequal America

Part 2, The Country Club Lunch

Part 3, One Family’s Fall From the Middle Class

Part 4, Billable Hours Don’t Pause for Birth

Part 5, The Value of $60,000

Part 6, How Marriage and Divorce Shape Financial Futures

Part 7, Why the Rich Don’t (Usually) Get Divorced

Part 8, Privilege Starts in the Playroom

Part 9, Intelligence and Education Are Not Enough

Part 10, Mentorship, Money, and the Price of Poverty

Part 11, The Price of Playing

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My most recent book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. Tips joyfully accepted via Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.

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