As families consider the decision of pursuing a future at the college level for their child, a new factor has moved to the forefront. The cost of playing travel baseball has never been higher.
Across the Northeast, the price of playing club baseball has skyrocketed. Families have been forced to turn from budgeting for college into reshuffling their money for club baseball in hopes that there will be a return on the investment in the form of college scholarship money..
"If you're paying for travel baseball with the hopes of your kid landing a matching college scholarship off of that, you're prioritizing your investments wrong," said Walter Beede, author of The Recruiting Process. "Based on the scholarship money available for colleges, it's impossible for the financial returns to match each other."
The average tuition for a Northeast program’s ‘premier’ team for kids between eighth and 12th grade stands at north of $5,000 per year. The maximum cost hovers at $8,000. In recent years, as club baseball participation numbers have skyrocketed, so too have travel baseball costs.