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Parents seek Sunday youth sports boycott

By Meggen Lindsay, Pioneer Press, 10/05/2005

A group of vocal soccer moms – and dads – in the south metro are clamoring for a timeout.

Hundreds of parents of young athletes in all sports, in fact, say their children are alarmingly overscheduled, and are calling for a boycott of youth sports – tournaments, games and practices – on Sundays in the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district.

The Sunday boycott drive is believed to be the nation's first such parent-led effort, organizers say.

"It all seems to be getting terribly out of hand. There's a greater anxiety and a greater expectation out there for what kids should do," parent Andrea Grazzini Walstrom said. "We want to encourage a more reasonable approach among families."

But the leader of one athletic association says organizations try to avoid Sunday scheduling, but demands on time and athletic facilities pose challenges. Overscheduling is also an individual issue, not a community one, added another community athletics leader.

Grazzini Walstrom, of Burnsville, is a leader in the Balance4Success group that hosted a community meeting Tuesday night in Apple Valley. She and other parents want to change the culture of what she calls "hyper-competitive" childhoods, youths governed by the frenzied pace of sports schedules and other after-school activities.

Parents and experts say the overburdened families are a result of pressured parents, demands for structured activities and a huge influx in participation in activities such as sports.

"We see that there is a small group of really competitive parents and leaders — parents driven by a fear that if they don't do more and more activities, it will hurt their kids," Grazzini Walstrom said. "We think the majority of parents don't agree. They don't believe that kids need four or five days a week at practice."

Both practicality and precedence guided the choice of a break on Sundays, Grazzini Walstrom said. The Minnesota State High School League already bans games Sundays, she said, and the day historically has been a time for rest.

The new movement's proponents hope to find strength in numbers: If enough parents pull their kids out on Sundays, perhaps the youth athletic associations will stop scheduling games and practices then.

The group hopes the "Taking Back Sunday" initiative will give parents the courage to lodge protests, despite the pervasive concern their children may be benched or left unable to compete if they don't keep up the pace.

It's too soon to tell if the organizers' efforts will amount to anything concrete, parents agreed. But the sentiment was appreciated nonetheless.

Steven Kreitz, of Rosemount, skipped a Boy Scouts highway cleanup to attend the meeting with his wife, Mary, and their three boys, ages 7, 9 and 11. The Kreitz children play different sports, are all in scouting and take piano lessons. Free nights are a rarity for the working parents.

"It's a juggling act, that's for sure. We're always moving," he said. "We want to prioritize more. We have made school our priority. But we want family time to be a priority, too. It's time for us to figure out what else is important in all of this."

Sundays unfettered by sports sounds wonderful to Kreitz. "We'd love it. We'd still have church, of course, but we'd love the time."

Upwards of 150 parents piled into the auditorium at Falcon Ridge Middle School on Tuesday to listen to University of Minnesota professor Bill Doherty, a national expert who speaks and writes about "overscheduled kids and underconnected families."

Doherty pleaded with parents to bring back a now-antiquated expression for their children: going out to play.

"Not a play date, arranged by a parent. But going out and finding someone to play with," he said.

Doherty helped launch the groundbreaking Putting Family First initiative in Wayzata and other programs that promote family bonding in Eden Prairie and southwest Minneapolis.

"This time, we wanted to be a little more edgy, and a little more challenging," he said before the meeting.

Organized sports are taking a toll on kids, and taking away their childhoods, Doherty said. Young children, in particular, are exhausted, stressed out and often don't have time for homework, much less family time.

Doherty's years of research convinced Balance4Success organizers that many parents want to pull back from sports.

That may be true, but it's not so easy, said Eagan mom Claire Zobel, as she picked her 10-year-old daughter up from soccer practice Monday.

"Society has changed so much since we were young. If you don't get kids involved at a young age now, they won't succeed at high school sports," she said. "If all the kids start out at age 6, your kid needs to, too. Those are the pressure we face. And it is real."

But Zobel said the Eagan Athletic Association does a good job keeping Sunday schedules light, and doesn't know that a universal day off is the answer.

She's not alone. The leaders of the Eagan and Eastview athletic associations have refused to go along with the ban.

Dan Mott, who heads Eagan's association, said eliminating Sundays for traveling sports is not a plausible solution. The more competitive traveling programs need the weekends for tournaments.

Kids are overscheduled, Mott agreed, but said it was up to the parents to create their own balance.

Chris Lee, whose three kids play sports, agreed. Lee teaches at Apple Valley High School, coaches his 12-year-old son's traveling soccer team and is an assistant varsity coach as well. He said parents have increasingly unrealistic expectations.

The popularity of youth sports has made courts, rinks and fields a scarce commodity, everyone acknowledged. The sheer amount of kids involved requires scheduling every day of the week, said Rob Gensch, Eastview's board president.

Overscheduling is an individual problem, not something that requires a community effort to fix, he said. If parents don't want kids involved in so many activities, simply don't sign them up.

"People can make family time around activities," he said. "An hour a day at something for sports doesn't impede family time. Some would say that actually is family time," he said.