Why is hockey so expensive

But Reggie Hunter became a hockey player when the family found out Snider Hockey was offering free equipment and instruction 20 minutes from their New Jersey home. He learned to play multiple positions over time as his great-grandfather drove him to and from the rink in Pennsauken. That was seven years ago. Hunter, now 21, went on to play junior hockey. Many families wrestle with the time and money needed to play youth sports, but those challenges can be even more significant when it comes to hockey, with all of its equipment and rinks that are sometimes far away.

For the less wealthy, having a child who dreams of hockey can look like a nightmare. The cost of protective equipment, sticks and ice time is one factor that keeps hockey lagging behind sports such as basketball and soccer in the U.

And we have two paid development coaches. He laughed. You need to register them in a league and get them a full set of equipment. But this stuff is new. Maybe you can afford all this. The fees, the skates, the sticks, the coaches. But what about the soft costs?

Do you want to spend hours of your life in rinks or stuck in traffic between rinks? Do you have the flexibility to take a day off work for a tournament? Are you willing to give up every weekend and miss out on other stuff, like visiting grandma and grandpa? Fitz-Gerald paused here to make a key point. Youth sports, particularly at a competitive level, are a huge time suck and can be hideously expensive.

Dancing, swimming, tennis — all can be as consuming. But for those who are going to play a sport, going to join a league, hockey has more competition. Another issue that looms large in this discussion is the demographic change underway in Canada. Many Canadians were either born in other countries or are the children of new Canadians. Not all that long ago, Fitz-Gerald says, the immigrant experience often meant a hard break from your old habits and customs.

But with the ubiquity of instantaneous global communications, one link back to the old country that was once hard to maintain — sports — is enduring among new Canadian communities. They can follow their ex- hometown soccer team from thousands of kilometres away and pass that passion on to the next generation, while paying little heed to local sports. He recounted one anecdote, the story of a woman he got to know while writing his book.

She is an immigrant, married to a small-town Ontario boy who grew up loving hockey. Their children now play, too, but she can still watch the nightly news from her home country online. You can still watch the nightly news in Hungarian, but you want to learn more about Canada. So you check out hockey, the local pastime. No thanks. And they never signed their kids up for hockey. And if a kid wants to travel for the sport, parents can expect costs to soar.

These kids have parents who are willing to bet the farm on scholarships and future careers in sports, or have the means to make this happen the way I take my kids to get ice cream.

No equipment, no problem, right? Not to mention the travel costs. Gymnastics is the prime example of a sport where the weekly lessons are the driving financial issue for a family.

Intensive camp? Taken with travel and over time, the costs of gymnastics can really add up. Horse ownership is essential. And horses are not cheap.