Cost of Competitive Sports

          From kids not being able to play competitive sports to kids being disadvantaged because of cost. Cost of competitive sports is hotly contested because many think that the costs of multiple sports are too big and schools must pay for them, however, others argue that it is good that we have to pay since the school’s need to earn money and nothing is free nowadays. There has been a long disagreement about this topic, (and this paper is) and I am going to tell you that it is both good and bad, but it matters about what exactly you are talking about.

           Let's take as look at school sports or sports where you play for the school team for UWCSEA east. Out of many school in Singapore, UWC is one of the most expensive and high standard schools, looking at how much the cost per kid is huge, the school gets a lot of money, that means, the school has more than enough money to pay for all the clubs, sports, and activities. The point that I am trying to make is sometimes the school should pay for most of the sports that we are playing, but not mentioning for example swimming or gymnastics, since those sports you truly need a professional coach and if you travel you need to train hard. And to show that you fully committed to this, you pay money, or you can think of it another way, tax. But of course there will be that one person that will argue against me, and they will say that since the people in our school are in UWC which, again, is an expensive school, people are rich enough to pay for all the sports.

         How about camps, when it comes to camps, you truly first think about how much it costs. Usually camps cost an awful amount and if you think from the camps side or the people that organise it. Holidays vacations are the only times when they get money, and of course they need to cost more than a usual sport. Coaches train other kids during normal days, and they get payed less since it is a working week. You might believe that coaches charge too much, but in our school, Fast Break(which is a basketball camp) charges as less as they can, counting the uniform, you get 2, the cost per term, tax, and many more. Our school, also tries to charge at the minimum since we already pay more than usual, as I said in before. For example badminton, it is free since there is a lot of people in it and it would be tough on all the kids to pay.

        I asked a 54 year old woman, which is a mother to three children, about what she thinks about the cost of competitive sports in our school and here is what she said:

      “Activities that have truly professional coaches and train the kids hard, activities like that have good and fair prices. But sports like junior school basketball should be free since it is a short time sport and most of the time in our school the clubs are lead by sometimes random teachers. “

      I think what she said was only one aspect out of thousands, but that is an aspect of many moms that are interested in their children and spend a lot of money and time on them.

       Some people will still disagree with the idea of people in our school paying for particular competitive sports, and there still will always be people that disagree, but I say that schools, especially ours, should pay for competitive sports.