This may just be a Decatur thing, but I am getting pretty frustrated with how quickly the youth sports leagues around here fill up. More than once I've had to tell my kids that a league had filled up before I got them registered. And it's not just the city league -- the private leagues like the YMCA and Druid Hills Youth Sports fill up just as fast. I don't remember that ever happening when I was a kid, and that's not because my parents were especially on top of things. I can only speculate why this might be an issue, but I'd love to hear if others have noticed it and have an idea of what the limitation is. My ideas are:
- Density: Decatur has much higher density than where I grew up (Baltimore suburbs). Maybe there just are a lot more people per playing field, and the leagues are limited by space.
- Growth: Decatur's population has been growing rapidly over the past decade, especially it's youth population. Maybe the infrastructure -- both physical and organizational -- just hasn't kept pace. I hope Legacy park can make a difference.
- Popularity: Maybe more kids are playing in leagues these days (I've heard that's true)
- Traffic: Maybe I'm not willing to drive as far my parents were because there's a lot more traffic here.
Any other thoughts why this might be so hard?
Back when, most kids would just run off and do whatever in groups on their own. Now, parents both can't stand their children being at home AND can't stand them being unsupervised at any point in time. Hence, all supervised out of the house activities are inundated as every parent looks for someone to offload their kids on.
That may be part of it, but in my case part of the reason is that there are a lot more hazards where I live now than where I grew up -- where I live now there isn't much open space to play in and we're hemmed in on all sides by busy roads with aggressive drivers. It's a shame that America's automobile obsession makes it so hard to let kids do their own thing. -- as described in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw
Sounds like you're saying there's too many people and having kids isn't a good idea. That's how what you just said translates to me, but wth do I know.
I'm saying there's too many car. The video shows how it's possible to have a child friendly city if we limit car usage.