Amid downturn, a rally to save youth sports

Jose Martinez, who works in production for Forest River, an Elkhart recreational vehicle manufacturer, has two sons on two different Flames teams. Martinez, who played league soccer as a child in his native Honduras, said he gladly spent the $360 in travel team fees despite being sole breadwinner for a family of seven (including four kids and two grandsons) since his wife lost her job in April.

“I pay a lot of money, but it’s OK,” Martinez said. “This is good for the boys, fun for my boys. They can play soccer, baseball, basketball, or they can sit down in the house, watching TV. That is not good.”

More expensive travel teams are not wanting for kids, either. John Drew, who runs the Elkhart Titans travel baseball program, said he was going to drop his 15-year-old division because of a lack of players, going so far as to move his own 15-year-old son to the 17-year-old team so he could play. But then parents began rushing to sign up their kids, and the 15-year-old division was brought back.

Youth sports is moving from beyond the realm of looking recession-proof to being developed as an economic engine. Just as large cities trying to make a name for themselves built enormous stadiums to attract major-league teams, small towns and suburbs across the country are building or planning massive sports complexes to match the success of the National Sports Center in Blaine, Minn., opened in 1990.

Or they may try to follow the example of Columbus, Ind., a city of 40,000 that reported $16 million in economic impact for youth sports events in 2008. In the northern Indianapolis suburb of Westfield (population 24,000), Mayor Andy Cook has announced plans for a $1.5 billion development centered on a $60 million youth sports complex for baseball, soccer and other sports with the goal of making Westfield the self-proclaimed "Family Sports Capital of America."

Eleven miles northwest of Elkhart In Edwardsburg, Mich., population 1,147, ground is expected to break this summer for the first eight acres of what is planned as a 102-acre complex hosting soccer, football and baseball. A nonprofit group said it has raised $1.7 million of the $4 million it needs to complete the project, which it notes is twice the size of the region's major sports complex, Newton Park in Lakeville, population 567. However, Newton Park, 25 miles southwest of Elkhart, will continue to hold a local monopoly on youth auto racing, thanks to a track built by the park's benefactors, the owners of locally based racing tire maker Hoosier Tire.

Jennifer Shephard / The Elkhart Truth file Edwardsburg's Mariah Murphy drinks water as she sits in the dugout with a wet towel on her head before the start of action at Osolo Wednesday, June 11, 2008.

Twenty-four local convention and visitors bureaus or sports authorities in Indiana have joined an effort called Sports Indiana, designed to promote the state for sports tourism, particularly attracting youth tournaments. The National Sports Center has never sat tight in the face of this competition, expanding sports and planning a “sports mall,” a retail center geared to all of the center's young visitors. The leading idea for what to do with the former Dodgertown, the Los Angeles Dodgers' spring training complex in Vero Beach, Fla., is to turn it into a youth sports complex attracting national teams.

“It’s almost like an arms race,” said Patrick Rishe, an associate professor of economics at Webster University who runs a company called Sportsimpact.net. It is hired by localities seeking to assess the economic impact of current and possible sporting events, particularly youth sports tournaments. “You make the weapons so you have them in case you need them. You make the case locally that we need to build or we will assure ourselves of not being able to attract those visitor dollars.”

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