00:00In the escalating arms race of youth sports, parents are pulling out all the stops,
00:04even hiring personal coaches for kids as young as six.
00:08What was once reserved for elite athletes is now a booming business,
00:12with families spending thousands to give their kids a competitive edge.
00:18Gene Williams is a former college basketball player at Johns Hopkins University.
00:23His wife, Elaine, played college soccer at Temple.
00:26Together, they created the private coaching platform Athletes Untapped in 2021,
00:32building on their own experience as youth coaches.
00:34We started out with just basketball and soccer.
00:37Then as the years went on, we realized that a lot of youth athletes now play what we would call the non-primary sports.
00:43So golf, tennis, pickleball, used to be mainly for adults, but there's a lot of youth training with that.
00:47So now we have 16 sports in the platform.
00:49The platform helps families navigate different sports, their family schedules, and costs by offering on-demand services,
00:56which provide more flexibility as spending in youth sports skyrockets.
01:01A study by the Aspen Institute estimates U.S. families spend between $30 and $40 billion a year on their children's sports.
01:09The cost of specialized coaching is second only to travel, with parents spending over $180 per year per sport on private lessons, according to the survey.
01:20And it's really regional, too.
01:21So on the West Coast, I think probably L.A., San Diego, average price point for a lesson is like $80, $90.
01:27East Coast is probably $65, $75.
01:30Midwest, maybe $40, $50, depending on if you're around Chicago or not.
01:34But I'd say when I first started doing this and giving my own lessons, it's probably increased about 20%, 25% since then, a decade ago.
01:41Prices for lessons have leveled out because more coaches are getting into the game.
01:46And Williams says the advent of name, image, and likeness money in college is opening even more doors,
01:52where college athletes can earn money coaching.
01:55The marketing is simple.
01:56They are elite athletes performing in an arena where kids eventually want to go.
02:01So when NIL came out, we made it a huge part of our platform to have current college athletes doing it.
02:06We have 3,000 coaches now.
02:08I'd say at least half, if not closer to two-thirds, are current college athletes.
02:12And it's awesome to see.
02:13I mean, they can set their own rates, they set their own schedule.
02:15It's a flexible way to make extra income.
02:17Williams has an ambitious goal of adding 7,000 more coaches to the athletes' untapped platform by the end of 2026.
02:25Parents are pouring in more money than ever to support their kids in sports.
02:29The average family spends more than $1,000 on a kid's primary sport per year, according to the Aspen Institute.
02:37That's a 46% increase since 2019.
02:40Another study says 83% of parents believe their kids have the skills to play at a college level.
02:46Despite that belief, less than 7% of high school athletes go on to compete in the NCAA.
02:52But for those destined for greatness, intervention comes early, like swimmer Kathleen Baker, who won gold and silver medals at the Rio Olympics.
03:00She said the biggest turning point in her career was when she was 12.
03:03She was a good swimmer, not great, met a coach who had trained a couple Olympians and he decided to work with her one-on-one.
03:09So by the time she was 14, she was training with Olympians and beating them because she had spent two years with this guy.
03:14But like, if you can find that kind of mentor, that kind of coach in your corner at the late elementary, early middle school age, it makes such a difference.
03:22Baker is now a coach in Wilmington, North Carolina, available for hire on Williams' platform.
03:28For Straight Arrow News, I'm Chris Francis.
03:30If you have some thoughts on this story, and we know parents do, or maybe another suggestion on a youth sports topic you're passionate about, you can reach me at cfrancis at san.com.
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