Demise of youth sports starts and ends with the NCAA. Giving 7th/8th graders verbal commitments is such a joke and causing feeding frenzies, and helping to get the few travel club owners very, very wealthy because they purposely bait parents and string them along with misinformation. We hang on thinking that our kid will get what they promise. We are partially to blame because at some point, one has to know that one's child just doesn't have it. BTW, it's OK not to be a top player. Your kid probably has other talents that you never bothered to recognize and develop because you're so focused on your own inadequacies. And then, you have the parents that happen to have the physically gifted kids that elevated them to some special status in their minds. And, there are many of these parents. They're loud. They were bullies or were bullied as kids. They are rashes that just won't go away. They're kids are usually assholes. I feel bad for their kids. Gotta suck to have these moms and dads for parents...