The Ultimate Sideline Survival Kit For Youth Sports Parents

My family got pulled into youth sports faster than we expected. We started as dabblers — taekwondo, sports-themed summer camps, and recreation-level soccer — but things escalated quickly when travel teams entered the picture. A little recruiting pressure from other parents, and suddenly we were all in, committing weekends and most holidays to the sidelines.

Each sport has its own parent-testing conditions. For us, travel soccer was a year-round affair that stretched from still-frozen “icebreaker” tournaments to sweltering turf fields with no shade and heat radiating up from the rubber pellets. One weekend, we stomped our feet to keep our toes from going numb; the next, we wondered if our sneakers were slowly melting. Indoor sports don’t exactly offer relief, either, trading weather for the unmistakable aroma of sweaty matches in poorly ventilated high school gyms and bleachers that feel like they were designed specifically to hurt lower backs.

Continue reading to learn more about what to bring to youth sports, written by Heather Kuldell-Ware.