A competitive edge.

• Author: Stewart, Heather Dawn
• Position: From the Editor

My younger brother played on a youth soccer team when he was a kid, and it was a pretty low-key affair. His league played games on Saturday mornings, and his team lost every single game. One week, my dad offered to take him to McDonald's for lunch (a rare treat) if his team won. They lost--but my dad just shrugged and took him to lunch anyway, because in the '80s, expectations were fairly low. Parents pushed their kids into youth sports to help them learn teamwork and hone their competitive instincts. And--let's be honest--to get them out of the house on Saturday mornings.

Nowadays, parents have their expectations set a little higher. Last year, TD Ameritrade surveyed parents about their spending on youth sports programs. They targeted households with at least $25,000 in investable assets, and found that those parents typically spend between $100 and $499 each month on elite youth sports. (That includes equipment, team fees, coaching and travel expenses.) A not-insignificant number of parents spend $1,000+ each month per child.

But parents clearly consider it a worthwhile investment in their child's future. In the TD Ameritrade survey, two-thirds of the parents said they hoped sports would help their child snag a scholarship--and 40 percent were pretty sure their kids would earn scholarships. And, astonishingly, a full 15 percent of parents said they were counting on their child making it to the Olympics or becoming a professional athlete. (In another survey, TD Ameritrade found, sadly, that only 2 percent of youth athletes turned pro or went to...