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Hockey Moms? |
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There’s a reason soccer is the world’s sport…you don’t have to pay much to play.
And that’s why all this talk about “hockey moms” is making me raise an eyebrow. If your kid plays hockey, more power to you - but in a time of home foreclosures, bank bailouts, and a falling dollar, is hockey really representative of the type of lifestyles struggling Americans are leading?
Check out this report on rising hockey fees in Wisconsin:
Joyal has two sons who play hockey for Madison West.
“They want to show their pride and play for their high school, and it’s getting really tough to make that happen this year with $1, 800 due up front,” Joyal says.
The 2007-2008 budget raises the fee to play hockey from $400 to $800, slapping Joyal and other parents with the added cost — plus, a $115 participation fee for all athletes.
“We had to cut $7.9 million this year, which is the real big picture,” school board president Arlene Silveira says.
“We got a lot of complaints from people saying you hit the classroom before you hit the fields,” she says.
The school board president says hockey already costs more per student.
“Even with the increased fees, the district is still subsidizing hockey $465 a student, which is still higher than most of our other sports,” Silveira says.
Contrary to what Sarah Palin and Republicans would like to you to believe, things aren’t peachy keen in small-town America. Hockey moms are struggling, and those who can’t afford to pay for kids’ hockey fees are struggling even worse. Schools - as the article shows - are struggling too, meaning that hockey costs aren’t the only problems impacting American kids.
In small-town Ohio where I’m from, people are worried about the economy, worried about the price of gas, and worried about how America is going to solve its problems. And a lot of those people know what the real source of those problems is - the Bush White House, and years of bad Republican governance.
