‘Travel sports’ just means club sports, traveling to other areas to compete. I’m assuming whichever person mentioned travel softball travels to other towns, possibly a few other states if the athlete is at a high level, but no international travel.Glass Half Full wrote: ↑Tue Jun 27, 2023 9:24 pmSounds like a rip off to me!Gymfan wrote: ↑Tue Jun 27, 2023 8:59 pm
She always just wants to sound rich like, “only rich people like me can afford the super expensive sport of cheer”.The more money she spends, the richer she feels (ironically). Cheer is expensive, but there are more expensive sports, like figure skating, equestrian, hockey.. Most cheer gyms offer a few fundraising opportunities to offset costs. I know cheerleaders who raise hundreds, even thousands of dollars just from selling popcorn. Of course it’s much easier to sell popcorn when you have friends/coworkers and actually *like* your family, which Kendal does not.
But you certainly don’t have to be anywhere near rich to do cheer. Floridians also have fewer travel costs because so many cheer competitions are in or near Florida.
I’m thinking it’s a lot more expensive than travel softball though. A lot of cheer is a ripoff because it’s all run by Varsity which has a total monopoly on the sport. You have to pay over $50 to watch your kid perform a 2.5 minute routine twice, on top of already paying well over $100 for your kid to enter a 2-day competition. Then there’s the fact that Kendal’s kids switch teams a lot, so that means new uniforms every season, so that’s another 500+ a year. Other kids are getting 2 or 3 seasons out of the same uniform.
In Switzerland we don’t pay to watch our kids compete. I’ve a gymnast and track and field athletes. I don’t know what ‘travel’ teams are. Do you mean out of the country? Like internationally? Because in Switzerland we are always travelling to competition. All over the country every weekend. And our eldest is an international standard track and field athlete. So this year she’s been to France and Italy so far, Finland next month and probably France again in September, not to mention all the other competitions all over Switzerland. If kendal is paying more for her low level cheer children than we are paying for our higher level gymnast and track children (which I suspect she is) then she’s just spending stupid money and enjoying the flex. And let’s not forget that Switzerland is one of the more expensive countries in which to live where minimum wage is on almost 3x higher than in the US so everything should cost more. But I’m suspecting it doesn’t when in comes to competitive sports
It sounds like you have a very high level athlete in your family! Kendal definitely does not, but pays competition fees and tuition as if she does! Your child gets to travel to all those countries, while Kendal rarely leaves Florida for competitions lol. Cheer is a very US-based sport though (because again, Varsity owns everything), so even at the highest level, the World Championships takes place in Florida every year, despite everyone wishing it would move around to other parts of the world.
On a side note, I’m fascinated by how perfect your English is as someone from Switzerland (such a beautiful country by the way). Is German your main language? They start teaching a bit of Spanish to 5 year olds in school in the US, but I have yet to see anyone come out of school knowing how to speak a second language anywhere close to fluently. We’re clearly teaching it wrong or not spending nearly enough time on it. I bet Kendal’s kids don’t have a clue how to say anything in another language despite it being required coursework.
. Our kids are born raised and educated here. We speak English at home but their entire upbringing has been in German (the language in which they are educated) and Swiss German (the dialect spoken outside of school). Most kids here speak really good English. I am a gymnastics coach and I rarely speak German in the gym. My entire group of girls aged 12+ speaks to me in English and understands me too. I’m pretty fluent in German and you definitely wouldn’t know our kids were anything but Swiss. Obviously they’re fluent in English too but all our family and friends in Ireland says they speak English “with an accent” whereas they speak German and swiss German without a hint that their parents speak english. 
