Jump to content

Menu

If your child is involved in competitive sports or other activities...


Recommended Posts

We travel 35 minutes for flute lessons, 25 minutes for piano, 20-30 (depending on traffic, it's at a university right in the city) for clarinet, 25 minutes for orchestra, 45 for dd's internship, 20 for dds' volunteer position, 20 for robotics, 20 for art, 0-5 for Scouts (most meetings are at our home,) and 5-15 minutes for various sports. We'll be adding 5 minutes for band in the fall. That's for the weekly stuff. We also travel hours to get to various camps and competitions during the year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My DD does Young Champions cheer. The practices are close to home (about 10 minutes), but there are two rounds of competition a year, each containing one regional (about an hour 1/2 away, but this year it's supposed to be closer to home) and one state (about 4 hours away) competition if they qualify at regionals, and her team almost always does. At her level, they don't go to nationals, but the older girls end up doing a nationals trip basically every summer, this year to Indianapolis. She also takes dance, tumbling, and piano, but all of those are within about 10-15 minutes of home.

 

Our co-op is about 30 minutes each way during the school year, and so is her homeschool lab science class, but I don't consider either of those extracurricular.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because of where we live we need to drive about 30-35 minutes to get to most of our activities. It feels excessive and gets old but we really just can't afford to move.

 

On the flip side we live just 10 minutes from dh's work. I have to remind myself that many people commute 30 minutes to work everyday. If we moved to the town all our activities are in he would have the same commute every day.

 

I'll feel better if a bunch of people respond saying that they travel 30 minutes for activities regularly :tongue_smilie:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Everything for us is 45min to 1hr each way. Track is 1hr, co-op is 45 min., foreign language is 45 min the opposite way from co-op. We just double up trips and I make sure I do my shopping on the same days.

 

Okay 4h is local, but our group was horrible so we have stepped down for the rest of the year. :glare:

 

Often times dh drives an hour to work, an hour home, and then an hour back out to track and vespers and then an hour home. He has a little car that gets 40mpg, so if we all do not have to go that is how we work it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For us, it varies from week to week and month to month.

 

This past school year, my son consistently had:

 

- choir rehearsals once or twice a week, 10 minutes from the house.

- choir performances once or twice a month, anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour from the house.

- tap class once a week, 30 minutes from the house.

- voice lesson once a week, 30 minutes from the house.

- robotics club once a week (fall only), 30 minutes from the house.

 

He also did five shows, each of which rehearsed anywhere from one to five times per week. The theatres and rehearsal spaces for those were as close as 15 minutes from the house to as far away as 45 minutes from the house. It was not unusual for him to have classes and/or rehearsals "stacked" on top of each other, as many as three activities in different places on a single day. Sometimes, that required driving 30 minutes in one direction, then an hour in another and then 45 minutes home.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While the distance for many things is further here, the drive is faster than when we lived in Northern VA.

 

Anyway, the co-op will be the furthest- about 30 minutes or so. Trumpet lessons are 10 minutes, Venture scouts also ten minutes, Science team- maybe 20 minutes.

 

She had closer homeschool classes last year than the co-op but much preferred the co-op model and so we are doing that this year. I hope to have her driving by Jan and get her a car so she can do the drive herself. I am not looking forward to two hours travel on Fridays- there and back in the morning and then the same in the afternoon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour each way for swimming. That is twice a day several days in the summer. My girls only do the twice a day once a week during school (they do the other twice a day by doing one practice closer to home on their own). Everything else is about 5 minutes. 10 tops.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How far do you travel for practice, music lessons, classes, etc?

 

Out here the minimum is 20 minutes, not this current year but last year we drove 45 minutes for violin. Next year maybe driving 45 minutes if I can get dd a spot at the horseriding (I have heard they sometimes are willing to exchange work hours for lowered fees so have to see).

 

We drive 1 hour for our volunteer location. Field trips which usually are actually 1-2 day classes we apparently drive upto 5 hours each way, but those are not like weekly classes of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Depends on the activity. Here are things we are involved in:

 

piano - he walks, 1x/week, school year

karate - they walk, 4x/week, year round

Little League baseball - 1 mile, spring - 3 - 5 x/week

Travel baseball - practice field 15 min. Games - up to 2 hours away. Spring/summer.

Violin - 20 minutes each way, 2x/week, school year

gymnastics - 25 min each way, 3x/week, year-round

Boy scouts - he walks, 1x/week

Rowing - 20 minutes each way, 5x/week in the summer (we carpool)

Both my oldest boys have jobs within a mile, so they walk

 

I think that's it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We drive an hour away (so two hours round trip) for music lessons twice a week. The kids compete in music festivals in the spring - usually three or four different ones and they're anywhere from 20 minutes to 2.5 hours away. This year ds (12) also made it to provincials and that was about a 7 hour drive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because of where we live we need to drive about 30-35 minutes to get to most of our activities. It feels excessive and gets old but we really just can't afford to move.

 

On the flip side we live just 10 minutes from dh's work. I have to remind myself that many people commute 30 minutes to work everyday. If we moved to the town all our activities are in he would have the same commute every day.

 

I'll feel better if a bunch of people respond saying that they travel 30 minutes for activities regularly :tongue_smilie:

 

40 minutes there, 40 minutes home every day. Does that make you feel good? :001_smile:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For my highschoolers, we drive 40 minutes each way, for basketball and soccer practices and games. That means at least five times a week from the beginning of August through the end of February :) It's not the drive that bothers me as much as the two hour wait (during practices) once I get there - I was spoiled last year as my oldest son was able to drive and take his younger brother with him . . .this year the eldest will be heading to college so I get chauffering duty again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We always lived in large cities in California, where it took at least 20-30 minutes to drive almost anywhere, so keep that in mind.:-)

 

Dance classes, which were always once a week for an hour, were on the other side of town, and not right off the freeway, so I left the house at least 30 minutes before classes started. Highland dance competitions were almost always out of town; in the summer, that mean multiple out-of-town trips during the summer, from April through September, including Corta Madera, Costa Mesa, Sacramento, Fresno, and Modesto. One Highland games was in town, another was just 40 miles away. Once we went to Seattle. :-) In the winter, there were three indoor competitions, somewhere between San Jose and Sacramento. Dd did Highland dance for 9 years.

 

Older dd was in a marching band one year (color guard); practices were 20 miles away on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; after January there was a weekend-long band camp every month until school was out, and then each section added a practice each week. There were two 10-day trips, one to Seattle, one to Southern California. That 20-mile trip took at least 45 minutes, as we had to travel the freeway during rush-hour traffic to be there at 6 (practice was over at 9). Happily, she only did that for one year. :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rebecca just joined the competitive gymnastics team at a larger gym in Nashville. We drive 40 minutes one way, three times a week. We put Sylvia in that gym too, at a noncompetitive level. We previously were driving about 5 minutes to their gym, so this is a big change.

 

AHG is about 10 minutes away. Choir, 10. We're dropping co-op this year, but that was 40 minutes one way too. When they did soccer (they didn't have a session this spring, hoping they start it up again next year), that was about 20 minutes away.

 

We live in a small town.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Everything except travel teams are no more than 30 minutes top and that's because we live on the outskirts of town. However my kids are on a lot of different travel teams and have competitions we have to travel for. We can easily have to travel 3-5 hours regularly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the replies. I'm looking at switching gyms for my daughter. I currently drive about 20 minutes each way and we would be driving about an hour each way to the new one. She goes at least twice a week. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy. :D

 

Not crazy. But, it's a huge difference! If she gets really competitive (I'm assuming it's gymnastics) she'd be going 4 - 5 times/week. Are you ready for that?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not crazy. But, it's a huge difference! If she gets really competitive (I'm assuming it's gymnastics) she'd be going 4 - 5 times/week. Are you ready for that?

 

It is cheer, not gymnastics, so she wouldn't have to go that much. If she needs another day she can do a private lesson closer to home.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All times are one way travel...We travel 45 min for violin lessons 1X/week, 20 min for violin practice 1X/week, and 1 hour 15 min for orchestra once a week. We travel 2.5 hours for Irish fiddle lessons twice a month and various distances for concerts, gigs, and Irish sessions fairly regularly.

 

This summer I am driving an hour every day for 2 weeks for violin camp, 10 hours for fiddle camp, and to Ireland for fiddle competition.

 

Yeah, I put a lot of miles on a car. (over 43,000 miles in 16 months)

 

 

I won't even go into all the miles we do for wrestling...though that has eased up a little now that oldest is in high school and most of his practice is through the school during wrestling season.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cheerleading is also our farthest drive, but it's only about minutes away and she goes 2-3 times per week. Swimming, track, gymastics, baseball, soccer, etc. practices are all within 20 minutes. Games and tournaments can be a lot farther.

 

If she's the only child at home, the practice times are good and it's not stopping you from doing other things, an hour doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Practices aren't too bad: 20 minutes each way 4x a week and only 2 hours each way once a month, it's the competition/events that get us. My daughter is involved in disabled/adaptive sports and they are few and far between.

 

Over the last year or so:

Regular swim meets: 1-2 hours each way, usually monthly

Adaptive swim meets and other disability events: driving 6-10 hours each way times two plus two different trips involving flights.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Choir: 10 minutes. We could ride the city bus (25 minutes) but we don't get home in time for dinner.

Guitar: Ditto.

 

Swimming: <5 minutes, as we go to the neighborhood pool.

 

Piano: 15 minutes. Used to be 30, but the piano teacher moved her studio back into town because she was having a hard time getting new students to drive out into the country.

 

Karate: 5 minutes. It's close enough that the boys could bike there in 15-20 minutes, as soon as ds7 learns to ride a bike well enough.

 

We purposely chose activities nearby to cut down on gas, and so that we can ride bikes as soon as the boys are all aware enough/stable enough on their bikes to ride in fairly heavy traffic (with bike lanes, but still, some drivers are kind of crazy).

 

Cat

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dd(15) has been a competitive dancer since she was 7.

 

Regular practices are always in the range of 15-20 minutes away (less than 5 miles).

 

Workshops, master classes, and conventions are from 30 minutes to 2hrs away.

 

Regional competitions are anywhere from 15 minutes to 2hrs away.

 

National competitions can be anywhere from a 3-hr drive to a 5 hr plane ride.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

one thing about cheer, too-you might be able to take cheer at one gym, but do tumbling at a gymnastics gym. My DD takes tumbling 2x/week at a gymnastics gym which doesn't have a competitive cheer team, but practices with her cheer team. Since her cheer program doesn't have the tumble track and some of the other equipment that makes teaching the harder tumbling passes easier and safer, this is a better fit for DD, and is something her cheer coach not only approves of, but suggests if you can afford it financially.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...