How youth sports are squeezing Sunday worship
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Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
America's youth sports boom is quietly rewriting Sunday mornings, turning the family calendar into a competition between the pews and the playing fields.
Why it matters: For generations, churches helped organize American family life around a shared weekly ritual. Youth sports are increasingly filling that role on Sundays — reshaping what families treat as sacred time.
- The U.S. has undergone one of its fastest religious shifts in modern history, marked by a rapid increase in the religiously unaffiliated and in church closures. Youth sports are one of the less visible forces driving that broader cultural change.
- As it's boomed into a multi-billion-dollar industry, more games are moving to Sundays, something less common a generation ago.
- "The idea of missing church for sports is just assumed," Linda Flanagan, author of "Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports — and Why It Matters," tells Axios. "It's just not even a consideration anymore."
By the numbers: Among parents of children ages 5-17, Sunday religious participation fell from 26.8% in 2003-07 to 16.7% in 2021-24, an Axios analysis of American Time Use Survey data found.
- Meanwhile, youth sports participation climbed to 58% in 2024, up from 53.8% in 2022 and marking a third consecutive annual increase, according to the Aspen Institute's Project Play.
- Another measure found 65% tried a sport at least once — the highest share in Sports & Fitness Industry Association data dating to at least 2012, the Aspen Institute's Project Play found.
State of play: The youth-sports industrial complex is rapidly commercializing, fueled by private equity, massive tournament complexes and the normalization of out-of-state travel teams.
- Parents are increasingly treating sports not just as recreation, but as a primary identity and community anchor.
How it works: Youth sports often start in local rec leagues, then move into club and travel teams that play weekend tournaments across a wider region.
- Across basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball and soccer, many weekend tournaments use Saturday for pool or preliminary play and Sunday for elimination rounds and championships.
- That fuels cities' and towns' investments in sports complexes built to draw traveling families and their hotel and restaurant spending.
Zoom in: The average sports parent spends 3 hours, 23 minutes every day their child has a practice or game, including driving, attending activities, washing uniforms, preparing meals and communicating with coaches.
- Families are spending heavily, too: The average sports family spent an average of $1,016 on a child's primary sport in 2024, up 46% from 2019, Aspen found.
What they're saying: Tim Morey, lead pastor at Life Covenant Church in Torrance, Calif., tells Axios that sports don't necessarily sever families from church, but they make attendance "more spotty" at times.
- "If we inadvertently teach our kids that sports (are) more important than weekly worship, then everything is more important than weekly worship."
Yes, but: Religious institutions are attempting to adapt rather than surrender.
- Morey said some families "divide and conquer," sending one parent to church and the other to the field.
- Others have kids attend the first 10 minutes of service in their sports uniforms or stream services live from team hotels.
Between the lines: Youth sports can create the same sense of community that mirrors what church did — to a point, Flanagan said.
- Parents form tight bonds because they spend so much time together, but competition for positions and playing time can also strain those relationships, Flanagan said.
The bottom line: For generations, Sunday was about getting the family closer to heaven.
- For many families today, Sunday can also be about getting a daughter closer to UCLA's softball team.
