Is Private Coaching Worth the Money?

Last reviewed: August 2026

Team fees, travel, and equipment get most of the attention in a youth sports budget. Private coaching and camps are smaller individually, but they're also the most discretionary line item — the one a family chooses to add, not one a league sets for them.

What a typical family spends

The Aspen Institute's Project Play survey reports a national average of $183/year on private and small-group lessons and $111/year on skills camps — $294/year combined. That's an all-sport average, not specific to any one sport, and it covers instruction and camps specifically, not team fees, travel, or equipment, which are tracked separately.

What it doesn't buy

The NCAA's probability-of-competing figures are population base rates — this year's NCAA roster count divided by last year's high school participant count. They don't move with an individual family's coaching spend, and no source ties private lessons or camps to a measurably higher probability of playing in college. This isn't a claim that coaching spend buys a better shot at a scholarship — it's one cost line set plainly next to the same payoff data used across this site.

A more useful question

Rather than framing private coaching as a scholarship investment, it's worth weighing it against the rest of the season's budget and against what the child actually wants out of it — skill development and enjoyment are real returns on their own, independent of any recruiting outcome.

Source

• Aspen Institute Project Play — State of Play youth sports parent surveys — 2022 Costs to Play chart (PDF).

Informational only, not financial or recruiting advice. Figures are national averages and will differ from any one family's actual costs.