Homework happens against a window in the dark. Ninety minutes there, ninety minutes back, three times a week. And somewhere around mile 40 tonight, you stopped being sure who this is for.
I'm Sammy.
Welcome to Hey Sammy, where we tell each other the truth about youth sports, one letter at a time. Today, the commute, and the question hiding inside the phrase, it's what she needs. This one's from Maria in Chicago. She writes:
We drive 90 minutes each way to practice, three times a week. My husband says it's too much. I think it's what she needs. How do we decide?
Let's do the math out loud first, because the number hides in pieces. Three round trips is nine hours of driving. Every week.
That's a part-time job. That's 140 hours a season, give or take, spent watching taillights. I'm not saying it to shame you. Plenty of families make that drive and would again.
I'm saying it because a decision this size deserves to be seen at full size. Now, the sentence doing all the work in your letter: It's what she needs. I want you to finish that sentence out loud with an actual ending.
She needs it... for what? To make a national team? To play in college? To be with the best coaching she's ever had? To stay with friends she loves? Every one of those is a real answer, and they justify very different amounts of highway.
The sentence with no ending justifies everything. That's exactly why it needs an ending. Then ask the follow-up that stings a little: Is this truly the only place she can get it? Not the best place, the only place. Because there's almost always an 80% option at half the distance. And here's what the far club never puts in the brochure.
The drive is part of her training load. Lost sleep, homework in the dark, dinner from a container, a kid who's tired before warm-ups. Development isn't just the two hours at practice; it's the whole life the practice sits inside. A slightly worse club and a fully rested kid beats the reverse more often than we'd like to admit.
And your husband, he's not the enemy of her dream. He's the only other person who can see the whole family from where he stands. The siblings at home, the marriage running on logistics texts. Hear him the way you want him to hear you.
And do the sibling check while you're at it. Somewhere in your house, there might be a kid who spent two years in a backseat at somebody else's practice. The drive cost them, too. And they never got a vote. Put their hours in the ledger.
Then bring in the one voice missing from your letter. Hers. Ask your daughter, without leading the witness, what she'd think about something closer.
Some kids say the drive is worth everything, and mean it. Some kids have been quietly falling asleep on the highway wondering how to tell you. You won't know which kid you have until you ask.
And here's a middle path nobody offers you, because the far club has no reason to. The experiment. Pick a defined chunk, one season, one winter, and try the closer option. Not forever, a trial, with a review date on the calendar. If her development stalls and she aches for the old team, you've learned the miles are worth it.
Drive them gladly, with a clear conscience. If she's just as good, sleeps more, and the whole house exhales? You've learned something better.
Decisions this size deserve data from your own family, not from a club's brochure.
One more thing, about the car itself. What's actually happening in there for three hours? Because I know families where the drive is the relationship. Talks that never happen anywhere else, music arguments, the good stuff. If that's you, count it on the plus side of the ledger, truly. But if it's two silent phones and a kid asleep against the window, count that too.
The car is nine hours of your family's life, every single week. It should be given a job. Or given back.
This week's assignment is arithmetic. Add up the real weekly hours, all of them, and write the number where you both can see it. Numbers end arguments that opinions can't. That's today.
If your family is fighting the calendar too, write me, hey@heysammi.com.
I read everything, usually from a parking lot.
