My son plays travel hockey. I live in Florida.
Florida....hockey....ice fees, skates close to $1000, sticks over $300, the rest of the gear, tournaments in the northeast....you want to talk expensive? Lol, get out of here with baseball.
We've always, always paid our own way. If some of the ither team parents bring up fundraisers during the year we balk, and never ever approach other people, even relatives, about supporting our son's sports financially. But he's my only child and we can afford it. Its always been our position that if you can't afford it you shouldn't be playing at this level.
But what makes me really shake my head is the parents who pay for travel hockey meanwhile their kids stink. Like really stink and have no future playing the sport other than in a beer league in their 30's. These kids don't have their edges, don't grasp positions, can't complete a tape to tape pass to save their life. They should be in Rec league but their parents insist they play at this level, and the organizations in Florida are more than happy to take their money and give them a spot.
We're out of here after this season ends. My son will be playing up north in an academy next season. No NHL dreams, but he has set his goal on playing in college and he's putting in the work. But if he wasn't as skilled as he is we would have pulled him from travel long ago and put him in Rec.
Youth sports isn't what it was when I was growing up and its never going back. Its so much more involved that you really need to look hard at how skilled your kid really is, how much they really want it, how much effort they're putting into it, and how its affecting them. Are they still able to have a social life, or are they turning into anti-social weirdos? Are they learning life lessons, or just learning how to be entitled whiners? And grades? Heck, they better keep them up or they're not playing in any decent college.
TLDR version.....Milano's a d-bag for begging people to pay for her kid's sport.