sunspot.net - business

Alexander T. Mason, an investment banker from Owings Mills, is amazed by the progress his 15-year-old son has made in polishing his tennis game one month after enrolling in a new youth sports training facility in Baltimore County.

"One of his tennis coaches has already noticed that his lateral movement has improved," said Mason, vice chairman of corporate finance at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, of his son, Christopher.

"That was amazing to me. I was surprised that a coach could see results so quickly. They identified a muscle group that needed strengthening. He's getting stronger and faster and more agile."

In Maryland and across the country, parents are spending big money to give their kids a leg up mentally and physically at sports training facilities such as Velocity Sports Performance in Bare Hills, where the Masons signed on. Spending on specialized youth training is estimated to exceed $4 billion in the United States.

For decades, individual coaches have trained elite young athletes - especially in figure skating, tennis and gymnastics.

But the latest evolution involves training franchises, popping up like chain restaurants, with brand names and locations across the country.

The trend is sweeping in many more children than the few who used trainers in the past, with more varied skills.

Some youth psychologists and others, however, wonder whether healthy, simple kid play is being lost in the push toward year-round training.

People involved in the industry and their clients say a range of factors are at work: a push for success in high school athletics, the lure of scholarships at a time of soaring tuitions or even professional riches, concerns about sedentary kids in a video world, and parents lacking time to practice with their children.

"The interest in unbelievable," said Dr. Josh Fink, medical director of Prescriptions for Fitness Inc., a medically supervised training center with sites in Connecticut and New York.

"In a down economy, people are less willing to spend money on themselves, but they're still willing to spend money on the future of their children," Fink said. "People think it's better to invest in their kids' future than in mutual funds.

"You've got people out there who think that their child could be the next cover of the Wheaties box, or an NFL player or a professional baseball player."

Youths represent about a tenth of his business, where some families spend more than $30,000 a year on athletic training. His rates range from $25 an hour for group sessions to $250 an hour for individuals.

Fink recalled one parent telling him, "When I call my broker and invest $20,000, I don't know if he really cares, but when I invest it in my son, I know he's going to try his best."

The explanation is simple to Jon Segal, founder and editor-in-chief of SchoolSports Magazine, which covers high school sports across the country:

"It's a logical extension of the big business that sports have become. Kids are turning pro at increasingly earlier ages, and colleges are offering college scholarships to kids at increasingly early ages. This is big business, and parents and their kids want to get a piece of the pie."

"These types of companies fill the gap left by those services cut by dwindling school budgets," said Paul M. Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon. "You're turning the level of time and investment up another notch."

In Anne Arundel County, a baseball training franchise called Frozen Ropes has worked with 7,000 clients, many of them in the 8-to-13 age range, since opening nearly three years ago. It has about 1,000 active clients.

Last year, Alex E. Brunet, the operation's president, found himself with a waiting list of 75 kids for the 12,000-square-foot facility, which was profitable by its second year.

"There's a lot more science going into sports now," said Brunet, who played college ball at the University of Maine. "A lot of the things I was taught in baseball are bio-mechanically incorrect."

The Glen Burnie center - named for baseball lingo describing a line-drive hit - has prospered for at least three reasons, as Brunet sees it.

Some parents acknowledge that they know little about baseball or softball and want trainers with expertise to help their children, he said. Others believe that they have taken their children as far as their own skills will allow and want them to receive advanced coaching.

And another group of parents believes their children aren't listening to their advice and seem to take instruction only from outsiders.

"Maybe 20 years ago, you're out in the back yard with Dad, but now he's still at work," said Brunet, who spends his days as a computer analyst for the Department of Defense.

"I think they want their kids involved in activities, and these are safe and have a good work ethic associated with them."

Frozen Ropes, a franchise business, has 19 locations nationwide. It plans to double in the next five to 10 years.

"We don't want to be the baseball McDonald's with one on every block. We want to be maybe the baseball Ruth's Chris [Steakhouse]," said Brunet, who with his partner, Vicky L. Medford, has discussed tripling the size of their facility and opening another in Northern Virginia.

Dan Haab has been a loyal Frozen Ropes customer for three years, bringing his son, 11, for baseball training and his daughter, 16, for softball. Haab also coaches a 12-year-old travel baseball team and uses Frozen Ropes to help their training.

"I can manage a team, raise the money and put the practices together, but when you get out there and you're playing teams from all over the country or all over the state, you're competing with the best," said Haab, a Glen Burnie resident and regional project manager for a security company.

"You've got to go out there and get the best training you can. My goal is to give my own kids and my team the best possible training that we can afford."

Haab hasn't kept track of the money he has spent at Frozen Ropes, but he knows it's in the thousands of dollars. He acknowledges his own amazement at the escalating cost and pace of youth sports, although he compares it to the cost of a top reading tutor who might charge $100 an hour.

"For advanced training, you pay," he said. "My team spends nothing compared to some other teams I know."

At the new Velocity Sports Performance center just north of Mount Washington, customers find a 40-yard artificial turf field, a 55-yard sprint track and clusters of free weights.

Unlike adult-oriented centers such as Bally Total Fitness or Curves for Women, more than three-quarters of its clientele are expected to be 8 to 22 years old.

"Physical education is being cut in schools, and look at the obesity level in your children," said Jason W. Beaulieu, sports performance director at Velocity Sports. "This is a good time to bring something like this to market."

Clients discuss what they hope to accomplish, and the staff at Velocity sports devises a plan to boost the child's fitness level in hour or 90-minute sessions. The programs might run from 12 to 75 sessions and cost $17 to $37 each, depending on a variety of factors. Those prices are for the small-group settings, with four to six students.

One-on-one with a personal trainer runs $55 to $75 an hour.

The center guarantees results as long as clients show up for their sessions. Unplanned absences are met with a phone call and a reminder that the guarantee will not apply to those who miss two or more sessions.

"I think Baltimore will be a terrific market," said Jamie N. McDonald, a former managing director at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown who left investment banking in 2002 after 16 years. "There's a great sports culture in this area. I think it's a good time for this because of the growing competitiveness of youth sports."

Her plunge into sports entrepreneurship was born of a personal quest to find a way for an athletically inclined son to do even better in sports. She's already making plans to open in Howard County in a year and Anne Arundel County in 2005.

Her new center - set for an official grand opening this week - will be Velocity's seventh nationwide, but the Georgia-based chain has sold 94 franchises across the country, according to company officials.

McDonald designed her business model around subscribing 200 clients the first year, which would enable the center to turn a profit. Each center costs about $500,000 to get started. She is seeking out coaches with master's degrees in strength and conditioning.

"People are starting to realize that people are not just playing the sport; they're actually training for it, and it's trickling down to high school," said Loren Seagrave, founder of Velocity Sports and a longtime coach. "It's on an upward trajectory. It doesn't show any signs of flattening out."

His company cites an estimate from the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute that American households spend $4.1 billion on private coaching and sports instruction for youth athletes.

But others raise serious concerns about whether it's a good idea for kids to be in perpetual training camp for those scarce athletic careers.

"It worries me tremendously," said Shari Young Kuchenbecker, a California research psychologist and author of a book, Raising Winners: A Parent's Guide to Helping Kids Succeed On and Off the Playing Field.

"Many parents have visions of scholarships, professional careers and paths of glory dancing in their heads for their child and, vicariously, for themselves," she said. "Most children are not that uni-dimensionally focused at the young ages that these places are targeting. It's just not healthy. The kid is treated more like a racehorse.

"The fact is," she said, "very few children are meant to be Wayne Gretsky or Mark Spitz or Mia Hamm or Tiger Woods."

Even Alexander Mason, Christopher's father, said he fears how intense the pursuit of youth athletics has become.

"I worry about it as a parent," he said. "Tennis has become so competitive that the kids who are playing it are playing year-round.

"Is that too much? Some would argue that it is too much. In the case of my son, he loves what he's doing. So right now I'm comfortable with the time he's spending."

Fink, the medical director who works with young athletes, is another critic of the franchise model - which also means more potential competition for him.

The volumes that franchises need to be profitable are greater than the number of youths who have the stuff to become top athletes, he said, so eventually quality control will suffer.

Demand isn't likely to diminish soon, though, he said.

"The trend will end," Fink said, "when baseball players get paid the same as teachers."