As American trends move toward sport specialization at younger ages, the financial burden on families to pay for sports training, coaching, and competition has gradually pushed many youth sports out of reach for middle and lower class families. Without government funding to support youth sports programs as is done in many other countries, it appears the vast majority of American youth will be shut out from high performance training for sports and thus limit our athletic pool of athletes at the elite level.

Question:Within our political system, how can these trends be reversed to provide equal opportunity to all youth if they have the talent, desire, and work ethic to compete at the highest levels?