The Coachella Valley may be a desert, but it has a rich and varied landscape when it comes to youth sports. Families looking to get their kids moving, have fun and make friends can find teams, leagues, schools and camps for a range of sports, including: soccer, golf, tennis, baseball, football, swimming, water polo, ice skating, ice hockey, football, basketball, cheer, gymnastics, dance and more.
The question often comes up: what are the advantages of recreational leagues versus club, or travel teams? Kids often start at local recreation programs run by the Desert Recreation District, which offers dozens of options from Rancho Mirage down to the Salton Sea. Or they participate in programs run by the Palm Springs City Parks and Recreation, the Family YMCA of the Desert or the Boys and Girls Club of the Coachella Valley. Once they hone in on a sport, kids migrate to one of the many recreational leagues. Once they reach peak potential in rec leagues, some athletes move on to play in club or travel teams, and join the high school-based sports teams.
There are distinct advantages to each type of team, and each has its ardent supporters. In many sports, the recreational leagues train beginners of all ages and focus on learning the game and having fun. They often are based in a particular community, so kids are likely to play with kids they know from school or the neighborhood. It is a relatively low-pressure environment. The kids get placed on different teams each year, so the families have a chance to make friends with many different parents and kids as each season progresses. You don’t have the stress of try-outs and the cost is relatively low.
Club and travel teams often require a larger commitment in time and money with more practices, more games, more tournaments, and significant expenses in gas, hotels and food on the road, for many weekends out of the year. However, these teams expand the athlete’s pool of competitors beyond the valley and can hone their skills at a high level, enhancing their chances for athletic scholarships. The families of kids in club see each other constantly and they often form a tight bond that can last many years. Some of the club teams generate a significant amount of revenue for the facilities they anchor (some of the local pools for example) and that helps the facilities be able to offer more programs to the community.
CV Kids did a little research and found that whatever your child’s interests, the desert has many options for budding athletes.
Basketball is primarily organized via the local parks and rec districts and the high schools. Family YMCA of the Desert offers basketball and flag football. Speaking of football, the Desert Sands Friday Night Lights program serves kids from Rancho Mirage to Coachella. Desert Hot Springs Football and Cheer is a popular option as well.
The American Youth Soccer Organization (A.Y.S.O.) has five leagues in the desert, from Palm Springs to Thermal, including Desert Hot Springs and Morongo Valley. The league has dozens of teams and plays on multiple fields. Be aware that the league asks for significant parent involvement to mark off the fields for the games, set up and tear down the goals, and referee the games.
Palm Desert Soccer, also known as PDYSL, is a rec league based at the Hovley Soccer Park. It costs about $80 a year and sends the winning teams to a tournament in Temecula each December.
Christopher Flicker has two kids who have been playing in the La Quinta AYSO since 2009. He says, “I like recreational soccer because everyone plays and for the most part the coaches are really good about encouraging all skill levels. They are usually very positive with the kids and don’t emphasize a win-at-all-cost attitude.”
Monique Verlato’s daughter Eliana has been playing soccer for 7 years. She started at AYSO in La Quinta and then switched to PDYSL. She’s had offers to enroll her daughter in club soccer but has declined, saying, “I just don’t think it is healthy for them to play every week, year-round. The cost and time commitment is just too much, especially when you have multiple kids.” Palm Springs Soccer League offers extensive programming as well.
For more competitive soccer, families migrate toward club soccer, many to the Desert United Soccer League, which is based in Palm Desert, but competes all over Southern California.
Serious swimmers may want to check out the Piranha Swim Team, which operates out of Palm Springs, Indio, Palm Desert, La Quinta and Loma Linda and runs competitive swim teams for all ages. The program costs $80-$110 a month.
The Palm Desert Swim Club trains kids from 6 years old to 18 of all abilities and costs $75-$130 a month. Families can scale up their level of commitment as their kids set higher and higher goals. The 8-year-olds, for example, swim 45 minutes a day 3x/week. The most elite swimmers practice 6 days a week for at least two hours a day.
Coach Mitch Gold from the Palm Desert Swim Club (PDSC) says most of the top high school swimmers are also club swimmers and the league attempts to coordinate practices and schedules with many of the schools. He says the club teams can really develop a young athlete’s potential and is proud that many of his male and female youth swimmers compete at very high levels. They have won events at CIF (California Interscholastic Foundation) level and one girl, Akemi Von Scherr, has even qualified for the open water junior nationals in 2019.
Gold says he likes to mold swimmers from a tender age, saying, “The younger the better. The earlier we can get them in the water and teach them the fundamentals of swimming, the better. Swimming is like a language. If you learn it at a young age you can become more proficient.” The PDSC has grown to more than 150 athletes.
Julie Brunett’s three kids have been dedicated members of the Palm Desert Swim Club for many years. She says they initially looked at the swim team to provide life skills, safety around water and an activity that would keep them moving year-round in our desert climate. But, she says, over the years it has become much more than that, saying, “Swimming with the club has provided routine and taught the kids discipline and focus which I believe has benefitted them elsewhere in life, especially in school. It has taught them how to win and lose gracefully. It has provided them the opportunity to be on a team but also to pursue individual goals. Some of their very best memories and their very best friendships have been formed because of their time spent with the club. And, of course club swimming gets them off the couch and off the electronics. So it has been great for both their physical and mental health.”
Baseball and softball are also wildly popular. Angela Guerrero’s son John started out in PONY recreational baseball with Palm Desert Youth Sports Association and then moved on at age 12 to play for a team called the La Quinta Scorpions which is part of the La Quinta Youth Sports Association. One year the team even made it to the PONY League World Series, representing the entire western region of the United States. Guerrero says rec ball all-stars is the only route to qualify for the PONY League World Series. Her son now plays on the junior varsity team at Shadow Hills High School. She says, “He developed work ethic, discipline, time management, sportsmanship and teamwork. It really helped his confidence, despite his being hard of hearing, and exposed him to a range of new friends.”
She says that rec ball is geared more toward getting your child started in a sport. But once they get to a point where they’ve gained all the knowledge they can gain in rec ball, you can go into travel ball. At some travel teams, you have to pay a monthly membership fee or contribute to the cost of going to regional competitions. With high school baseball, you have the potential to go to state championships and get your child noticed by college scouts. There are also tournaments that cost more but are guaranteed to have college scouts in attendance. She adds, some parents even choose their high school according to the strength of the coaching staff.
Desert Hot Springs Little League fields a number of teams, and Palm Springs Youth League Baseball is a PONY league that serves the west valley. Indio Youth Sports Association offers baseball and softball as well.
Juan Rodriguez runs a rec baseball league called the Coachella Youth Baseball Softball Association that has 13 teams for boys and girls ages 4 to 14, and costs $75 per season. He says, “The benefit of a recreational team is that its focus is more on recruiting and teaching local community kids close to that park to participate and help their community. Often, we fundraise to support field maintenance. We emphasize camaraderie and sportsmanship. The players commiserate and talk to the same kids that they go to school with. So it helps them build character and personality, plus they learn how to play the sport and get exercise, whereas with travel teams, there’s a different focus. There’s an individual parent-child focus to advance to the next level whether it be high school, college or professional.”
Desert Prospects is a club team that uses its networks to help student baseball players get recruited to college. Run by Patrick Evans, long-time coach and former professional baseball player, the goal of the program is to bring together the hard-working and talented youth of all ages in the Coachella Valley and beyond and provide them with the best atmosphere to grow as players. To date, the Desert Prospects program has helped roughly 46 kids play baseball collegiately, 16 kids play baseball professionally, and 15 kids play softball collegiately.
Tennis, is very big here in the desert. There are many camps, including those at the Palm Desert Resort and at Shadow Mountain in La Quinta. Of course, the world-famous Indian Wells Tennis Garden has lessons and organizes matches. There are U.S. Tennis Association tournaments and competitions run by the National Junior Tennis League. Both offer multiple levels of tournaments from the easiest – level seven – up to the most competitive – level one. Players are assigned a Universal Tennis Ranking, as they play and face opponents of various levels – which qualifies them for certain tournaments. Higher level tournaments are by invitation only.
For those interested in youth ice hockey – check out the Desert Blaze program, based out of Desert Ice Castle in Cathedral City. It has a rec program for beginners, and a club program for more dedicated hockey players. The rink also offers ice skating lessons at their skate school, which start at a half hour a week for beginners. Many of the kids participate in friendly competitions via the Ice Skating Institute, which is a national organization. They also have a small group called Future Champions that trains skaters for competitions across Southern California, including those run by the U.S. Figure Skating Association.
And last, but certainly not least, is golf: the sport that attracts people from all over the world to the Coachella Valley. Many kids start with The First Tee Golf, based in Palm Desert. There are a number of excellent camps, including ones at Shadow Mountain. Mission Hills Country Club has PGA Junior Golf camps as well. The FCWT Junior Golf Tournament makes a stop at PGA West.
So whichever sport you favor, whatever your level of play – the Coachella Valley is a great place to get involved and join in the fun!
