A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to comment here or via Twitter or via Facebook or via email – I knew y’all would have some great suggestions for me! I love hearing about your experiences with these different tournaments and how you weigh cost vs. value. As I keep saying, it’s not just about the tennis here – sometimes it’s about the Life Lessons learned.
Here’s what we finally decided to do regarding next week’s ITF tournament in Waco . . .
I sat down and figured out what the total cost was going to be for the tournament, expecting that my son will make it through a couple of qualifying matches and maybe, just maybe, into the main draw: flight, hotel, rental car, gas, meals, and his coach’s daily fee. A conservative estimate was $2500 – OUCH! For our family, that’s a lot to spend on one tournament, especially since our son is only guaranteed one match (remember: there is no back draw in these tourneys!). On top of that, we had to consider the possible missed school days and how he was going to stay on top of his work.
I asked my son how badly he wanted to play in this tournament. He said, “Really badly, Mom!” I asked if he wanted to play badly enough that he’d be willing to spend some of his savings to help off-set the cost. He thought about it for a minute then said yes. So, that’s what’s happening. He’s going to pay for part of the tournament, and we’re going to cover the rest. We figured this was a good use of his savings plus it would give him added accountability for his preparation and performance in Waco. When I say “performance”, I don’t mean whether he wins or loses matches. What I mean is that he competes well, fights hard, maintains a positive attitude, and absorbs the lessons he’s sure to learn.
Once we’d made the decision to let him go, it was time to make all the travel arrangements. One of my friends/readers suggested we use Priceline to book the trip – she thought we’d be able to cut the total cost (air, hotel, and rental car) by about 50%, which would be fantastic! The problem is that it’s waaaaaay cheaper to fly into Dallas (about 90 miles from Waco) instead of directly to Waco, and I could never figure out how to get Priceline to do airline tickets and rental car in one city but hotel in another, so that didn’t work. But, Southwest Airlines now flies from Atlanta to Dallas AND offers online fares with no change fee (!), so I signed my son up for their frequent flier program and started booking the trip. My son’s coach suggested I book the return flight for late afternoon on Monday – if my son is still in the tournament at that point, we can always change the date. If he’s out of the tournament before then, his coach is going to arrange practice matches with some of the other players (thanks to another reader for that great suggestion!) to take full advantage of being in a new area of the country with some different boys. It turns out that Southwest also has a bundling deal where, if you book air, hotel, and rental car through their website, you get a discount plus frequent flier points on everything – great deal, right? I ended up saving about $125 by bundling which should cover food for one of the days.
So now everything is booked, my son is working really hard to get ready for the tourney, and his coach feels like this is going to be a great learning experience for him. I think we made the right decision to let him go but also to ask him to contribute financially to this opportunity. It gives him more ownership in the whole thing which my husband and I both feel is important – we don’t ever want our son to take his tennis or our financial support of it for granted. I’ll let y’all know how it goes!
