Shawn Johnson is on a six-day-a-week workout schedule. The 14-year-old gymnast from West Des Moines trains 25 hours a week at Chow’s Gymnastics & Dance with her coaches, Liang and Li Chow. She already competes on the national team, and now she is hoping to earn a spot on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team. It will take a lot of practice – and a lot of time and money on the part of Johnson’s family – for her to reach her Olympic dream.

“Every year, you pick up an additional hour here and there or add another day a week, and you don’t really feel the effects until after the fact,” said Shawn’s mother, Teri Johnson. “We just don’t take family vacations anymore because her training is year-round.”

In addition to monthly training charges for Shawn, her family covers their travel expenses to Shawn’s competitions. Belgium, Hawaii and Canada are just a few of the places they’ve traveled to since last fall for gymnastics meets.

“We’re kind of on this roller coaster ride right now, and we’re not sure when it’s going to end,” Johnson said. “All we know is that we’re going to support her wherever this leads.”

Teri and Doug Johnson are fortunate that because Shawn is an only child, the costs of gymnastics classes and training over the past 11 years haven’t created a large financial burden for the family.

“Shawn is required to either travel with the U.S. team or her coach, but we go along as spectators because we don’t like the idea of her being in another country without us,” Teri Johnson said.

Raising a child athlete can be expensive, with fees for professional coaches, private trainers, sports camps, tournaments and travel with elite teams. As America’s obsession for sports continues to grow, so does the number of businesses that cater to young athletes and their families. This is true in Central Iowa, where new training facilities and programs have opened in the past couple of years, offering services designed to make children more skilled in their respective sports.

Competition grows

For businesses that cater to young athletes, the demand for their services has not only exceeded their owners’ expectations, but sometimes surprised them, as parents have called to request training for their preschool-age children.

“We expected our target audience to be kids between the ages of 10 to 12, but we’ve had calls for kids as young as 4,” said Dan Bradley, whose Des Moines business, Overtime Sports Agency, specializes in one-on-one or small-group training with former college athletes. Since he started his business last December, he has established a clientele of about 75 children who come in for weekly one-on-one training and another 60 who participate in group speed- and agility-training sessions.

Bradley and other business owners in this sector say youth athletics have become more competitive today than they were 15, 10 or even five years ago. Some say it’s a trickle-down effect from seeing the success of young sports stars like golfers Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie, who turned professional at the ages of 16 and 15, respectively. Others say the rising cost of a college education is causing more families to seek athletic scholarships to help pay for their child’s education.

“Parents these days seem to be willing to spend and travel to wherever they need to go for their kids’ sports,” said Geoff Jensen, one of the founders of Acceleration Iowa Sports Training, a 2-year old Urbandale business that offers small-group fitness and agility sessions. “We work with a lot of 10-to-12-year-olds who are going to national camps all over the country. They come to us to help them be at the top of their game to get the most out of their investment.”

“You can argue both sides, whether it’s good or bad that sports have gotten this competitive, but it really doesn’t mater how you feel because it is how it is,” said Dickson Jensen, president of Jensen Group, which operates the 2-year-old All-Iowa Attack Basketball Program along with a handful of other companies.

About 200 basketball players from across Iowa play for the Attack’s invitation-only teams, including Jensen’s five children, ages 9 to 16. His children work out at the club’s newly built 15,000-square-foot gymnasium in Ames anywhere from four to six days a week.

Jake Sullivan, a former Iowa State University basketball player, is the director of All-Iowa Attack. Growing up in Minnesota, he belonged to a basketball club known for taking its players to tournaments where they would be seen by college coaches. He incorporates that same philosophy with the All-Iowa Attack, putting together a schedule for his older teams that includes often includes playing out-of-state tournaments attended by college coaches.

“It’s not enough to be a standout player at your school,” Sullivan said. “Your real competition is kids in other cities and states, and it’s important to catch the athletes while they’re young to work on skill development.”

Pat Yacinich, a co-owner of SportsPlex West in Waukee and a former baseball coach at Roosevelt High School, said he sees more strong athletes in Central Iowa today than in previous years, which he attributes to more opportunities for instruction.

Instruction has a price

The All-Iowa Attack athletes pay monthly fees of $150 to be involved in the program, which includes workout time at the team’s gymnasium and skill-building clinics. Dickson Jensen realizes these fees are out of reach for some families, so scholarships are available.

“There is no question that what we’re doing costs money,” he said. “There aren’t too many things in life that are done well that don’t cost money.

“It’s a huge investment to go into these programs, so you have to ask yourself is it worth spending a couple thousand dollars a year so that your kid will become a better leader and person in the process and might get a scholarship worth $100,000 down the road?”

SportsPlex West attracts a lot of baseball and softball players because of Yacinich and the other two owners, Mike Mahoney and Orsino Hill, come from baseball backgrounds. Yacinich estimates that the SportsPlex instructors probably taught about 2,000 lessons last year in baseball and softball, and hundreds of lessons for basketball and other sports. One 40-minute baseball or softball lesson costs $60 at SportsPlex West, with lower per-session prices when multiple lessons are purchased.

“Our instructors are paid very well because we try to maintain the highest quality possible,” Yacinich said. “They are good instructors or coaches, and their time is valuable.”

Acceleration Iowa charges about $25 for its one-hour sessions, but requires clients to purchase at least 12 sessions. According to Geoff Jensen, the business has grown from about 200 clients the first year to about 800 this year.

Overtime Sports charges $60 for an individual training session, but the price is less when multiple sessions are purchased. It also offers skill-building clinics, which can cost as little as $20 for 90 minutes, and agility training, which runs $75 for 12 sessions.

“This summer has been incredibly busy,” Bradley said. “We could have done a bunch more summer camps and clinics for these kids, but we just didn’t anticipate as big a demand as there’s been.”

Riley Westman, a 17-year-old from Chariton, travels to Des Moines for weekly workouts at Overtime Sports with Sean Sonderleiter, a former University of Iowa basketball player. Randy Westman, Riley’s father, said the cost is “quite a bit,” but he says it’s worth it considering the opportunity his son has for one-on-one instruction from an accomplished player like Sonderleiter.

“It’s nice to have another perspective from Sean,” Westman said. “The coaches at school can only spend so much time with each player.”

Beyond the game

Westman said his son, Riley, averaged more points per game last year on his high school team after he started training at Overtime Sports, but he’s also seen more subtle changes in his son since he added the one-on-one workouts to his routine.

“I’ve noticed that Riley started to feel more confident about what he could do on and off the court,” Westman said. “Hopefully he’ll take more of a leadership role on the team this year because of it.”

Westman said his son is hoping to play basketball in college, but it’s not something the family is banking on.

“It’s hard to say we’ll put all this money into it and get a scholarship, because you don’t know if that’s going to happen,” Westman said. “You do this for the right reasons, so the kids gain confidence and leadership skills, and if the rest falls into place, that’s a bonus.”

The All-Iowa Attack program emphasizes character development with its athletes, something that Dickson Jensen believes is the most important component of youth athletics.

“We use basketball in our family as a means of enjoyment, a means of spending time together and a means of training our kids with life lessons,” he said. “And it’s turned out that they’ve become pretty good players as a result of it.”

Dickson Jensen said he doesn’t consider the time he spends – at least 20 weekends a year – attending his children’s basketball tournaments as a burden because he’s spending time with his family. Nor does he worry that he’s putting too much pressure on his children to become standout athletes.

“We have high expectations for all our players and want them to perform at a high level,” he said. “I think that prepares you for what to expect as adults. Sure, there is pressure on my kids, but I don’t think it’s out of control. The value of my children is not based on how good of players they are; it’s how good of people they are.”

Teri Johnson said her daughter’s success in gymnastics has evolved without pressure from the family. Shawn sets her goals on her own with the help of her coaches.

“I try to keep it clear that I’m OK with her doing it as long as she’s OK doing it,” Johnson said. “If it ever becomes too much for her, I hope it becomes apparent to me. I want this to be her decision. The training is too hard. I wouldn’t want her doing it for somebody other than herself.”