Opinion: The free door in youth sport closed without a vote; Calgary can reopen it.

Advertisement 1 This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Breadcrumb Trail Links HomeColumnists Opinion: The free door in youth sport closed without a vote; Calgary can reopen it. Author of the article: By Ken King, Calgary Herald Published Sep 23, 2026 Last updated 28 minutes ago 3 minute read Join the conversation Opinion author Ken King PHOTO BY SUPPLED PHOTO /Postmedia Network Article content On Nov. 13, 2018, I was in a Calgary pub watching the city vote on whether to bid for the Winter Olympics — 56 per cent said no. The room did not feel anti-sport, but it did feel like a city that had done the math. Article content Eight years later, the math has moved into the house. Article content Article content A child can play a sport through their school for about $70 a year. The same sport, through a club, costs $1,122. Same kid, playing the same game, in the same gym, because the club rents the school floor at night. Article content Article content The family pays it, because the free door has quietly been closed. I run Calgary Minor Basketball, and I watch families do that math every September. Article content Noon News Roundup Your weekday lunchtime roundup of curated links, news highlights, analysis and features. Sign Up By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Article content We treat the symptoms as separate problems. Officials are walking away in every jurisdiction, and it is not abuse that pushes them out. It is what their organization does after they report it. Article content Kids leave organized sport in a wave at age 13 and we call it dropout, as if the failure were theirs. Canada’s national sport lost a third of its registered kids over the same years it kept winning gold. Article content This spring, a federal commission concluded that Canada’s sport system is broken and unsustainable, and listed 98 calls to action. Article content Ninety-eight calls to action is what you write when you can name the symptoms but not the disease. Article content Here is the disease: Organized sport is about 160 years old — younger than the telephone — and it behaves like a society, not an industry. It has a founding myth, a priesthood, a tax system and a currency of status. Societies built as pyramids do a predictable thing over about a century and a half — the top keeps winning, the base pays more for less and then…