A New Horizon For Youth Sports

Fast-growing chain tries to make athletes faster, tougher

(Tuesday, February 15, 2005) - Teen football players, feet sheathed in black slippers, slide laterally on a slick plastic board.

Volleyballers, harnessed at the waist, leap skyward against the tug of a bungee cord pinned to the ground by teammates.

Budding athletes high-step rapidly over a row of micro-hurdles, then observe their technique on a flat-screen monitor playing a 10-second delayed tape.

The evolution of youth sports is in action at this three-ring sweat circus on a green carpet disguised as a 40-yard football field in a Roswell strip shopping center. Birthed in Marietta, based in Alpharetta and expanding nationwide, the fitness chain Velocity Sports Performance is the brainchild of a battle-scarred track coach who preaches that speed can be imbued and a pair of entrepreneurs who observed that parents will spend fistfuls of money to enhance their child's athleticism.

Velocity has opened 46 centers, two in Georgia, in less than three years. Its owners have sold another 160 franchises, 40 of which are expected to open this year. Franchise fees and start-up costs range from $300,000 to $600,000.

The business plan was modeled after Sylvan Learning Centers, the coast-to-coast tutoring chain that once employed Velocity President and Chief Operating Officer Rich Kissane. The fitness chain's fees vary from market to market because they are set with an area's academic tutoring rates in mind. They generally run $20 to $35 an hour.

Like Sylvan, which capitalizes on parents who believe its formula can make their kids smarter, Velocity sells to dads and moms who want their children to be faster, tougher, stronger athletes. Its breakneck growth has broadened the debate on the over-accentuation of youth sports.

"We want to be to sports training what Sylvan is to math and English," Velocity Chief Executive Officer David Walmsley said. Velocity executives envision their chain becoming a national brand for sports education, with training videos, publications, nutrition programs, beverages, apparel, even data-mining statistics such as youngsters' times in the 40-yard dash.

Loren Seagrave's ambitions were far more modest nearly six years ago when he started a Marietta gym (now closed to the public) and called it Velocity. The longtime Atlantan had been a sprint coach for hire, training athletes from youngsters to Olympians such as Gwen Torrence and Donovan Bailey. But he had soured on dealing with elite runners, chiefly because of unstable income, and he wanted a pulpit from which to spread his gospel.

Seagrave dismisses the old saw — "speed is born, not made" — as myth. "We have been sold a bill of goods that you can't teach speed," he said. "You can."

Kissane stumbled across Velocity when his son was laboring in football. The youngster improved enough to impress Dad, who decided on a career change. He and Walmsley named Seagrave chief performing officer, and they set about hatching more centers.

$4 billion market

Velocity, and any imitators it might spawn, is a product of the ever-increasing emphasis on organized youth sports.

"Gone are those days" of free play, Seagrave said. "If it's not structured by parents, it doesn't happen."

More and more adults devote substantial time and expense to boost their offspring's athletic ability. Though no single study study seems to have pinned down annual spending on physical training for young Americans, various experts estimate the figure is close to $4 billion.

Seagrave imparts his unique techniques to all Velocity trainers, some with master's degrees in exercise physiology.

To the naked eye, exercises range from the routine (backpedaling) to the ridiculous (push-ups with the aforementioned slippers covering the hands) to the sublime (running to cones in the corners of a room while fighting the resistance of a bungee cord.) There is a method to the seeming madness.

Programs are aimed at, but not confined to, middle- and high-schoolers. Velocity attracts grown-ups — even overgrown college football players preparing for the upcoming National Football League draft. About two dozen at the Roswell outlet, mainly from Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, grunt and groan for the same trainers who bark instructions at kids.

Brian and Kathleen Butcher of Alpharetta ferry their daughter, 10, and son, 7, to classes, paying $150 monthly for each. "I would feel guilty if I didn't bring them," said Butcher, an offensive lineman at Clemson in the early 1980s.

The Butchers say they want Hannah and Andrew to appreciate sports at any level for life. But Dad acknowledges another goal: maximizing Andrew's football talents.

"I want to give him every opportunity to let him be as good as he can be," he said.

Velocity's approach sidesteps some of the criticism of the focus on youth sports. It is not sport-specific, instead preparing kids for an array of physical activities. It stresses flexibility, beneficial beyond the sphere of baseball games and swim meets.

"The idea is sound," said Fred Engh, founder of the advocacy group National Alliance for Youth Sports. "Think of it as if you had a kid showing musical talent at the piano. Wouldn't you want him to get the best teaching available?"

Potential downside

Still, long-term commitments and frequent visits to such establishments can be symptomatic of a problem: parents, many living vicariously, pushing into sports children who either do not enjoy them or lack a competitive streak. Engh addresses the excesses in his book "Why Johnny Hates Sports."

Dr. Cedric Bryant, chief exercise physiologist for the American Council on Exercise, said youth training "has the potential to be beneficial if kept in the right perspective."

"It's important these types of facilities remember they are dealing with kids, not mini-adults."

Given that youngsters' muscle-skeletal systems are still evolving, the keys are a gradual progression, with time for rest and recovery, Bryant said. Parents enrolling their children with the notion of developing the next Michael Vick, Chipper Jones or Serena Williams is "a recipe for disaster."

Velocity sessions run an hour for young kids, 1 1/2 for teens — divided equally among stretching, speed and weight work.

Seagrave insists Velocity will show Dad the door if he is looking for boot-camp intensity. "We don't measure the workout by the volume of vomit," Seagraves says.

The center in Roswell lures athletes as far away as Murphy, N.C. Football players from Dalton High travel up to 90 minutes each way twice a week.

"They work muscles you don't even know you had," said Will Brackett, a husky lineman from Dalton whose after-school Tuesdays are wiped out by a long commute and the 90-minute endurance test.

Dale Hair, the Dalton parent who handled driving duties one recent night, enrolled his son, Dallas, also a distance runner, for 24 weeks at $700.

"It's worth the money," Hair said. "I would like to see him go far. It's always a parent's dream. I want to give him every tool possible to attain that."

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