A travel soccer season used to run about two hundred dollars. That number is gone in this county, and most parents only learn it after their kid already loves the game. Nobody sees who sets the registration fee or who covers the five hundred dollars a new team needs for its first tournament. 

On this episode of Bucks Co Living, I asked Erika Duszny and Alaina Davis of Falls Soccer Club to put real numbers on it. We explored the actual costs of keeping a child in travel soccer in Bucks County and identified who silently absorbs these expenses when the finances don't add up.

Curious about this episode? Here is a quick preview of our conversation:

The Volunteers Behind Every Saturday Morning at Falls Township Park

I have sold homes across Bucks County, Montgomery County, and Philadelphia for more than sixteen years. Families ask me about school districts constantly. Almost nobody asks about youth sports, and youth sports often decides whether a family settles in or starts browsing listings again in three years.

Erika runs the Falls Soccer Club Fairless Hills as president and coaches the 2013 Black travel team. Alaina serves as marketing director and walked in with no soccer background, which is exactly why she reads the business side so clearly. Both do this on top of full-time jobs, with four boys between them.

The club has served this township for twenty-seven years and now carries more than six hundred kids. Registration windows, field closures, and season announcements all run through the club calendar and season updates, with match photos and roster news posted through their youth soccer community page.

For families weighing a move, that operation is a real part of what makes homes for sale in Fairless Hills worth a look.

Watch the full conversation here:

The Two Hundred Dollar Season Is Gone and Nobody Tells You What Replaced It

Erika played travel soccer in New Hampshire for roughly two hundred dollars a season. She said plainly that the price is gone, and that youth soccer has become too expensive across the board. What makes Falls different is not the sticker price. It is what the sticker price includes.

"As for the pricing, other clubs don't include a lot of stuff, right? So a lot of clubs don't include trainers. They don't include professional trainers and they rely on volunteers just like we do. But for our travel soccer, our fees are inclusive of a union trainer for every team for at least once a week, which is a great thing for our parent coaches who are volunteers. Most of our parent coaches are very knowledgeable, but it just helps them get an extra edge over maybe these clubs who are charging double the price that we are or more, and we're competing against them, and we're holding our own."

That is a commission conversation in different clothing. Erika is not defending her number. She is redefining what the number buys, then letting the comparison finish the argument. Any agent who has sat across from a seller asking why your rate is what it is should study that move.

The trainer is Sally Bubalo, who came up through youth academies overseas and now works with the Philadelphia Union. Weekly access to that coaching is the whole value argument, and it is why the Philadelphia Union trainer youth soccer partnership matters more than a discount would.

Tournament entries run five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars depending on distance. The Lady Lions fundraised their entire way to regionals in Connecticut, the farthest any Falls team has gone. Newer teams are still scraping together five hundred for a first tournament, and the club refuses to bolt that onto registration. 

The national picture on travel soccer costs in Bucks County and everywhere else backs her up. Project Play research found that the average American sports family spent $1,016 on a child's primary sport in 2024, up 46 percent since 2019, laid out in full in this report on rising youth sports spending. Project Play

Erika's standing instruction is worth copying. If a family cannot cover something, have the conversation. Do not let a kid quietly disappear off the roster.

Your Voice Carries Farther Than the Coach's and Your Kid Pays for It

Erika told me the hardest people to coach are not the kids. Kids know the rules. Parents take far longer to understand the game, and far longer to understand what their own voice does from the sideline.

One groan, and a twelve-year-old's head turns. He is out of rhythm for two minutes, and the parent never registers it. Kids are tuned to their parent's voice above everyone else's, so when you call out while the coach is trying to reach him from the far touchline, your kid hears you.

Erika fights this herself. Her husband reminds her she learned how to coach and now has to learn how not to coach. Alaina swapped her reactive phrases for safe ones after her sons told her honestly when she was making them uncomfortable.

The fix is cheering and nothing else. It is a discipline problem, not a knowledge problem. The club keeps its code of conduct and sideline expectations for soccer parents in one place, and there is a full training course on youth soccer sideline behavior for anyone who wants the longer version. 

I get into this same territory often on the Bucks County community interview series.

How Two Hundred Fifty Dollars Puts a Local Business in Front of Six Hundred Families

A fall sponsorship runs two hundred fifty dollars. It sponsors an intramural team, puts your flag on the field, places your logo on the club site, and gets you into the season-opening email. The October outing runs a full ladder, and the golf outing sponsorship packages show the whole thing. A single hole is a hundred fifty dollars. Dinner and cart sponsorships are sixteen hundred, and each includes a foursome plus a year of website placement. That is the entire menu of youth sports sponsorship opportunities here, and the entry point costs less than a week of most ad campaigns.

"In terms of sponsors, that's been challenging, because it's sort of like a numbers game and kind of like, for lack of a better term, cold calling, just finding companies. Ideally, the dream of the club would be to have a really lucrative sponsor that we could have sponsor the whole club, and so there was a period in time that we were pursuing kind of larger companies which really didn't produce anything. But I feel that we've had more success engaging smaller companies through the golf outing for like our single hole sponsors and that sort of thing. At least developing a relationship with them and having them still be involved representing the club, keeping them in the loop about things going on during the year."

Every agent chasing a corporate referral partner should sit with that. The big-logo pursuit produced nothing. Small local relationships, opened at an event and maintained across the year, produced actual support. Volume outreach loses to a warm room, and the follow-up between asks is what makes the second ask land.

Alaina also works the St. Patrick's Day parade, festival tables, and flyers in preschools, because the club's problem was never quality. People in the township did not know it existed after twenty-seven years. Their club news and event announcements carry most of that outreach now.

Meanwhile, the gap gets closed by fundraising, and Erika is honest that fundraising mostly recycles money from the club's own families. Presidents at comparable clubs are landing five figures. That gap is why she wanted this conversation on record.

Pass the Torch Before You Stop Fighting for the Job

Erika's predecessor, Erin Mullen, gave her the framework she still uses. The role is a service, not a title. You will not finish everything you planned. The person who follows you may do less, or considerably more because they came in hungry. Either way you hand it off.

Erin also believed the term should be short, because long tenures shrink the pool of people willing to step up. The test Erika keeps in her head is simple. If you have stopped wanting to fight for things, you have stopped providing the service you are there to provide.

The other lesson was finding her lane. Steve, who has handled the fields for two decades, calls closures. It took Erika most of a season to stop second-guessing him, even with state cup games on the line. That kind of volunteer board leadership in youth sports only works when the president trusts the specialists. Bob Kovak, who runs intramural and coaches the Lady Lions, takes all of July off, and the club is better for it. I end up talking through that same tension with local business owners across Bucks County more often than you would think.

The Part of This Community I Stopped Taking for Granted

"Woody and I are very aware of where we are, especially with our head coach and union trainers that we have. We're learning as much as the kids are, and we're becoming better as the boys are becoming better. So how we coach now is completely different than we did four years ago, and he and I have always been very open to that change and learning. How we played soccer in college is very different than how soccer is being trained and coached now, and so we had to be very open to that transition and trusting the people who do this every single day of their lives. I think if one of us had been a little bit more rigid and wanting to stick with our old school ways, it would have been a lot harder to continue."

Two coaches with real playing backgrounds deferred to full-time professionals and rebuilt their approach inside four years. Anyone who has watched an agent insist their 2010 playbook still works knows how rare that is.

Erika also makes a strong case against early specialization. Kids funneled into one sport too young either wear out a muscle group or burn out before high school. Her sons went to fishing camp. It is not athletic. It gets them off the field and lets them be friends somewhere other than a soccer bubble. The research on youth sports specialization and burnout tracks with exactly what she is seeing on her own sidelines.

The detail that stuck with me most was Alaina and her husband quietly donating thirty-five hundred dollars to fund registration scholarships, first come first served. Kids stayed on the field and never knew why.

I sell this county. Erika Duszny and Alaina Davis with Falls Soccer Club run part of what makes it worth buying into. When a buyer asks what a neighborhood is really like, the honest answer now includes the volunteer board nobody ever sees. That is as true in Levittown as anywhere families choose a town by what happens on a Saturday morning, which is why I keep showing up at local events with a camera and too many questions.

Want to hear exactly how Erika and Alaina are keeping travel soccer affordable in Bucks County? Listen to the full episode to get their complete breakdown on costs, sponsorships, and what really happens behind the scenes.

FAQ

How much does travel soccer cost in Bucks County right now?

It varies by club, and the registration fee rarely tells the full story. Falls stays below most comparable local clubs while including a Philadelphia Union trainer for every travel team weekly. Tournament entries add five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars per event, which many clubs pass straight to families.

What does a Falls Soccer Club sponsorship include?

A two hundred fifty dollar fall sponsorship covers an intramural team and includes a flag on the field, a logo on the club website, and inclusion in the season-opening email. Golf outing sponsorships start at a hundred fifty dollars for a single hole and climb to sixteen hundred for dinner or cart placement, which also includes a foursome.

Should my child play more than one sport?

Early specialization drives both overuse injuries and burnout before high school. Kids do not need a second league, just physical variety and time away from one field so the sport stays something they chose.

Apply as a Guest on the Bucks Co Living Podcast

This county runs on people whose work never makes the newsletter. Volunteer boards, shop owners, coaches, contractors, lenders. Erika and Alaina spend their nights chasing sponsor money so a family does not get a bigger invoice, and almost nobody knew their names before this episode.

If you are solving a real problem for people here, whether that happens on a field, behind a counter, or across a closing table, I want that conversation recorded.