COLUMBUS, Ohio — A year-round, $5 billion youth sports industry is pushing some children too hard and pressuring families to spend big money traveling the country for games, specialized training and the pursuit of elusive college scholarships, The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday.

Non-school leagues are largely unregulated and can leave children more susceptible to injury. At a minimum, many kids are robbed of their childhood, the newspaper said in the first of a five-part series.

The Dispatch said it spent a year examining the current landscape of youth sports and found it is marked with physical, emotional and financial minefields for children and families. Some parents are driven by fear that their children won’t be good enough for a varsity or college team.

Families easily can sink up to $50,000 a year in youth sports.

One Cleveland family spent $30,000 in six months to help their son pursue a soccer dream, the newspaper said. Another mother arranged to send her 11-year-old son to live with a trainer in Alabama to refine his football skills.

Increased participation

About 40 million children participate in youth sports — nearly six times as many who play high school sports and 100 times as many who play at an NCAA college.

To examine the sports culture, the Dispatch surveyed about 1,000 Ohio high school students and 213 coaches, along with 70 athletes and 33 coaches from Ohio State University.

Half of the athletes said they started playing sports as young as 6 and quickly felt the need to press on if they wanted to someday earn a spot on the high school varsity team or win a scholarship.

More than 40 percent said their parents pressured them to play, and 10 percent said their parents’ behavior during games embarrassed them.

“Too many parents today want to be agents instead of parents,” said Dave Klontz, head baseball coach at Heath High School.

Sandy Baum, an economics professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga, N.Y., and an expert on financial aid, said parents are making the wrong investment.

“Your kid is much better off studying and doing well academically than spending all the time on the soccer field.”

In the past decade, the amount of money pouring into nonprofit youth sport organizations has doubled to nearly $70 million in Ohio, according to IRS tax data. Nationally, those groups are collecting $5 billion a year.

Some kids feel caught between high school and youth sports coaches.

About 25 percent of high school students said they felt pressed to play at a higher level of competition. As a consequence, nearly half of the high school coaches said some athletes have quit their teams to focus on playing with non-school teams.

Coaches say youth sports need a governing body similar to the Ohio High School Athletic Association.

The Dispatch found that while colleges and schools have standardized rules to help avoid injury, youth sports organizations don’t share the same playbook.

Colleges and schools also are required to examine the criminal backgrounds of coaches. Many youth sports leagues aren’t.