About us
Built by a coach and parent who got tired of guessing
Youth sports ask families for a lot of money, a lot of weekends, and a lot of trust, usually before anyone explains what any of it buys. Prime Path Athletics exists to explain it first.
Our mission
To help families spend their time, money, and trust on what actually moves their athlete forward, with honest guides, plans an athlete can follow, and directories that say plainly what we checked and what we did not.
Why we started
From the sideline, the same thing kept happening. Families paid for the showcase, the travel roster, the extra tournament, the private lessons, and found out afterwards which of those mattered. Kids showed up to camp guessing at a standard nobody had explained to them, then spent the week catching up to it.
None of that is a parent's fault. The information exists, but it is scattered across club websites, sales pitches, and other parents' opinions, and very little of it is written for the family paying the bill. So we started writing it down: what a season costs, what an athlete should be working on at each age, and where the real programs are.
Who is behind it
Prime Path Athletics was founded by Samuel Duffey, a youth coach and sports parent. Sam played basketball through high school and walked on at a junior college, then spent years coaching youth players from age 5 to 16, in recreation leagues, travel ball, and higher-level travel programs. That is where most of what is on this site was learned: watching which kids improved, which money helped, and which did not.
“I've coached kids who froze on day one of camp because nobody told them what to expect, and kids who walked in calm because they knew exactly what was coming. That difference is the whole reason this company exists.”
Samuel Duffey, founder
What we make
- The Real Cost. One book per sport for parents: what a season actually costs, line by line, and which spending buys no development at all.
- The Offseason. Week-by-week training plans for ages 10–13 and 14–18, plus 32-week position books for 32 positions across six sports, from quarterback and point guard to libero and goalkeeper.
- The Daily Athletic Journal. A 120-day journal the athlete keeps through the season: practices, games, recovery, and what each week taught.
- Training calendars. Printed wall-and-desk calendars for each sport and for 32 positions, to keep training, goals, and game schedules in one place all year.
- Bundles. The season journal, the position offseason book, and the 2027 calendar, printed and sold together for each of the 32 positions.
- The directories. Camps, leagues, and trainers, with camps in more sports than our six, each listed with where we found it and how far our checking went.
What we promise
- The plan comes before the purchase. We would rather a family read one book and skip three expensive mistakes than buy anything else from us.
- No one pays for placement. A camp, league, or trainer cannot pay to be listed, verified, or moved up a list. If that ever changes, paid listings will be labelled. How we check a trainer.
- We say what we do not know. Where a price or a date was not published, we leave it blank rather than guess.
- We fix mistakes in the open. If something here is wrong, email us and we will correct it.
How we make money
From the books. That is it: no affiliate commissions on the programs we list, and no fees from trainers. The details are in our terms.