Maybe it is "regional." But most of our sports do require a way to contact parents by the child. Most of the sports we have participated in have actually had the clause that if you chose to drop off and not stay at practice, your child needs a way to contact you. It could be a phone, an iPod to text, but some way to contact the parent.
For instance, our swim team practices are often called early due to lightning. There is no cell phone at the pool nor are the children ever allowed to use the pool office phone, (town rule, not team rule.) There are 8 coaches and 190 kids. They cannot possibly allow all those kids to use their phones. And with limited shelter to protect all those children, just two small locker rooms, it would not be safe to wait out the storm until parents show up when practice normally ends.
Our schools close the office doors at 4pm and NO child is allowed to use the phones after hours, even for school sanctioned sports.
I still think it completely rude for a parent to draw a line in the sand and say "my child can't have a phone until x" but then expect others to provide communication methods for that same child.
IF the parents have their own plan, it is pennies to add another line to the majority of plans. There is no excuse for children to be left stuck without the means to communicate with their parents in today's world.
In the dinosaur days, our parents put a quarter into our pockets because there were pay phones on every corner. Now cell phones are those quarters.
