Thread: High School vs Travel Ball

Originally Posted by bgecoach

hey mts, sorry about any indications in my thread that high school softball is behind here because of the coaching. that is not what i am saying at all. i blame it on the girls and their lack of willingness to work during the off season months to improve and the culture of being okay with being behind other areas of the state in softball. the reason travel ball far out exceeds high school in competition here is because this is where the dedicated players play. this is why three 18u teams didn't field teams here this year and i still had trouble putting one together.

the lack of pitching is because no one seams to want to put the time into it. i certainly don't expect a high school coach to develop a pitcher. if she can't pitch by her freshman year, it probably isn't going to happen. i feel sorry for the poor high school coach here that has to try and field a team with one pitcher and she's a freshman.

when i put my team together i went to a high school coach and asked him to help me because of the world of experience he has coaching. i have nothing but respect for anyone willing to coach a high school team.

here softball starts roughly six weeks before the season starts and with the exception of a few weeks during a summer dead period they can coach with travel teams as well. three HS coaches here had travel teams and a fourth had two. of course when school starts they have to stop coaching until season starts.

the bottom three HS teams out of my dd's region of 16 schools were all three schools from our city and they had a combined record of 9-75. it is a local problem starting much younger than high school but unfortunately that's where they end up. my team grew leaps and bounds from the high level competition they faced, not from my coaching. it's hard to become a better hitter when you rarely face a decent pitcher. it's hard to become a better pitcher when you very rarely get challenged by hitters.

again sorry, i didn't mean to offend any HS coach... you have my complete respect. go easy on us travel coaches too... speaking for myself, i coach because i love the game and being around a great group of players. i could write a book on what i don't know about fastpitch but i'm willing to put in the time to learn.

I picked a bad week to quit coffee...Don't mind me.

I agree that there are excellent travel coaches and I constantly tell my Dad (he coaches another HS team) that the travel players are more sound when it comes to fundamentals and are definitely more competitive.

Maybe I am jealous of the fact that travel does get more committed players then HS teams. If my schedule would allow I would coach a travel team, but until my son gets to the HS level I could not commit to being away every weekend coaching tourneys.

High school in our area is actually pretty good. However, the depth of the teams falls quite a bit short from travel ball teams. We have quite a few outstanding pitchers in our area (pretty much all play competitive in the spring/summer. Our high school ball is in the fall (starts next week).

Generally, the high school teams that have the majority of their players on travel teams in the summer are the strongest. My daughter has only two or three that play in the summer. Fortunately, the two or three are all pitchers, which helps us compete.

Pitching speed has very little to do with anything..I've seen very good high school teams get befuddled by slow throwing junk pitchers.

Our area has extremely good HS teams and some not so good.

We moved from Tucson years ago to the east coast and I was really worried about the caliber of HS ball. No worries!

Matter of fact one of our local HS teams almost became the unofficial "National Champs" They were something like 34-1, beating some of the top HS from California. Ranked #1 for awhile. There one loss came in the State championship game from a rival HS about 100 or so miles away!