Rise of select teams

[CoogansBluff]

We love tournaments. Setting up camp at the park and playing all day is awesome. My DD is usually bummed when we lose our 2nd bracket game or whatever and have to go home. She always wants to know how many games are guaranteed and if it's a 3GG she's disappointed. I agree, though, that for some people it does not work out in the long run and a lot of kids do burn out. It would be nice if there were more options between full travel and rec for kids in my area. We'd still want to do tournaments though.

When I say league format, keep in mind that I'm not wishing this as an option for less serious players. I'm wishing this as an option for families and players who are just as serious, but who would prefer something more spread out. Kinda like eating cake. Do you want to eat one piece per day, or eat the whole cake in 12 hours? That's the analogy my DD would've used when she was 10-12. She was serious about softball. But she had grown tired of playing so many games in a day, total softball from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. She loved the pace of middle school ball. Not the competitive pace, but the pace of the schedule - practice/play almost every day, play 2-3 days/week, but never gorging on it.

My concern is that there are many girls and families that might've loved softball been really good at it but couldn't handle the tournament culture.

 

[grcsftbll]

I think it makes a lot of sense to have more options like that. For a lot of kids I think it would be preferable and I bet we'd see a lot less burnout.

 

[Terror Coach]

I don't see a problem with the 8u kids playing travel ball. Of course I have an 8 year old that plays 10u. Last year was her first year playing softball. She was 7 and on a first year 10u team. At first she didn't even want to play. I didn't push her to hard which meant not much practice on the side. She sat the bench a lot but loved being around the girls. After the season I let her decide if she wanted to play again. She did. She now wants to practice all the time. Physically she is behind her teammates that are all 10, but her skills are equal if not better. I don't know what her future in softball will be, but IMO she is so much further ahead then if she played rec ball.

I would love to have my girls play more weekday games versus tournaments. Right now we are the top 10u team in the area. We talked about putting them in a rec league this summer but no way we can go play 10u rec teams. I would love to play 12u but the ball size is an issue. Next year we move up to 11s and I may consider looking at playing 14u rec ball and taking a few more weekends off. I don't know about the girls but an extra weekend off once in a while would be nice.

 

[marriard]

I would love for travel ball to be more league and less tournament. Lots of kids (and parents) get burned out, not by the total number of games in a year, but the number of games in a given day. It's really insane to play 5 games in a day, or 8 in a weekend. But that's the only option. It nearly ruined if for my daughter, but she survived. It shouldn't be a sport of attrition, but sometimes I think that's what it is.

Our org runs a fall travel league. You play a couple of games on a Saturday or Sunday on 5 different weekends over 8 weeks (some weekends have no games) and then a seeded double elimination tournament to end. It provides a lot less stressful fall schedule especially coming off the mad house that is generally May through July. So for our fall travel schedule (Aug-Dec) we play this then 3 reg tournaments and that is it.

Baseball locally does a lot of leagues where you play home and away on weeknights as well as on weekends however we discovered that in softball 1) no one is willing to travel on weeknight cross county lines or more than 30 minutes (Baseball no problem, softball BIG problem) and 2) Trying to centrally organize it is a huge unrewarding PITA. So we do it weekends, we run all the games at our fields and we benefit as an org financially from the immense amount of time we invest in it.

 

[let it be fun]

i think a competitive league would be more fun than tournaments every weekend.

Be careful what you wish for. Competitive leagues are really tough to manage. The biggest problem with leagues is figuring competitive balance. There will generally be a fairly large disparity from top to bottom. If you try to strictly maintain competitive balance you can find yourself driving an hour and a half for a Tuesday night 6PM double-header all the way on the other side of town. Some coaches want to sandbag and some coaches want to play up. If a coach enters an "A" league they are locked in that league for the season and they might not really be an "A" team. They end up spending the season getting blown out. On the other hand, the true "A" teams get sick of blowing teams out by 15 runs. With tournaments you can at least register at "B" and play some A and B to figure out where your team is at and then change classification if necessary.

 

[bleacher coach]

if anybody knows the sugarland are, they know 10u and up teams are everywhere but not many 8u select teams in sugarland area which is shocking. You have a lot more on the south eastside of houston strecthing to the coast plenty 8u select teams there. Seems like a lot of 12u team in the woodlands area, maybe its a territory thing.

 

[Rocketech1]

The 6U is actually coach pitch if you can believe it. I just shake my head when I see them advertised.

Yes, I stand corrected. At 6U, it was 3 coach pitches to put the ball in play or the T would come out...

 

[chinamigarden]

We used to be on a team that was in a competitive league. There were no rules on how teams were set, most were travel teams. Some were from specific high school feeders, which is what ours was. Others were fairly high profile orgs from the suburbs. The comp was pretty good, we played a regular season then a intra-league tourney that you didn't have to sign up for if you didn't want to. The league played 2 double headers a week, which really was too many if you also wanted to go to tourneys. We would finish up a double header Thursday night and then be playing tourney ball the next night and the whole weekend. Monday off and they back to a DH on Tuesday. Some weeks it became too much, and if you didn't have 4 decent pitchers (who does) it became too much for the girls. But when you didn't have tourneys it was great, 4 games a week over 2 evenings and you still had your weekend.

 

[indianafp]

When I say league format, keep in mind that I'm not wishing this as an option for less serious players. I'm wishing this as an option for families and players who are just as serious, but who would prefer something more spread out. Kinda like eating cake. Do you want to eat one piece per day, or eat the whole cake in 12 hours? That's the analogy my DD would've used when she was 10-12. She was serious about softball. But she had grown tired of playing so many games in a day, total softball from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. She loved the pace of middle school ball. Not the competitive pace, but the pace of the schedule - practice/play almost every day, play 2-3 days/week, but never gorging on it.

My concern is that there are many girls and families that might've loved softball been really good at it but couldn't handle the tournament culture.

There is an actual Travel Team league starting here. I put us in it. It was like 16 games, (DH every Tuesday) with a tourney at the end. I actually dropped a couple tourneys and picked this up. It is affordable and local for our team. There is like 8 teams in it. It should be fun, I'll keep you posted on how it works out.

 

[Momo'sDad]

In our area, we too use the term "Select". I've never liked it. Select sounds like something extra special. It really isn't any more. It's merely pay to play.
I prefer travel ball, or club team, or tournament team.

Our rec league recently joined much of the rest of the region in adopting the year-round ASA "B" program. The team was selected, and they will travel to tournaments. You don't have to view it as "special", but it is different from traditional rec, and it does cost more to play on this team than on a regular rec team, that is true.

Terminology probably differs across the country. While in Georgia, I became aware of a ''select league'', which was the best players in a rec program forming a team. But instead of playing tournaments after the season (like all-stars), they would play other select teams during the season. So for example, a rec program might have 4 regular 10U teams that play each other and one ''select'' team that plays a schedule of games against other ''select'' teams from other rec programs.

I've never been part of a scenario like that, but as someone who has run a rec program, my concern would be that it helps the 10 select players at the expense of the other 40 kids in the league. Softball is a difficult game, and you need some of those better players to be pitchers and catchers. Unlike soccer or basketball, where it's fun for young kids just to run around, softball is no fun unless somebody is throwing strikes. That's why I prefer an all-star situation, where the best can see a higher level while also benefiting the rec league as a whole.

It took me a very long time to accept the new reality. At my core, I still believe largely the way you do that a rising tide will lift all boats, but there's a large population who feel the less-talented 8-9yo's in the rec leagues are holding their little snowflakes back.

I don't know what the result will be, but what you're basically seeing is the beginning of the end of talent subsidies to the rec leagues. But maybe, just maybe this will be a good thing. Less naturally talented players will get more opportunities in those pitching and catching roles and there's also a chance players with potential will view the local "special team" as something to strive for.