Travel Ball or Tournamen Ball? Is there a difference?

[Pitchermom28]

In your opinion..is there a difference in travel ball teams and tournament ball teams?

There are alot of parents that want their DDs on TB teams, however are not willing to travel out of their hometown. To me that is not travel ball.

Thoughts?

 

[abbygale]

I think it all follows under comp (competitive) ball. Some are just more competitive than others. Mine is on a "tournament" ball team and they travel all over the place to play in specific tournaments, so to me, tournament ball ends up with more travel than "travel ball".

 

[David Carter]

I think this is totally dependent on location. Some teams have the luxury of living in an area where you can stay local and face competition that is just as tough if not tougher than you would get from traveling. If that is the case why would you travel...now I would think even a local tournament teams would have some kind of goal tournament (even if it just state or regional championship that requires some travel to attend or qualify).

Obviously some exposure teams do nothing but travel all over the country so yeah that is different.

I would put teams in 3 categories:

Local only...basically they have a strong enough local area where they are happy to not travel and just play at home without traveling. In our area (San Antonio) you could probably do this and still play some good local teams as well as DFW and Houston teams that travel here. But basically the parents have decided they don't want to travel.

Local plus...these teams will play mostly local tournaments but travel several times a year usually just a days car ride attempting to qualify for some goal tournament (that would be a far away).

True travel...basically they are looking for the best tournaments in the area and will travel a days car ride most of the time, then also travel several more trips of a couple days and probably also go to Colorado, California and Florida to big exposure tournaments.

my two cents

 

[knightsb]

The difference I have seen, are the teams that travel more are generally traveling to play better competition, or different competition. Our team has scheduled 15 spring/summer tournaments of those 15, 4 are out of town. Our team does not dominate, so we are able to find competition in our own local tournaments. As we get older, and there are fewer teams, I can see traveling more to play different teams. I really enjoy playing an opponent that we haven't played before.

 

[crystlemc]

For me, travel ball is a team made up of girls from anywhere (not just one town) and they travel where they need to in order to play the best competition for them.

Tournament ball, to me, is more of a community team that will play some TB tournaments, but not venture too far from home.

 

[rdbass]

Tourney team= Players from anywhere and all over.
Travel ball team(all stars)= players from one community-all stars from the rec. league.Plays other local teams/travel teams. My DD plays on a travel ball team and we play other communities around our area.
That is how it is around my area.

 

[stickpile39]

in our area, Rec is the local league, accepting any and all that are interested. Some of the best players from REC get invited to travel which has one home and one away game each week, the travel is up to 45 minutes away. Tournament involves an off season practice committment and traveling to weekend tournaments that can be out of state.

 

[GunnerShotgun]

I had an old school coach tell me one time he didn't need to take his team out of state to get their rear kicked. There were plenty of teams locally that would be willing to do it.

 

[rdbass]

I had an old school coach tell me one time he didn't need to take his team out of state to get their rear kicked. There were plenty of teams locally that would be willing to do it.

Thats funny!
The big difference is the money.

 

[David Carter]

Again I think it's all relative when you say from anywhere and all over if you live on a metro area you can access a couple million people within less than an hour drive. If you live in a rural area you might have to travel all day to reach a couple million people.