Avoiding bad organizations

[Westwind]

In my rural area we didn’t have a ton of options. We are about 2 hours from Chicago and we did not seriously consider the options there at all. There was a smallish regional team that was a good fit for a couple years. Ended up with a smaller national level team where the org director was in constant conflict with his coaches. His best coach quit during an on-field blow up with the org head. There always seemed to be controversy brewing between the org head and whoever he was in contact with. I think all this was amplified by covid. It really wasn’t fun and it was certainly not a great recruiting environment. That being said, dd enjoyed playing decent competition and playing with good players.

I see the SoCal folks and others posting and having a lot of teams to evaluate. It ain’t like that everywhere, sounds like a good problem to have.

It is absolutely about the coaches. At every level. Secondarily it’s about the org head. If you can do one team for multiple years and it 80% fits your needs and goals, that really is valuable.

There were warning signs with all of these teams, but they were the only game in town. Sometimes you just hold your nose and roll with it.

 

[Westwind]

One more thing- if your dd is college bound, understanding that it will probably be a less than perfect situation and being able to deal with it is not a bad skill to possess.

I think parents think college is going to be the best coaching their kid has ever experienced and that their kid will spend lots of time being nurtured, mentored and coached by these truly special people while unicorns graze on the berm. Odds are it won’t be anything like that. It will probably be more like high school with a big budget and better buses than it is The Ultimate Softball Nirvana.

 

[nikkilugi]

The loyalty is on the coach’s part in this case but I don’t disagree with your premise. Around here there isn’t a single team in DD’s age group (or the 08 age level which she is playing) who can consistently compete at the National level so my other choices at the time were to A) join a team (in her own age group or the one she is playing in now) which is marginally better but have worse coaching or B) go out of state to find a top team with good coaching , which was an option as a team wanted her (in her own age group) but not something I was willing to do at 11YO (for multiple reasons including the travel would be 4+ hours one way and she would have to quit her AAU basketball team and she may end up being a better bball player when all is said and done..)

They will be playing in CO this spring/summer along with another 4 or 5 good tournaments so she won’t be lacking challenging competition for a 12 YO/6th grader.

I'm venturing to say that at one time everyone scoffed saying there were no good teams in Nebraska. We are from that general area and would play NE Gold many times when they all were younger and would beat them consistently - now look at what they are producing. We would play Tulsa Elite and struggle. If your coach adds talent along with keeping the core I would think that soon your DD's team can compete consistently at those levels and you wouldn't need to leave the state.

 

[_MIA_]

I'm venturing to say that at one time everyone scoffed saying there were no good teams in Nebraska. We are from that general area and would play NE Gold many times when they all were younger and would beat them consistently - now look at what they are producing. We would play Tulsa Elite and struggle. If your coach adds talent along with keeping the core I would think that soon your DD's team can compete consistently at those levels and you wouldn't need to leave the state.

We will see, I am not worried about it now.

As she gets older she is going to have a number of choices to make, regardless of whether she stays in state or not, if she wants to continue to play both sports as the “big tournaments” for both sports are at the same time

Basketball recruiting is where softball was a few years ago, kids are getting offers in MI

 

[radness]

In my rural area we didn’t have a ton of options. We are about 2 hours from Chicago and we did not seriously consider the options there at all. There was a smallish regional team that was a good fit for a couple years. Ended up with a smaller national level team where the org director was in constant conflict with his coaches. His best coach quit during an on-field blow up with the org head. There always seemed to be controversy brewing between the org head and whoever he was in contact with. I think all this was amplified by covid. It really wasn’t fun and it was certainly not a great recruiting environment. That being said, dd enjoyed playing decent competition and playing with good players.

I see the SoCal folks and others posting and having a lot of teams to evaluate. It ain’t like that everywhere, sounds like a good problem to have.

It is absolutely about the coaches. At every level. Secondarily it’s about the org head. If you can do one team for multiple years and it 80% fits your needs and goals, that really is valuable.

There were warning signs with all of these teams, but they were the only game in town. Sometimes you just hold your nose and roll with it.

Too many teams may seem like a good problem to have. But it has actually created its own problem.

A fleet of average teams
A fleet of below average teams
And beginner players mixed in to those teams.

A few of the better players are mixed in. However the truely developed players in each brackets pretty much are separated from the majority 80% of the crowd.
So the bulk of teams
(people are looking at)
what they're doing as average and below-average is without knowing what upper level and better developed players actually look like.

In this world where people will throw money at anything they just keep throwing money at team, after team, after team, after team, after team,
because they are looking for something that fits their emotional state...
without knowing their daughters are still behind in a learning curve.

Do think it's good for everybody to be able to play travel ball.
That said, don't think its good for everybody to be in the same group/clump because not everybody has the same goals.
Causes conflict of interest.

I have commented to this before and I'm going to say it again,
Travel ball used to be for players that were really good. Every time you went out to play it was going to be competitive.

Things like pgf and Alliance that basically handed out invites to go to Nationals has made it worse because now you have teams that have no business playing in a particular Nationals who are just getting an invite and saying yeah look we've got this invite even though it still cost $3,000 to play the tournament the other teams that are really competed to play in the tournament end up playing lousy non competitive teams Nationals means nothing now.

Anybody can coach a team and anybody can just go to another team has truly created its own pecking order.

 

[_MIA_]

Too many teams may seem like a good problem to have. But it has actually created its own problem.

A fleet of average teams
A fleet of below average teams
And beginner players mixed in to those teams.

A few of the better players are mixed in. But the truely developed players in each brackets pretty much are separated from the majority 80% of the crowd.
so the bulk of teams
(people are looking at)
what they're doing as average and below-average without knowing what upper level and better developed players actually look like...
Do not resemble the talent levels players should or could be at.
In a this system where people will throw money at anything and everything they will just keep throwing money at team after team after team after team after team because they are looking for something that fits their emotional state without knowing their daughters still are behind in a learning curve.
I do think it's good for everybody to be able to play travel ball. But I don't think it should be everybody in the same group/clump because not everybody has the same goals

I have commented to this before and I'm going to say it again travel ball used to be four players that were really good. Every time you went out to play it was going to be competitive. Everybody can have their own interpretation of what it's like to have a mixture now and low Talent. But the better quality teams will tend to avoid the bulk of everything but they have to do it on their own because there is no separation of talent level.

It created its own pecking order.

More options is only a problem (in terms of choosing a team) if a parent doesn’t know what they are looking for

 

[Westwind]

I really think the perspective of the folks from high tb saturated areas is interesting.

I guess it’s anti-intuitive to me that it would be a problem! I do see what you are saying though.

 

[Westwind]

@RADcatcher

3 main components in play here:

1) Lack of pitchers

2) Lack of pitchers

3) Lack of pitchers

Fix any one of these three and you have better teams overall

 

[radness]

@RADcatcher

3 main components in play here:

1) Lack of pitchers

2) Lack of pitchers

3) Lack of pitchers

Fix any one of these three and you have better teams overall

Here anybody who says they are a pitcher has a team that will pick them up.

Maybe that's part of the problem because they don't actually have to be good pitchers to call themselves a pitcher and pitch.

I can say that in that way because there is no shortage of teams and all of the teams have what they call pitchers.

 

[radness]

Clearly in the past 4 years the disparity in talent level of teams has grown noticeably extensively here.

There are some 14U teams that are astonishingly low in the learning curve.

Where I would say
'why are these people spending this much money to play travel ball?'
After 1st year 14's
they should just do high school ball.
Reality is they want to spend their money on their kids and people are happy to throw money at it. But they don't want to put in the time behind the scenes it's just an activity. Doesn't matter what the level their kids are playing or the cost they keep throwing money at it.

I'm not going to say that's bad but if we're talking about competitive softball it's part of the discussion.