Not playing HS....hurt playing in College?

All 16/18U (some 14U)teams go dark during HS season at least in Texas and most other states. If your kid doesn't play HS and happens to find a team, who are they gonna play? There are no tourneys to play.

Orange Socks said:

All 16/18U (some 14U)teams go dark during HS season at least in Texas and most other states. If your kid doesn't play HS and happens to find a team, who are they gonna play? There are no tourneys to play.

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She is already on a travel team, so we don't need to find a team. She will practice with them. Coach already said that he will be having scrimmages and round robins with other teams in our organization and others organizations during school season, so that's not a problem. She will be playing.

We are off this weekend, then its 4 weeks in a row, then into indoor winter workouts, with about 2 weeks off for Christmas/New Years. Those will last till probably mid March. I think we may play an indoor tournament or two over winter and we are heading down to FL for the Diamond 9s tournament. Practice outside starting MAYBE mid March at the earliest. April have a scrimmage or 2 or a round robin on the weekends. Mid-Late May start tournaments. HC said we should plan on about 8-10 tournaments in Summer. She'll be playing plenty. Really won't have that long off.

She plays volleyball in the fall, but I don't think she is planning on doing a school sport for spring. She is considering baseball, since our HC is an ex-MLB player and DD1 is going to be a manager for the team (DD1 loves keeping the book). We'll see about that though. She is worried that the boys will "take it easy on her" cause she is a girl. I told her first time she throws with one of them and then smashes a ball to the warning track that will go out the window. She likes the idea (and I do to) of having a former MLB player help with her swing. If she doesn't play baseball, she'll probably just go to travel practice and do stuff like t-work, pitch at home.

Cannonball said:

I know you are right about this but I can't be the only HS Coach in America that gets their players recruited. My players all play for TB teams that say that they get their players recruited. Typically, that means that they give out the URL for the parents to sign up for some service. I can't think of one HS player of mine that has gone on to play in college that I wasn't the one who made the contacts and pushed the recruitment. There has to be more HS coaches out there that do the same. Note - I will say that it gets harder and harder to get a coach to make that initial call back to me if I don't catch them in their office. I've sent some pretty good players to some of these schools. Players who ended up in their career record books. So, I know you are right about colleges moving away from high school. I have a senior this year who is a stud. She has all of the accolades etc. and I just now found her a place to play. She will own the record books of where she is going by the time she is done.

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[MENTION=938]Cannonball[/MENTION] - you are truly one of the 1.8%, just wish there were more of you out there. The biggest issue with recruiting in HS is most teams only have a couple of players that are college material, and when a recruiter comes to watch them play it is usually for one game/day and you have no idea what type of competition they are facing. Watching high level TB players compete with a bunch of REC league players is NOT a good way to judge talent/ability. There is a saying that if a player wants to play badly enough there is a school/coach who wants them. Sometimes finding that fit is A LOT of hard work and I am glad to know that you are putting in the extra effort for your players!

Actually, it is our staff that does this. Our HC knows a lot of coaches as well and our other coaches are former players who are either going to be inducted into their school hall of fame or have already been inducted. We really try, as a staff, to get the word out on our players. I think that this is a part of our job. However, and I mentioned this, it is getting harder to open lines of communication with college coaches. Even where my dd went it is hard and I would think that when I say we have a comparable player, they would respond. Note, this coaching staff is not the same HC and AC that coached my dd. You are all correct, imo, that there will come a day when few if any HS coaches matter in the recruiting process.

Cannonball said:

Actually, it is our staff that does this. Our HC knows a lot of coaches as well and our other coaches are former players who are either going to be inducted into their school hall of fame or have already been inducted. We really try, as a staff, to get the word out on our players. I think that this is a part of our job. However, and I mentioned this, it is getting harder to open lines of communication with college coaches. Even where my dd went it is hard and I would think that when I say we have a comparable player, they would respond. Note, this coaching staff is not the same HC and AC that coached my dd. You are all correct, imo, that there will come a day when few if any HS coaches matter in the recruiting process.

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I know the level of HS softball varies across the country, but in my neck of the woods there are very few HS coaches who played softball or had DD's who played. They coach other sports when softball is not in season and have no relationships with college coaches.