Is your travel team required to play rec ball in 10 and 12u?

Are the other rec only players subsidizing some or all of the TB player's costs? If so I can see why they would want the TB kids to play rec.

grcsftbll said:

I definitely don't see the point of having kids who are good enough to play A level travel dropping down to play rec. That sounds like a bad idea for everybody.

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There are many reasons as others have mentioned in this thread. At 12u and 10u the difference between the average A player and the average Rec player isn't huge. Now if you took an 'A' team and put them against a Rec team that would be bad.

A lot of those "Rec" players will go on to play Varsity softball at the High School. When you mix the travel players in with the Rec league I bet I couldn't pick out all 12 if I watched all of the games played.

It's good for the Rec league, it's good for all players, it's good for the community. It's not that many games compared to a travel season. I am all for it.

GunnerShotgun said:

At 12u and 10u the difference between the average A player and the average Rec player isn't huge.

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This I disagree with. Having coached both Rec and TB recently, it was almost scary to have the TB girls hit at or throw to the rec girls.
When I'm telling the other coach to back up their 1st baseman cause the ball is about to be hit there..... there is a problem. My daughter 10u drilled a 1st baseman last season she played rec, not fun for anyone.

Is the concern about the time commitment of starting practice in January instead of May? Most TB teams practice 11-10 months a year...




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Softballmom2008 said:

Our travel team is connected to a rec league, but the past few years, travel ball started when rec league ended. All Stars is made of coaches kids and top travel players. It’s separate from travel and rec. but still part of the rec league. It’s just 1 tournament weekend, before rec playoffs. Now they added a more elite team considered B level that will start playing in January. They will play in A level and open tournaments in addition to the B tournaments. They will still have a C travel team that starts at the end of May when rec season is ending. The C team will only be on 1 team during rec season, their rec team, up the B team will be required to play on a rec team, likely All Stars, and their travel team. I think it’s too much. Plus those players will be on rec teams with newbies and casual players which is competitively unfair to both types of players. Not sure how that will work out since it’s the first time they are doing it. The reason they are creating this team is so these players don’t leave the area to play on more elite teams which is what started happening the past couple years.

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I think it's great they want to offer something more competitive, but they've got a lot to learn. Hand picking a "rec team" and having them go out and destroy everyone else is stupid. Also "Elite B" doesn't make a lot of sense.

GunnerShotgun said:

There are many reasons as others have mentioned in this thread. At 12u and 10u the difference between the average A player and the average Rec player isn't huge. Now if you took an 'A' team and put them against a Rec team that would be bad.

A lot of those "Rec" players will go on to play Varsity softball at the High School. When you mix the travel players in with the Rec league I bet I couldn't pick out all 12 if I watched all of the games played.

It's good for the Rec league, it's good for all players, it's good for the community. It's not that many games compared to a travel season. I am all for it.

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You must have some good rec leagues in your area. In mine I can tell you the difference between my 12uA player and the better rec players is enormous.

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We are in Nor Csl. Here is the issue. At 10u, the good players start leaving the rec league and the travel team associated with the rec league to go play on more elite teams out of the area. The rec league which also sponsors the local travel teams has decided in order to keep the top players in the local area and on our travel teams, they are forming a “B+” team that will play January thru Nov. with August and Dec off. My guess is depending on how this team does, they will spin it into an A team the following year. Our area currently does not have any A level teams at any level. Players must commute across bridges an hour to find these teams. I’m not willing to do that right now for my dd even though she would easily make one of those teams. My dd is a pitcher and she’s getting plenty of time on the mound right now so at age 10, I don’t want her on a A team until 12u...even 2nd year 12u. I’m really hoping our newly forming January team works out and they actually keep good players and find others or recruit back the players who left the area for stronger teams.
Regarding rec, I don’t know how my dd can go back to coach pitching and no dropped third strike, stealing home etc. which are 10u rec league rules. Maybe if they use travel rules in 10u rec. this year it might be ok, along with making the top players like my dd...maybe a team captain or assistant coach and give her more responsibility on her rec team.

Actually our rec league is 2 practices and 2 games per week at 10u. I think that’s a lot with All Stars, which is really just 1tournament, and travel ball at the same time...plus my dd likes to play rec lacrosse in the spring, which she won’t be able to do if she has to play on 2-3 softball teams in the spring.

Is this a Little League based rec-League? When my dd played rec, the girls who made All-Stars that spring were given the first offer to play on the rec-League sponsored travel team which started up the next fall. They played tourneys in the fall, worked out together in the winter, played rec in spring with about 4 travel tournaments on spring weekends, and the team then had to disband before All-Star season started up again. It was a way to keep the girls who played on the All-Star team together so they could improve for next year’s LL All-Star season. The team of 12 was split up among the rec teams each season - we typically had 4 teams so 3 travel girls on each team. They played in B-level tourneys and would hold their own. No way could they compete in A level where the teams could pull girls from all over and ours had to live within a boundary.

It was very doable, even when the girls still played other sports in the fall and winter. It also gave other girls in the rec league more pitching time as we would save the travel pitchers for the tourneys.

No...our all Stars isn’t like that. Its kind of bogus actually. It’s just 1 tournament weekend. They select “top players” (coaches and board members kids with 1 or 2 spots left for the best league player) from each towns rec league teams and put them on an all star team. Our all star team only had 1 practice together before they played in the tournament. It was kind of a joke.