How are your local HS teams distributed? Our local scene

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marriard

Not lost - just no idea where I am
Oct 2, 2011
4,312
113
Florida
The multi-sport thread made me think more about how the local HS scene looks.

I took our local county - which is considered strong state-wide and have had the most success in terms of getting to and winning state championships the past few years:

Team Quality:
Contenders: 8 (varsity teams with all travel players, most or all from high level 'A' orgs)
Middling: 7 (at least 1/2 travel players, have a mid-level pitcher with experience)
Bad: 28 (No travel players or at most one or two)

Contenders break down:
5 openly recruit as either private schools or charter schools. All have JV teams full of travel players, all of which would beat most of the 'middling' level HS varsity squads.
3 public schools have strong rec leagues and travel leagues based in their home cities and are also large to very large High Schools(between 1800 and 6000 students)
All the quality pitching in the area attend these schools. Most have 2 quality starters - some have as many as 4

Middling Schools:
Most travel players are in more local travel teams or 'b' level teams. Most not good enough to get recruited into the top 5 contenders. They have the second or third level of pitchers which allows them to crush the bad teams but have zero chance against the contenders. No depth.

Bad:
Ugh. Nothing. Or next to nothing. Will get beaten 15-0 by the contenders in 3 innings and it wont be much better against the middling schools. Games against each other are generally 23-20 walk-fests that end when the sun goes down (because no way their fields have lights)

Several of the middling and bad teams have been totally decimated by the recruiting teams. They should be able to field good teams but all the players who should be attending are at the Charter or Private School or have taken advantage of school choice/magnet programs to get to a different school (this includes the lone travel player on a bad team transferring schools to be on a middling team).

The games between contending teams are more intense than any travel game and are really high quality. Games between differing levels are generally awful. Middling teams versus middling teams can be fun. Bad versus bad is painful for the most part.

Looked quickly at the county above and below us geographically and the team level mix is similar but with even less middling teams and a fewer (but stronger) top teams. Statewide we are clearly the county that is most top heavy with teams and have the highest concentration of the best travel players in the fewest number of schools which is why the county does so well at State.


How does your area look?
 
Last edited:
Dec 2, 2013
3,410
113
Texas
Your assessment is spot on. It's always the Haves vs the Have Nots in the Houston area. You will typically see the same teams at the top of their district year in year out. It is rare that a cellar dweller can crawl their way to the top or to the middle of their district without an experience pitcher or TB players on the team. Every year in Texas they realign each district, and this year it seems we may have a favorable alignment to have an outside chance to make the playoffs. I can't believe I actually typed that! We have a young new coach that knows how to play, and knows how to work with our pitchers. DD's team played in a tourney on Thursday and Saturday and won both games on Sat with our lob ball pitcher. Our coach was resting our #1 to save her for games that actually mean something. What a concept! They got 5th out 16 teams.
 
May 27, 2013
2,353
113
My dd attends a private school and our conference is extremely strong. The schools draw travel players from 3 different states. Pretty much every team has at least one DI commit with a few other DII - DIII commits as well, or younger players capable of playing in college. Pitching is strong with most starting pitchers playing for a legit A-level travel program.

That all being said, our school is a big field hockey / lacrosse school and that is our draw for recruits. We are not a big softball program. Our softball team last year had 3 travel players with dd included; that number should go up to 5-6 this year. We were competitive last year but will be moreso this year with better bats in our lineup.
 
May 30, 2013
1,442
83
Binghamton, NY
Our situation here in upstate NY is pretty different.
Of course, some districts are perennial powerhouses, some in the middle, some weak.
But NONE are private or charters, and none have the ability to "recruit" (unless a family physically re-locates to a new district... or pays "tuition' to attend a school outside of their district, which is very rare).
Public School education and environment up here is very good, and therefore private and charter are almost non-existent.
Most teams have at least a few travel players, and a few districts are "stacked" with travel players.
Our HS is one of the stacked teams, and there are about 3-4 other districts on our upcoming schedule that will be knock-down/drag-out games. So, about 1/2 our schedule will be pretty tough. The other 1/2 not so much...
Our state Section has sent at least one team (teams divided among 5 classes AA, A, B, C, D; based upon enrollment size...) to the State Championships for the last decade, or so.
A few years we have sent a team from each Class in our Section to the Championships, one year we were victorious in 4/5 Classes.
 
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Jul 15, 2015
87
18
In Oklahoma, it's mostly schools that have built a tradition with softball programs and place greater emphasis on the sport at the top. You will typically see the same group of teams at the state tourney in most divisions year after year, unless a different program rises with a great pitcher or two.
 
Apr 16, 2010
924
43
Alabama
For our area it seems to be based on tradition more than anything. Schools that have had success in the past will always be competitive and others not so much. I am not saying there isn't some recruiting happening but it isn't wide spread. That being said you do not see too many HS in Alabama field a team with 7 players that go on to reach the post season in the NCAA like we did about 10 years ago without a little help.

Most of the competitive teams in our classification have 5 or 6 "A" level players or at least a good pitcher. It all tends to shake out towards regionals as most of the areas we are divided into have two more dominate teams and a couple of weaker ones.
 
Feb 21, 2017
198
28
In New England we have a similar breakdown in the public schools where some towns have a strong starting 9 with many travel A players and some glorified recreation teams.

Contenders: Most or all play travel, key positions are travel A (pitcher, catcher, couple INF and OF) with solid B players filling in.

Good: Solid A pitcher with decent support of B players behind her or the opposite (decent B) pitcher with some support from an A defensive.

Mediocre: B level pitcher with more B than A level players behind her.

Bad: B level pitcher with pretty much B players, some recreation players and few if any A level.

Ugly: Major weakness at pitching, catching or supporting players.

—————-

DD1 was in bad team with B level pitcher/catcher with mostly B level players behind, some recreation players. AC was coach of B level program and you guess it many of those B level kids played varsity, some 14U over A level 18U players. HC and AC are thankful gone, lost a tone of games.

One other thing is a few of the best programs have good coaches, former college players who are knowledgeable and motivated. They did better than their talent pool, the teams with poor coaches underachieved.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Apr 28, 2014
2,316
113
We have 24 or so teams in our district and of that about half have travel players throughout. The other half are hit or miss. Our conference has 7 teams and of that 3 or 4 will be fighting for the championship and have very good talent. Our HS had 4 pitchers tryout last year. 3 freshman and one senior. All on A level travel teams. We lost 3 senior starters but should be replacing with strong talent.

Here is our hype video :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk6...vCJB_DFsnq8oavfhtQt_ZQ9i7j7KFehe7RKiAa7tL7OgI
 
Sep 29, 2010
1,082
83
Knoxville, TN
First off, you have 43 schools in one county??? That’s a huge number!

In TN, there are some perennial powerhouses that will fluctuate with dominant runs and lack of talent for a year or two, but always seem to find their way back to the top. This is both public and private. There are plenty of bottom dwellers who seem to have coaches with zero interest in winning and some rural schools with good coaches who will probably never have the talent to win. The best teams around Knoxville and surrounding counties all have good middle school programs (they play in the fall) that are coached by someone from the HS coaching staff. Expectations are set early and the girls are ready when they get to HS.

Most people have a good idea of who will make the final eight to make state. I feel I could name 12 schools at the first of every year in our classification and the eight would always come from that group.
 
Jan 5, 2018
385
63
PNW
In our league we have 7 teams. 6 from one school district. The sixth was a new opening two years ago. This year they will field a Varsity team. But in the redistricting of school attendance boundaries it sucked a ton of talent from one of the other schools who now will NOT field a Varsity team this year. Talking with a school administrator I know, he said it generally takes 10-15 years for a school to "recover" when a new school is added and it affects the neighboring school attendance boundaries. These are schools with 1600-2200 students. There are 50 teams in the state at the same classification level.

It does seem the same 8-12 are consistently making the semifinals of state tournament.

One topic of conversation in our area is the number of players starting in REC and their eventual HS attendance. Our local Rec League encompasses 3 HS attendance boundaries...which the majority of the kids starting in rec come from one. Demographics and what my "friends" are doing seems to play a large roll. The other HS has a STRONG state contending soccer program and the third is strong in LAX. And those two have less talented SB programs than the one that has more rec kids starting out in its boundary. So the conversation is how to get more involvement at younger age in the other attendance areas.

The TB influence definitely has an affect on those HS teams. Our closest rival consistently has 8-11 Varsity girls also playing TB. Our HS has 6 currently. DD's Freshman year they will have at least 8 in the program. Her sophomore year they should have 11-12. It also helps that the V coach is a former College player and is reaching down to the young girls at the rec league. HC also comes to local TB tournaments to watch future girls coming to her program. The girls on our team talk about that a lot and there's some real positives.
 

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