Choosing rec or travel only after 10u

What one league around me tried to convince parents, and I tried to as well was: 'Rec is just 8-10 weeks during school that gives you a chance to play other positions, do you really want to travel 1-2 hours 2-3 weekends a month for tournaments while school is in session?'. We also tried to give them a good summer and fall B/C experience and encourage the parents part of spring rec is giving back to the community.

On the other hand, its hard to come back to rec after 3 summers of Allstars/travel ball. My hope was to keep most of the better kids around through the end of 1st year 12s. 9 years ago we were able to keep several of the better players around through the end of 8th grade, but now its become a struggle to keep them around to 1st year 12s. This year my DD's old rec league lost several 2nd year 10u's.

Except maybe for a P3 or lower trying to get circle time, moving on probably makes sense.

Piggy-backing on the female MultiSport Athlete thread, I'm probably a dreamer, but I think the opportunity of playing rec through 8th allows a player to experience middle school sports while playing softball.

Not to pick on Eric F, but So Cal softball is a different beast. My DD played in two 12u B tournaments in So Cal last summer. We watched parts of two 6u All-Star games. They looked good enough to play some NorCal 8u All-Star teams close, if not beat them.

Rick M said:

This is a good point, something that those of us with a half-dozen $300 bats in the garage tend to overlook.

It's great seeing responses from all over the country, and it does sound like the quality of play in Rec is really dependent on geography. In some places the district All-Star tournaments (and beyond) are very competitive and a big deal to the community, so it's worthwhile to remain in the program. Other places have such a vibrant travel scene that the better players leave Rec ball to the beginners. So to address the OP, there's no right or wrong answer here -- it all depends on your DD's unique situation. Most importantly, at 10U & 12U, make sure your DD is having fun.

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Extremely well said Rick M!

pattar said:

Agreed...that is what we did 30+ years ago in LL

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That is why LL is IMO one of the best "rec" leagues around. You have to draft which helps spread the teams more evenly although leave it to the coaches to screw that up This is a great topic and no single answer will fit every girl. I was fortunate enough to have been involved in what I consider a top LL rec program. It was extemely competitive when All-Stars rolled around and the team that beat us in Districts went on to win the Majors LL World Series a few years ago and followed up with at least a trip to Oregon the next year if I remember correctly. Not every rec league has that type of competition but those that do would argue rec is a good place to be for awhile.

IMO, depends on geography, the league, and more importantly the girl. The thing that stands out to me is the age of the girls we are talking about in this thread. They are young!!! Put them where they think they want to be. If friends are playing rec, play rec!! If they love the game, love to practice, and want to play TB, then play TB. No right or wrong answer but let them be part of the decision making process at the end of the day. If they are having FUN, then they will likely want to keep playing. Girls having FUN is the key IMO, or at least what a 17 year old and 13 year old have taught me thus far.

S3

Dabears17 said:

On the other hand, its hard to come back to rec after 3 summers of Allstars/travel ball. My hope was to keep most of the better kids around through the end of 1st year 12s. 9 years ago we were able to keep several of the better players around through the end of 8th grade, but now its become a struggle to keep them around to 1st year 12s. This year my DD's old rec league lost several 2nd year 10u's.

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All Stars is what did it for our DD. She played all stars over the summer of her second year of 8U. We put her back in rec for the fall and all of a sudden she hated it. I don't know how many homeruns she hit that last fall, but she wasn't impressed with herself at all. She'd come back into the dugout after all the high fives and tell me, "In a tournament that would've been a single." She was just done with rec after all stars.

STRIKE3 said:

That is why LL is IMO one of the best "rec" leagues around. You have to draft which helps spread the teams more evenly although leave it to the coaches to screw that up This is a great topic and no single answer will fit every girl. I was fortunate enough to have been involved in what I consider a top LL rec program. It was extemely competitive when All-Stars rolled around and the team that beat us in Districts went on to win the Majors LL World Series a few years ago and followed up with at least a trip to Oregon the next year if I remember correctly. Not every rec league has that type of competition but those that do would argue rec is a good place to be for awhile.

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I am not even sure how LL baseball (or softball) works now. When I played you had one league, 9YO-12YO. You tried out and if you didn't make you didn't play. This seems sort of harsh at first glance but you have to remember
that back then kids, whether they were playing organized ball or not, still played some sort of ball (stick,speed,wiffle) pretty much every day in the summer so they still
had ample opportunity to improve and make it the next year, and a lot of kids did. A few years after I left, in my town at least, I think they instituted a minor and major division so that if you didn't make majors as a 9YO or 10YO you would play in minors.

pattar said:

I am not even sure how LL baseball (or softball) works now. When I played you had one league, 9YO-12YO. You tried out and if you didn't make you didn't play. This seems sort of harsh at first glance but you have to remember
that back then kids, whether they were playing organized ball or not, still played some sort of ball (stick,speed,wiffle) pretty much every day in the summer so they still
had ample opportunity to improve and make it the next year, and a lot of kids did. A few years after I left, in my town at least, I think they instituted a minor and major division so that if you didn't make majors as a 9YO or 10YO you would play in minors.

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Agree, thats how baseball is now in LL across the board. Still think geography plays a part in it all as the teams that go on to the LLWS are many times the same team or from the same area. Just in our area we may be able to fill 6 or 7 LL minor softball teams and just across town they can't fill one with more kids in the mix. Not all rec leagues are great certainly and some more competitive than others. If you have a good one kids will tend to play in it longer. If not, then they move on.

pattar said:

In our rec league there were no evaluations. You either signed up as a whole team ahead a time or as an individual and were placed on a team (not even sure how they did that).

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This is how our rec leagues are as well. There are usually a couple of travel teams that join - the spring league is a Babe Ruth league and they want to qualify for the national tournament, and in the fall they just want to get some extra games in. And then you have the "whole teams" who are usually at a higher level than the teams that were put together from the "free agents". So we end up with a large disparity in talent levels, which would be okay if the talent was spread evenly across the teams. But instead we have a lot of lopsided games that aren't a whole lot of fun.