Can I get a travel ball history lesson?

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Mar 14, 2017
453
43
Michigan
Travel ball has changed in definition a lot in the last twenty or so years. I respectfully ask how did we get here. Please read the whole post and understand that I mean no disrespect in the question, but if you only read half the post it may come off as disrespectful. That's not my intent. I'm trying to learn something. So please read with an open mind...

I was very active in softball. Then I went on a long hiatus. Then I had kids and got back in, and times had changed.

In my first go round travel teams were few and far between. The people playing were likely college players who had been sought out in some regard to join/try out.

Now everybody and their sister is on a travel ball team. I had a Dad question me about why I didn't ask his daughter to try out for the Little League All-Stars, because she was a travel ball player. She was the worst player on her Little League team, but had $800 worth of bats in her bag, and her dad was willing to write a check to any organization that would take her. She only lasted a season and then was forced to move on to the next sucker who'd take her dad's money, but someone always did. I live in a rural area and there at least 4 organizations drawing talent in a 30 mile radius. Most of the organizations have 2 teams at each age level.

So the fact that everyone is able to join a travel ball team, brings me to two conclusions:
A. There are a ton of rec leagues selling themselves as travel ball teams.
or
B. Travel ball teams have over expanded so far that anyone can create a team and everyone can play if the check cashes.

I realize this sounds insulting, and I don't mean it to. I know there are great organizations with elite players out there. They have great coaches and their players are going to D1 schools. I'm not trying to lump all teams together.

I want to know how we got here. I'm not trying to be argumentative I'm trying to learn, and since this board is full of softball junkies who can't get on a field, I'm hoping I can get a thoughtful history.

Is there some regulation of who can call themselves travel ball teams?

Could I just find 9 girls and call us a travel team, and challenge my neighbor to do the same?

How do "state" tournaments work? My friend's daughter played in multiple state tournaments. I assumed a state champion was supposed to determine who was the best team in your state (with different divisions of course.)

How do National tournaments work?

How did we get to so many governing bodies?


Thanks for taking the time to read this epic and for answering my questions.
 
May 27, 2013
2,353
113
I’ll bite and try to answer some of your questions. I, personally, never even knew travel softball existed until high school. I was asked to join a team but unfortunately my parents liked their weekends at the shore too much, so I wasn’t allowed to play. This was the early 90’s. It was only an 18U team and I have no clue how far they traveled or who they played. No internets back then to stalk them.

Fast forward to now......anybody can put a team together and play in any tourney (unless it’s invite only). As long as they have insurance and pay the sanctioning body fees they are good to go.

Not quite sure when the big influx of teams came but I would say in the early 2000’s it was still mostly as you describe, at least in my area. I remember when I could only name a couple of organizations locally (most only had 14U and older teams) and now there are several (some starting at 8U). Many of the bigger organizations nowadays will take teams on from other orgs or take on independent teams just so they have at least 2-3 teams at each age level. The teams get to use “the name” and think it means something; however, almost every single org that I know of has its mediocre, decent, and good teams, “C-level” to ”Gold level.” Some have true regional/national level teams that are very good and travel to highly competitive tourneys and showcases which attract the college coaches. Those are the teams that you probably recall.

The state, region, and even national tourneys have different classes and brackets, heck, even PGF does. You could realistically be a “National Champion” team but may not have played teams from more than 3-4 different states depending on which sanctioning body’s Nationals you played in. Qualifying for National tournaments can mean just playing in x amount of the sanctioning body’s tourneys, or could mean you won a bid at a regional event. It all depends on the sanctioning body (USSSA, PONY, PGF, etc.).

Even showcases are difficult to figure out unless you’ve been involved In the sport for a while. Some much more popular than others ( with the coaches, as well) and typically you have to be “on the list” to get in (or at least to get the prime fields) and you have to register a year in advance. Some showcases you might not see any coaches, or just a handful that are extremely local to the showcase location and are there to see specific players who have reached out.

Many rec leagues now will take their “all-star“ teams and play a short spring and fall travel season outside of theIr regular season. Our Little League did this to better prepare the girls for the Little League District Tourney.

There are now travel teams for every level of play. I don’t see it as a bad thing as it only promotes the sport. The only problem can be when a team or player doesn’t really know at what level they fit in, and this can lead to a lot of disappointment. On the flip side, it can also be a whole lot of fun if you find the right fit. 😊
 
Mar 14, 2017
453
43
Michigan
There are now travel teams for every level of play. I don’t see it as a bad thing as it only promotes the sport. The only problem can be when a team or player doesn’t really know at what level they fit in, and this can lead to a lot of disappointment.


Yeah, part of the reason I've gotten more interested into the workings is because so many kids are involved locally which is great, but some of the coaches flat out lie to parents and players. One of the coaches told my friend that there would be at least 40 college scouts at their tournament. The tournament was in a little town in the middle of nowhere. There were no scouts going there and no one from any of the teams was getting scouted. It made me sad because he doesn't have the funds to live comfortably much less haul his family all over the state, but they convinced him she'll get a scholarship, so they do it. Her team's claim to fame is that two of their alums played at a community college.

Travel Ball really exploded in our area about 7 years ago and we are at the point where everyone is starting to see "the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." The scholarships aren't rolling in. A couple of girls "signed" at community colleges to play, but didn't play much and left after one season.
 
Oct 5, 2018
148
28
I don't know much history but just some of my thoughts...

$$$...and I don't mean this as an absolute negative. But these orgs have home training centers to pay for and maybe owners to support. The alphabet orgs are I assume for profit. Municipalities make $$$. ETC.......

Rec ball is great and painful at the same time. And non existent in our area after about 12u. In general, it is so cheap and non competitive. It's not about the talent, but there's just absolutely no commitment.

A lot of the "travel teams" aren't much more than a decent rec team from a talent standpoint, but the commitment is much higher because of the cash put forth. And don't really need to travel if in a metropolitan area and can get in a lot of practice/ games compared to rec ball.

I think most parents know where their team and player falls in the heirarchy of skill, but there are some that are clueless.
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
No clue as to how it exactly started but I would guess disgruntled parents started a domino effect. Start off with a couple of good orgs which take the best of the best. Suzy and Sally don't make one of these teams and their parents think they should have so they start their own teams. The same thing then happens for Amy, Beth and Kristen when they try out for team Suzy and Sally. So forth and so on. The onset of all of this probably coincided with the advent of helicopter parenting where parents make sure that their kids never have to face adversity in the face...
 
May 27, 2013
2,353
113
.
No clue as to how it exactly started but I would guess disgruntled parents started a domino effect. Start off with a couple of good orgs which take the best of the best. Suzy and Sally don't make one of these teams and their parents think they should have so they start their own teams. The same thing then happens for Amy, Beth and Kristen when they try out for team Suzy and Sally. So forth and so on. The onset of all of this probably coincided with the advent of helicopter parenting where parents make sure that their kids never have to face adversity in the face...

Yeah, this is a big part of it, as well.
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
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Yeah, this is a big part of it, as well.
This even happened in my town back in the mid 80's. No travel baseball back then just local LL. Well some Dad got mad that his kid didn't make an All Star team so he started his own Independent League in our town. The guy was just ahead of his time 😂
 
Mar 14, 2017
453
43
Michigan
No clue as to how it exactly started but I would guess disgruntled parents started a domino effect. Start off with a couple of good orgs which take the best of the best. Suzy and Sally don't make one of these teams and their parents think they should have so they start their own teams. The same thing then happens for Amy, Beth and Kristen when they try out for team Suzy and Sally. So forth and so on. The onset of all of this probably coincided with the advent of helicopter parenting where parents make sure that their kids never have to face adversity in the face...

This was kind of my theory. At one point an organization contacted me about a player I coached. (She eventually went D1.) He asked if I wanted to coach and if my daughter wanted to play. I had no desire to get involved and my daughter wasn't interested, thankfully. He asked if I could recommend some other players, and I told him no one was really at the travel ball level.

Once the girl he asked about started playing then her friend joined. The next season like you said, all the dads who thought their daughters were every bit as good as the future D1 girl all tried out, and more teams were started, so more players joined. And if those girls can play- then so can my daughter. In our small area our Little League teams had more girls who played travel ball than didn't. And they were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for coaches.

It was so ego stroking too. The thought was that clearly if you are good enough to be a travel ball coach then you know more than any other coach. Of course, they just started their own team because no one wanted them as a coach. But the parents had to keep drinking the Kool-Aid because if the coach was smart enough to pick their daughter then he must be smarter than all the other coaches who didn't want her.

Then the teams started cannibalizing each other. I'm not joking one team started up and offered to make your dad a coach if you left your team. They had 11 girls and 7 coaches. They were an area joke, but their creation ruined at least two other teams. I felt bad for one of the teams because the guy who ran it was a class guy.
 
Dec 11, 2010
4,713
113
My “history” reads a little bigger picture. I hope that’s ok but I think it’s important.

In my area, years ago, there was a lot of men’s fast pitch. A lot of those guys are in their 60’s and 70’s now. Some of those guys gave pitching lessons and coached teams when they had daughters. So until USSSA came along about 10-15 years ago, it was all ASA and you had to travel for a national tournament. But because of the old guys who wanted to stay in touch with the sport, we had pitchers and teams. There was softball to be played here because of them.

My daughters will be 18 and 22 this year. My oldest played rec until her first year of 14’s. USSSA was just starting around here and more people were playing what they thought was travel ball. It was starting to change. More teams.

That was the moment where “travel ball” began to become the the new rec ball.

My younger dd played from 10u on. She was on an established team with 4 adult non-parent coaches who had been coaching a long time and were used to winning. Really good guys, btw. Things had really started to change by that time. Lots of parent coaches starting teams. More kids playing. The team dd played for had trouble getting/keeping the caliber of players they were used to. We always had 5-6 solid players but despite being established and having actual coaching ability, parents were beginning to move players around, starting teams, generally making a mess of the local scene. Looking back, it is very clear. We didn’t know what was going on at the time.

At that time my kids were starting their softball journey, I worked with a softball mom whose dd was a very good player. Her dd was on the same team, with the same coaches and mostly the same players from 8u to 18’s. She totally looked down on anyone whose dd changed teams. She did not understand how that kind of “disloyalty” could happen. It was the end of an era. The head coach from that travel team later took over a 14u team after his 18u team aged out. He didn’t last more than a couple years. Things had changed.

I personally think that back then people were looking at high school softball as the goal. “If you are on a travel team you will start varsity” was the thought. Now, at our high school, everybody is on a softball and a volleyball “travel team”. The basketball is showing signs of going the same direction. The schools are pushing for “three sport athletes”. It has not resulted in competitiveness. At all. It has resulted in total mediocrity. It has resulted in players that “play“ three sports that are exhausted. They look worn out. They have no spark. It’s just another game. They play three sports and frankly aren’t good at any one sport. Our volleyball stunk. Balls hitting the floor between two players with them looking at each other. Basketball won 3 games. Softball would have been pretty competitive- could have been very competitive but they lack any experienced coaching knowledge or ability whatsoever. The model of every hs athlete playing three sports and being on two low level travel teams is a complete failure. Strangely..... Very strangely..... these failures are a DIRECT RESULT of increased opportunity, parents spending gobs of money and dragging these kids all over the place.

Before you say it, yes, I have heard college coaches talk about how much the value athletes that play other sports. They won’t be choosing from these kids. They aren’t good enough.

Both my dd’s were decent bb players. One played two years of hs and one played none. Both were stand out softball players because that’s what they focused on. By playing one sport, they had time to recover. They also had time to strength train and hit during the winter.

The increase in availability in “travel sports” is a double edged sword. I don’t need to say any more about that.

In my area, in order to play softball at a high level, it involves traveling every weekend and it involves real money. You have to get out of the local scene. There are no local teams that travel and you give up regular team practices, which sucks. Whenever I go back to local tournaments it feels like Groundhog Day. Same teams, the same players and as someone’s tag line says here, “only the names change”.
 
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Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
I personally think that back then people were looking at high school softball as the goal. “If you are on a travel team you will start varsity” was the thought. Now, at our high school, everybody is on a softball and a volleyball “travel team”. The basketball is showing signs of going the same direction. The schools are pushing for “three sport athletes”. It has not resulted in competitiveness. At all. It has resulted in total mediocrity. Players that play three sports that are exhausted and frankly aren’t good at any one sport. Our volleyball stunk. Balls hitting the floor between two players with them looking at each other. Basketball won 3 games. Softball would have been pretty competitive- could have been very competitive but they lack any experienced coaching knowledge or ability whatsoever. The model of every hs athlete playing three sports and being on two low level travel teams is a complete failure. Strangely..... Very strangely..... these failures are a DIRECT RESULT of increased opportunity, parents spending gobs of money and dragging these kids all over the place.

Both my dd’s were decent bb players. One played two years of hs and one played none. Both were stand out softball players because that’s what they focused on. By playing one sport, they had time to recover. They also had time to strength train and hit during the winter.
Nice post!!

Here is what I think with regards to multi-sport athletes and TB. I think in general the level of play for any one sport is higher now then it has ever been. For every kid who is playing 3 sports, there are 5 kids concentrating on just one sport. So unless you are super athletic, a kid who is playing 3 sports is going to have a hard time keeping up in any one of the sports with a kid who is just concentrating on that 1 sport. If you have a HS which is pushing 3-sport athletes what they are going to get is a bunch of mediocre teams like you pointed out.

That said I think 2 sports is reasonable in terms of not losing much with respect to any 1 sport if you have a kid who is athletic enough. The more skill-based those 2 sports are, the more difficult it is. Bball and softball are probably the most difficult to pull off ( although a good thing about basketball is you can do a lot on your own..only takes a hoop and a ball). On the other hand track and softball would be easier.

Right now my 10 YO is playing both bball and softball. I found her an AAU basketball team which is willing work around her softball schedule. My wife ran track in college so I can totally see my DD transitioning to that in HS if she isn't able to keep up (skill-wise) in basketball..Wife also played volleyball in HS but I am not sure nowadays you can just pick that up in MS/HS like my sister did in the early 90's. She had never played Volleyball in her life until the summer before HS. She ended up playing D1. She also played 3 sports in HS (12 letters) and said it was way too much..
 
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