Has travel ball hurt your local rec programs?

[mudrunner]

Around here I would say that travel ball has definitely hurt the rec leagues. DD started select/travel ball her first year of 10U if I remember correctly. At that time there were six 10U teams select within 20 miles of here, which is quite a bit considering we are a fairly small town surrounded by other fairly small towns. Baseball is even worse...I can't believe they still get enough players for rec baseball with all the travel teams around.

Like a lot of the other comments, I think rec ball locally has done very little to improve it's status. I can remember from DD & DS playing rec ball that fields would be overbooked, fields not prepped, schedules would change and no one would know about it, coaching was pretty much anybody that they could talk into it, just unorganized. On top of that the commitment was very lax. Not that rec ball needs a big commitment, but DD & DS both had kids on their rec teams that would never show up for practice.

Second year of 12U money was tight and my wife was pregnant with #3. After 3 years of travel ball we had DD talked into playing rec ball for a year just to get through the few months. Her & I were at the park and stopped to watch a few innings of a 14U rec game. After watching two innings of awful swings, a bunch of walks, dropped pop flies, and coaches that did pretty much nothing, DD wanted no part of it. Not that DD was a super star, but the competitiveness just wasn't there.

 

[Sweet Lou]

Rec has often been a stepping stone to travel.
Our rec league this year has between 430 - 450 girls in the rec program broken down as follows
Age # of teams
4-6 - 8
7-8 - 8
9-10 - 9
11-12 - 7
13-18 - 6

We also have a 12U-A and 14U-A travel team associated with the league.
It fluctuates from year to year but seems to have been reasonably steady with the numbers above the past few years. And we usually have one 8, two 10, two 12 and one 14 summer "select" teams.

Every year the league loses girls to travel ball programs in the area. That's to be expected and the way it should be as the more serious girls tend to move on to that at 10, 12 or 14 and the few 15 to 18 year olds in the league are the ones who don't want to play high school ball or aren't good enough to make the high school team.

 

[Eric F]

Our rec league has grown since we moved to TB 3 years ago. Unfortunately, this is mostly due to two neighboring leagues folding. Overall, the league has stayed fairly steady in participation numbers. The typical pattern is that the best players will migrate to TB somewhere in the 10U-12U range. Generally speaking, if they are still in the league at 14U, they probably won't ever make the move to TB. When I was a member of the board, there was a group of people trying to get the league to make more of an effort to retain the more talented players, but nothing really ever came of it. The league does a good job providing a place to play for new and intermediate-level players, and that's their focus. At some point, the better players out-grow the level of competition, and move on. For us, that time was second-year of 10U. It was the right decision for my DD.

 

[FP26]

In my area, travel programs really start impacting the 12u numbers. There are a few 10u travel teams, but not many. I am not familiar with any organizations within 50 miles that have an 8u travel program. So rec ball is a decent option for girls 10 and under. Some of the rec leagues still have 12u teams, but that is where it starts to thin out. There are very few options around here for rec ball beyond 12u.

DD initially resisted travel ball. She loves to swim and we have a pool, so.... But we realized that she didn't have a rec option beyond 12u and her school did not have a junior high program at the time. So her only option to continue playing softball was to move to travel ball. She played both rec and travel as a 2nd year 12u and then moved on to full travel ball from there. Looking back on things, we should have moved her sooner. Once she started playing travel, she had little to no interest in returning to rec.

 

[WARRIORMIKE]

Our rec ball program has 6 -10 teams in the 18U program. Hardly any travel kids on the teams. Mostly the hs freshman or JV players.

 

[Vertigo]

Around here there are numerous travel teams within a 30 min drive. If you’re willing to drive an hour, that number drastically increases. There are travel ball teams that are hurting for players because there are so many teams in the area. If you know how to throw a ball and swing a bat, there is a TB team that will take you. It definitely impacted our Little League mostly when the girls made the jump from minors to majors. Our program ended at majors (11-12 y/o). Not enough interest for juniors/seniors. When the league formed an in-house TB program, that helped to retain some girls; however, most of the better players would still leave. Another issue was baseball. The league definitely supported them more even though our softball teams would win Districts, Sectionals, and go to States.

 

[Westwind]

Are you calling tournament ball travel ball? Here is what I mean: in my locale, a rural area, fewer kids are playing rec at older ages. No doubt. But rec ball here is probably 12-15 games a summer.

It seems like kids that want to play softball now play local tournament ball, don’t travel out of town much and low level tournament ball has replaced rec. They play 50-60 games and maybe go out of town a couple times a year. This local tournament ball is where standout players USED to play but the level of competition has dropped badly.

It seems like local standout players that used to play locally now have to find regional teams that do nothing BUT travel to play. So now true travel ball has taken the place of local tournament ball.

So yes, I think rec ball is dead. Tournament ball has taken its place. True travel ball, (maybe exposure teams), has taken the space that tournament ball used to occupy.

I think it’s bad for the sport. It’s more expensive, not everyone can afford it. I also think it is a shame that it is so hard to find competitive ball without going to a regional team. I bet the old men’s players might have seen this when their sport declined.

I also think that one reason the men’s game died was lack of pitchers. Sound familiar? How many 12-16u teams are advertising for “a pitcher to round out a talented roster of players”. Players not wanting to pitch, the overall lack of pitching is a huge warning sign for the sport I think. And that might be from a lack of rec teams and games to get kids interested. Hope this all made sense.

 

[Gambler Bob]

I am sure our rec league is being affected by travel ball, and i personally think that is a good thing. I always hear people saying girls should stay in rec ball longer to help with development, softball players do not develop by playing rec ball. In this area you are lucky to get 5 practices in before rec season starts due to the spring weather. Once the rec season starts the teams no longer practice, all the fields are being used for games. So any practice would have to be done on your own time. There is no way for the rec league to actually develop talent. In most cases the rec league coaches are terrible, if you are lucky the coach might have played a little high school baseball/softball.

With travel ball, most teams practice 2-3 per week starting in January. That is where development should happen. Most travel ball players continue to practice 1-2 times per week once the tournaments start, so the players can continue to develop skills during the season. The truth is that if you want to play high school sports you better get out of rec ball by 12u, and even if you wait that long the deck is stacked against you.

 

[gamommax3]

Travel ball starts in earnest at 10u here, although you can find plenty of 8u teams in the mid-range travel organizations around here too. Our rec ball numbers have dropped off significantly, especially 12u and up. They have resorted to combining 14u, 16u, and 18u into a few teams that will play each other repeatedly. But they *have* addressed the desire to play tournaments by adding three tournaments to the rec ball spring season. They play a pre-season tourney, a charity tournament, and an end of the season tournament. It really helps to keep those families that want some tournaments but are not ready for travel ball. We started by playing all-stars over the summer out of our rec league in 8u which really gave us a taste of travel ball. We went back and played fall rec ball that fall (10u) and then moved to travel ball after that. That seems to be what happens every year. Most of the kids that play all-stars over the summer then move on to travel ball the next year.

 

[Lightning]

I am sure our rec league is being affected by travel ball, and i personally think that is a good thing. I always hear people saying girls should stay in rec ball longer to help with development, softball players do not develop by playing rec ball. In this area you are lucky to get 5 practices in before rec season starts due to the spring weather. Once the rec season starts the teams no longer practice, all the fields are being used for games. So any practice would have to be done on your own time. There is no way for the rec league to actually develop talent. In most cases the rec league coaches are terrible, if you are lucky the coach might have played a little high school baseball/softball.

DD's rec experience is pretty different from this. Their teams practice twice a week for the month leading up to opening day, and often add a day for the batting cages as well. Once the season starts, practices are usually one day plus one batting cage day. Plus girls are expected at the fields an hour before game time to warm up and, depending on the coach, hit the cages one last time. While girls miss practice sometimes, it's not common for there to be consistent no-shows (we've had no more than one girl per team)

Coaching is hit or miss, though. All of DD's coaches have been nice, but the last couple of seasons she's had coaches who run a pretty tight ship and are strong on fundamentals, and it makes a huge difference.