High School Dead Periods

[Cougars]

Just throwing this out there: Every state is completely different.

In Illinois, the summer contact days do not apply to baseball/softball. The restrictions on HS coaches coaching their players on non-school teams applies only during the school year. There are out-of-season/during school year limits on what you can do, too.

Love that summer is fair game for baseball/softball though. It should be. That's when the sport is played. We do a lot in the summer. Our HS girls (the ones who decided to play; it's optional) are going to get 20+ games this summer. We practice a lot less often, and I'm more lenient on missing practice/games. We also have a few travel girls who make those teams their priority. But I typically see more improvements and bigger jumps in skill during the summer than I do during the grind of the HS season.

Honestly didn't know Illinois had "summer ball" for high school. What schools do you play? My daughters school doesn't do it, and I've never heard of another area (western burbs) school doing it. Interesting.

To add to the Illinois rules, travel shuts down from basically the last week of February through whenever your school is eliminated from the playoffs (late May/early June). As a travel coach, it's nice to just be a fan for those 3 months. For the players, it does create an almost never ending season.

Weather pretty much shuts us down Nov/Dec.
Jan/Feb the travel team has a couple practices a week, maybe a few indoor games. At the same time, high school has some conditioning type stuff.
High school season March-early June.
Travel June/July.
We typically took August off.
Fall travel Sept/Oct.

It does become a grind, and we are just a typical 'B' team, with a couple "hotel" tournaments. As an 18u team, our seniors had no interest in playing all summer before going to college in the fall, so we are traveling Thursday for our last tournament. It's actually refreshing to know we won't be playing all July. I think for high school age teams going through the constant grind, July off (or at least majority of July) isn't a bad idea. Might not be as practical for the higher level teams chasing the D-1 offers, but for the large majority of teams, nothing wrong with some rest.

 

[Cannonball]

I coach in Illinois. When I was the baseball coach, I coached the Junior Legion Team each summer. We played a 25-30 game schedule and then playoffs. My assistant coached the Senior Legion Team. In this way, I could see the talent I had coming up and coach them. All of the young ladies on the HS team I coached in softball were coached by me in the summer. I was an assistant coach and my dd played with those girls. In a few minutes, I will leave to give hitting lessons to some HS girls I coach. I tried to get out of this but I am like the moth drawn to the flame. My golf game will suffer. LOL

The rules in Illinois apply to other sports. I was also the HC of 3 other sports besides softball at some point in my teaching career. The only sport that I coached against coaches who were not qualified to coach their sport was girl's golf. I was on the rules committee for every regional competition during my time as the HC of girls' golf. I was amazed at the number of coaches who did not know the most basic rules.

As a basketball coach, believe me, you didn't want me to coach your child all year long. In Illinois, I had 25 contact days and I used every one of them.

 

[YoungBuck]

I coach in Illinois. When I was the baseball coach, I coached the Junior Legion Team each summer. We played a 25-30 game schedule and then playoffs. My assistant coached the Senior Legion Team. In this way, I could see the talent I had coming up and coach them. All of the young ladies on the HS team I coached in softball were coached by me in the summer. I was an assistant coach and my dd played with those girls. In a few minutes, I will leave to give hitting lessons to some HS girls I coach. I tried to get out of this but I am like the moth drawn to the flame. My golf game will suffer. LOL

The rules in Illinois apply to other sports. I was also the HC of 3 other sports besides softball at some point in my teaching career. The only sport that I coached against coaches who were not qualified to coach their sport was girl's golf. I was on the rules committee for every regional competition during my time as the HC of girls' golf. I was amazed at the number of coaches who did not know the most basic rules.

As a baseball coach, believe me, you didn't want me to coach your child all year long. In Illinois, I had 25 contact days and I used every one of them.

American Legion baseball is in all 50 states and does a very good job in some... American Legion softball is slowly starting to develop (in ten states now) and will continue to grow to offer more value than what most kids experience now.

I have a relative that coaches a Legion baseball team and they will play 50 games in the next 60 days. A very different experience than the travel teams.

 

[_MIA_]

American Legion baseball is in all 50 states and does a very good job in some... American Legion softball is slowly starting to develop (in ten states now) and will continue to grow to offer more value than what most kids experience now.

I have a relative that coaches a Legion baseball team and they will play 50 games in the next 60 days. A very different experience than the travel teams.

American Legion was the best HS age summer ball when I was growing up (30+ years ago). I played with 4 kids in Legion who were drafted (one kid played MLB for 5 or 6 years)

 

[CoachJD]

Honestly didn't know Illinois had "summer ball" for high school. What schools do you play? My daughters school doesn't do it, and I've never heard of another area (western burbs) school doing it. Interesting.

While you can play against other schools in the summer (the rules talk about when you can play "interscholastic" contests), our summer ball consists of Cubs RBI and a local rec league. We do see other schools from time to time. One of the teams is the rec league this year has players from two different schools, plus some others to fill out the roster.

I do it because I want our girls to continue playing. When I started, only 1 or 2 of them would sign up for whatever local summer league they had. The only way to ensure they kept playing was to have a team. I think if I didn't do this team, almost all the girls playing with me this summer would still find a way to play for one team or another.

My guess is a lot of the suburban kids either have travel teams or their local rec leagues to join, so they don't really need to stick together as a school team. I wonder how many of those suburban coaches also coach travel teams and wouldn't be able to do it anyway.

 

[Cannonball]

American Legion baseball is in all 50 states and does a very good job in some... American Legion softball is slowly starting to develop (in ten states now) and will continue to grow to offer more value than what most kids experience now.

I have a relative that coaches a Legion baseball team and they will play 50 games in the next 60 days. A very different experience than the travel teams.

Yes, back in the day, our Senior Legion team played a 50 or 60-game schedule. The Junior Legion team didn't play as many games. Also, I was doing camps in basketball or ... and I just physically could not coach that schedule. I had a kid playing then.

Unfortunately, Legion ball is dying here. TB has killed it.