Interesting post on Facebook Group about Stay to Play

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Oct 4, 2018
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They base it on where the team is from, not where you have extra homes. Not a typical situation.

When we went to Colorado I stayed with a college buddy's family and save $$$ that way. The rest of the team's room blocks satisfied the minimum days to stay to qualify.

Yeah, makes sense. I'm just being silly.

We're not on any teams that travel much, and currently don't want to be. We love our softball, but want to keep it local and (relatively) inexpensive. That may change of course... :)
 

inumpire

Observer, but has an opinion
Oct 31, 2014
277
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Scenic City in Chattanooga just cancelled their 1st event in early June. This is a STP event. They told everyone they receive $1275 credit.....tell me someone isn’t making money here.
 
May 29, 2015
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This is all very dandy to say, but very hard to follow through. With the biggest National tourneys requiring STP, what are you going to do? .... but the Nationals are not going away and they are not gonna change their policy anytime soon. ... I have seen over the past couple of years, graduated Seniors that are signed decide not to play in the last few tourney of the summer so they can save money to spend on college instead.

Not that hard to follow through on. Just accept that you won’t be crowned the United Super Softball Association of Lower Manhattan’s Grand National Northwest Zone Eastern Section International Champions of the World.

They absolutely would change their policy if people quit registering. There is no reason to change as long as coaches consider a banner or trophy more important than their families’ pocket books. It won’t change as long as parents with the money to spend keep spending. It doesn’t even make the game better, just elitist.

Sounds like those girls have more sense than their parents or coaches.
 
Sep 9, 2019
130
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Not that hard to follow through on. Just accept that you won’t be crowned the United Super Softball Association of Lower Manhattan’s Grand National Northwest Zone Eastern Section International Champions of the World.

They absolutely would change their policy if people quit registering. There is no reason to change as long as coaches consider a banner or trophy more important than their families’ pocket books. It won’t change as long as parents with the money to spend keep spending. It doesn’t even make the game better, just elitist.

Sounds like those girls have more sense than their parents or coaches.

Unfortunately it's not the "our little corner of the world" series events that do this. It's the big college showcase events. These are very important for exposure.
 
May 29, 2015
3,731
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Are they though? I'd really like to see the ROI breakdown. You'd have better odds slapping that money on the craps table. It would be better invested if it was put towards a tuition payment.

Extremely high level, dollar for dollar ... In 2017, Sports Tourism (a great new term I just learned and will apply!) was estimated to be $9 Billion a year industry1. Colleges award about $3.5 Billion per year on athletic scholarships to less than 2% of all players2 . High level macro-economics, that is an investment loss of roughly 3:1 for the parents.

The average athletic scholarship for a D1 female athlete (all sports) is said to be about $15,000/year3. D1 schools are allowed to award a maximum of the equivalent of 12 full-tuition softball scholarships to their 20+ player roster. That is not to say each school even does award 12 FTE scholarships. An actual "full-ride" is extremely rare with incoming freshmen typically being allotted less than a quarter of the entire pie.

Realistically, the best of the best (less than 2%) are going to get an average of $60k (which is not a softball-specific number) over 4 years. Parents are chasing that and spending ... (fill in your amount here) ... per year over an average of a TEN year "career" (age 8 to 18) of a player.

If it is that important, then keep spending the money. But if you keep spending the money and unnecessarily feeding the beast, you have little room to complain.


1 http://www.thesoftballchannel.com/i...elite-travel-sports&catid=17:travel&Itemid=15
2http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/ncaa-scholarships-and-grants
3 http://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.html
 
Dec 2, 2013
3,410
113
Texas
Not that hard to follow through on. Just accept that you won’t be crowned the United Super Softball Association of Lower Manhattan’s Grand National Northwest Zone Eastern Section International Champions of the World.

They absolutely would change their policy if people quit registering. There is no reason to change as long as coaches consider a banner or trophy more important than their families’ pocket books. It won’t change as long as parents with the money to spend keep spending. It doesn’t even make the game better, just elitist.

Sounds like those girls have more sense than their parents or coaches.
Yes, but I am not talking about those wanna be tourneys. I am speaking of the REAL Nationals events that the best teams around the country are attending. You can't just say we're not going, and just stay home to play the Hittin' Kittens in the B league circuit. That helps no one. The Hittin' Kittens get curb stomped and the Gold level teams don't get to play better competition. I really enjoyed travelling the nation watching my DD play the best teams around the country. Although watching her game in Boulder vs the So Cal A's wasn't very fun to watch. LOL. They were very good!

And we all know that the athletic scholarships for the most part do not equal the amount of monies paid toward softball related activities and trips. My DD plays D3 ball and received an outside scholarship/endowment that pays for 75% of tuition a semester. Thank God for that! We think being part of softball helped her earn that scholly. If she quits softball or gets a 2.0 the scholly is still hers.
 
Sep 9, 2019
130
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Are they though?

Yes. If your goal is to play in college, you need to be seen by college coaches. And to be seen by coaches, these events are necessary. Not to be compared to ROI. It's not an investment nor should it be. It's entirely a gamble and a fun one.

BTW, Do you work Peoria? Be there in July. Hopefully.
Ever work Storm Dayz in Sycamore?
 
Mar 28, 2014
1,081
113
Are they though? I'd really like to see the ROI breakdown. You'd have better odds slapping that money on the craps table. It would be better invested if it was put towards a tuition payment.

Extremely high level, dollar for dollar ... In 2017, Sports Tourism (a great new term I just learned and will apply!) was estimated to be $9 Billion a year industry1. Colleges award about $3.5 Billion per year on athletic scholarships to less than 2% of all players2 . High level macro-economics, that is an investment loss of roughly 3:1 for the parents.

The average athletic scholarship for a D1 female athlete (all sports) is said to be about $15,000/year3. D1 schools are allowed to award a maximum of the equivalent of 12 full-tuition softball scholarships to their 20+ player roster. That is not to say each school even does award 12 FTE scholarships. An actual "full-ride" is extremely rare with incoming freshmen typically being allotted less than a quarter of the entire pie.

Realistically, the best of the best (less than 2%) are going to get an average of $60k (which is not a softball-specific number) over 4 years. Parents are chasing that and spending ... (fill in your amount here) ... per year over an average of a TEN year "career" (age 8 to 18) of a player.

If it is that important, then keep spending the money. But if you keep spending the money and unnecessarily feeding the beast, you have little room to complain.


1 http://www.thesoftballchannel.com/i...elite-travel-sports&catid=17:travel&Itemid=15
2http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/ncaa-scholarships-and-grants
3 http://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.html
Oh here we go, the old analysis of what you spend on softball versus the scholarship rec'd. We should save everyone the time and just put a sticky note up that reads "You will not receive back the same amount of money that you put into girls softball". Will save everyone a lot of time.

It's hard to put everything into monetary terms as there is more to life than amassing the largest bank account that you can muster. I would suspect if you ran a thorough ROI analysis on your umpiring job you would see that monetarily, there are 10,000 other things you could do to increase that ROI including loading UPS trucks and washing dishes at a restaurant BUT YOU STILL CONTINUE TO UMPIRE. Because you like doing it. Just like girls like to play softball and challenge themselves against the best competition they can find. There's more to it than money.
 
May 29, 2015
3,731
113
Oh here we go, the old analysis of what you spend on softball versus the scholarship rec'd. We should save everyone the time and just put a sticky note up that reads "You will not receive back the same amount of money that you put into girls softball". Will save everyone a lot of time.

It's hard to put everything into monetary terms as there is more to life than amassing the largest bank account that you can muster. I would suspect if you ran a thorough ROI analysis on your umpiring job you would see that monetarily, there are 10,000 other things you could do to increase that ROI including loading UPS trucks and washing dishes at a restaurant BUT YOU STILL CONTINUE TO UMPIRE. Because you like doing it. Just like girls like to play softball and challenge themselves against the best competition they can find. There's more to it than money.

I absolutely agree with all of that TH and perhaps I should have stressed that angle more.

The comment was made that ”we have to pay and play THESE places to get exposure.” Yes, I took it down a financial path because I interpreted it that way: PAY TO PLAY. Why else do you need “exposure”? If you just enjoy playing (which is a good answer), then you don’t NEED to play here or there or to compete for the Junior World Championship of the Southern Divisional Eastern Zone International Bracket of Georgia. So don’t patronize Stay to Play events. You don’t have to.
 
Mar 28, 2014
1,081
113
I absolutely agree with all of that TH and perhaps I should have stressed that angle more.

The comment was made that ”we have to pay and play THESE places to get exposure.” Yes, I took it down a financial path because I interpreted it that way: PAY TO PLAY. Why else do you need “exposure”? If you just enjoy playing (which is a good answer), then you don’t NEED to play here or there or to compete for the Junior World Championship of the Southern Divisional Eastern Zone International Bracket of Georgia. So don’t patronize Stay to Play events. You don’t have to.
The main reason to play is for the competition factor, not exposure. And the best competition is at these events that are PTP and happen to be exposure tournaments. But I agree with you in that if anyone is solely wanting to play at these events for exposure and thus, for a scholarship, they are financial dummies. Agree with you there. 100%
 

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