# of Travel Teams

[_MIA_]

I had two friends growing up who never played organized ball..they were poor and had family issues. They would play ball in the playground with us every day.. baseball and basketball in the summer and basketball in the winter. One kid made the HS basketball team and one made the HS baseball team. They were not stars but contributed on decent teams.

Imagine that happening in 2021?

 

[kennykozman!!]

I had two friends growing up who never played organized ball..they were poor and had family issues. They would play ball in the playground with us every day.. baseball and basketball in the summer and basketball in the winter. One kid made the HS basketball team and one made the HS baseball team. They were not stars but contributed on decent teams.

Imagine that happening in 2021?

It could happen at smaller rural schools. I don't think it happens very often any longer. I watched a JV game this year where a team in the top of the first scored 13 runs. I could name every travel team they played for.

 

[Dandan111]

Dd kept playing rec while doing travel. I wish more travel kids would keep playing rec. It helps coaches and teammates. Just because you travel doesn’t mean you can’t play some ball through the week. It also keeps reps up for the weekends. Support your local club before it’s gone.

 

[bmakj]

• A lot of this is that lowest level travel has killed and replaced rec in many areas. That isn't ideal, but that it is the current reality.

FIFY

rec is dying because each year, more rec level talent moves to travel to fill our roster of butt hurt parent coaches trying to build a team around 3 or 4 girls marginally better than their rec peers. rinse, repeat ad nasuem

 

[bmakj]

just imagine

you take the bottom 30-40% of "travel" teams in your area (ie any team that is not pure rec, ie geographically etermined boundaries determine where you play, drafts, etc., minimal ( I coached rec, am not naive enough to say no) finagling of rosters, etc), and move all those players back to rec. how much does that improve the level of rec ball, probably by several orders of magnitude. instead of 2-4 girls who are softball players on a team, you have 6-8 say, improves level of play to probably pretty close to the level of the bottom 30-40% of travel teams. Families spend a whole lot less, travel a whole lot less (to practices and games), girls can still play softball, and for those that truly standout, travel is still there. maybe everyone does not have matching bags and helmets, maybe their uniforms are not as fancy, and they might only have 2 shirts instead of 3 or 4.

hell there are times (and DD has played for multiple teams) when I wished DD was worried about making A team during tryout season, might push her more in offseason, instead of wondering which 2 or 3 teams would offer her.

too many parents caught up in "Sally plays for XYZ travel team". there is an example of this in town. Local dad took abou 8 or 9 girls from rec, supplemented with 2-3 girls outside our town, and created a travel team under umbrella of existing org from a few towns over. they have pretty much been smoked in every tournament they entered, but they did win the local "travel league" (roster limits on players outside each town, run limits in innings, 4 outfielders, etc., ie glorified rec), and a tournament that is only attended by teams in this league

 

[Cougars]

Some of it might be that "rec" is different by town, state, region? I looked up the website of the rec org in our town. The softball teams played between 14 and 17 games last spring. So if you are a player/parent that has any desire at all to play softball, will you be happy with 17 games for the year?

 

[radness]

in so cal heard of 2 more org name's popping up.
Same people/coaches tho...
Ya kno' coaches Jumping off the mothership to create whatever.

What's in a name?
.......letters

Whats softball about?
.......not the alphabet!

But around here the old el presidente's sit in the top seat,
If a coach wants that role they cant sit there cuz seat is taken.
Sooo they build a new name to create a place to sit...thrown?

Ohhh and maybe the other reason is
The lower totem pole teams
#2,#3,#4 coaches get tired of having their teams picked through pulling players up to the #1.
SO theres that.

 

[Traps71]

Dd kept playing rec while doing travel. I wish more travel kids would keep playing rec. It helps coaches and teammates. Just because you travel doesn’t mean you can’t play some ball through the week. It also keeps reps up for the weekends. Support your local club before it’s gone.

We did the same. It was a grind doing both, but i wouldn’t change anything. My DD has great memories of playing for her local LL. It was a lot of fun.

 

[bmakj]

Some of it might be that "rec" is different by town, state, region? I looked up the website of the rec org in our town. The softball teams played between 14 and 17 games last spring. So if you are a player/parent that has any desire at all to play softball, will you be happy with 17 games for the year?

if there were more players in rec, little fewer in travel, more games would be played.

around us, rec softball has pretty much conceded weekends due to a few girls playing both rec and travel, so that is potentially say 12-20 games could be added (assuming some SAt AM doubleheaders). and gtting umps is an issue, but if fewer travel tournaments, maybe more umps available? also, if talent level were higher, rec AS would probably be able to put together and keep together a team a few local travel tournaments after AS is over.

not saying TB is wrong or evil . . . just a lot of people in it for wrong reasons and creating teams for wrong reasons, compounds all the issues.

 

[NJSwampdragons]

Just an observation—

Nine years ago there were two 12u tournament teams within 30 miles of our area of Pa.

Today there are over 25 teams at 12u in the same geography. Two at A, a few B and many Cs.

Some teams are holding their 5th round of “final tryouts” as they still don’t have enough girls. Seeing teams folding, leaving their players looking for a new home at the last minute. Other orgs with 4 players are amazingly holding out hope of finding 6+“committed girls” in time for fall.

Looks like we’ve finally reached the saturation point.

In Eastern PA and NJ, it seems like a lot of the the really good 10-U teams moving up are struggling to fill their 1st year 12-U rosters. Not sure if they are being picky or they are struggling to find players. No one wants to pay all that money to have their DD potentially be a bottom player.

I talked to one coach a month ago from a top organization that didn’t seem that interested, despite how well my DD pitched against them. Then the coach recently made an inquiry if my DD was still available.

The team my daughter chose had over 50 girls at tryouts.