I am amazed about the participation in our town. We have a total of 10,000 residents, but year-after-year we have been at 700 kids from K-9th grade (boys & girls).
Hovever there are two factors that will eat away at registration. First is the emergence of lacrosse. It is starting to take hold here and that will drain participants away. The second is the increasing incidence of townsfolk taking whole travel baseball teams away to form a club team and completely exiting the local leagues. This year is was a first with a 2nd grade boys teams going club. I suppose they felt they had the starting team for varsity highschool baseball team settled already, so why wait to start soaking up the glory on their express trip to Cooperstown.
But what typically happens is the team goes through a transfomation in a couple of years. There are a few legitimate standout ball players, a group of reasonably good players and then 3 to 4 players at the bottom that are in over their heads. These kids get tired of getting thumped and outclassed on the field and drop away. 1 or 2 of the middling players fall away. Then the team either folds or becomes more of a club team that is looking for better talent in the region. Sometimes they are self aware enough to understand the littany of broken relationships and hard feelings caused by pullling away a whole team because they are too good for local ball.
It's the rare group of players that can come from a single grade in a smal town and compete at the higher levels. But these parents think they have struck gold every time.
Hovever there are two factors that will eat away at registration. First is the emergence of lacrosse. It is starting to take hold here and that will drain participants away. The second is the increasing incidence of townsfolk taking whole travel baseball teams away to form a club team and completely exiting the local leagues. This year is was a first with a 2nd grade boys teams going club. I suppose they felt they had the starting team for varsity highschool baseball team settled already, so why wait to start soaking up the glory on their express trip to Cooperstown.
But what typically happens is the team goes through a transfomation in a couple of years. There are a few legitimate standout ball players, a group of reasonably good players and then 3 to 4 players at the bottom that are in over their heads. These kids get tired of getting thumped and outclassed on the field and drop away. 1 or 2 of the middling players fall away. Then the team either folds or becomes more of a club team that is looking for better talent in the region. Sometimes they are self aware enough to understand the littany of broken relationships and hard feelings caused by pullling away a whole team because they are too good for local ball.
It's the rare group of players that can come from a single grade in a smal town and compete at the higher levels. But these parents think they have struck gold every time.
