Rise of select teams

[mogsoftball]

what board is that? Please share!! Could use more entertainment as it pertains to softball. LOL


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I agree spill the board link lol

 

[Jdaddy]

Pm's sent.

 

[CoogansBluff]

I believe parents feel their kids are going to be left behind if they aren't "keeping up with the Jones". DD started TB on a first year 10U team after one season of rec ball. While it was fun, other than getting our brains beat in, there was no benefit to starting that early, IMO. If I had it to do over, we would have waited til 12U.

It would be interesting to track travel players, documenting their entry points (ie, 10U, 12U, etc.), and looking at the outcomes.

Not sure where I stand on this. I formed a team of first-year 10U players six years ago. Of my original 12, only 4 still play travel. Maybe 2 more play high school but not travel.
But the question isn't necessarily how many still play, but how many enjoyed it while they did play. I think they all did.

I don't think my daughter would be as good as she is today (not saying she's any good, but she's still playing) if she hadn't started that early. I don't think she would've been athletic or motivated enough to catch up. But, I do recall seeing a girl quit last year who was really good and just got burned out because her team thought it was a good idea to have 11-year-olds play 20+ tournaments a year. Maybe OK for some, but not for her.

So I don't know. Best answer is probably that each kid is different, and it's very important to provide the proper level of stimulation for each, not too much, not too little, tailoring it to your particular kid.

 

[Orange Socks]

Around Houston the terms Travel ball, Select Ball, Tournament Ball are all used interchangeably. And yes, these teams are popping up because dad wanted to take the all star team to the next level and there is lots of practice space at Imperial Park. If those younger teams implode I would hope they would go back to rec ball to improve their skills and have fun. At 8U and 10U those kids should be playing seasonal sports and Summer All-stars. I was just looking at my 10U All-Star team pic and the majority of those kids are still playing to this date. I tried to keep these kids in Rec-summer all stars as long as possible. By doing that we became really good and by the time we played first year 14U Summer All-Stars, we took third at a Southern Nationals playing against year round teams. Those really were fun times.

 

[grcsftbll]

I've seen a little talk around here of 6U travel teams. I try not to judge, because I see people bash 8U travel and even 10U travel, both of which my kid has loved playing. It's still hard to imagine finding enough 6 year olds who want to play that much softball. My dd has always loved to play, even in 6U (rec), but I remember often she'd be asking how long til the game was over, because she was bored of waiting in line to hit and wanted the team snack. She's a natural softball player IMO but at 6 she would still get distracted by butterflies in the outfield. I'm sure there are girls who are serious and really good at 6. It's hard to believe there are enough of them to support multiple travel teams though.

 

[North River]

Around Houston the terms Travel ball, Select Ball, Tournament Ball are all used interchangeably.

Same here in Seattle.

 

[junkball]

Here in GA, here's what we went through.

At least here's how it was about 7-8 years ago for us when my oldest started playing and we got into softball at the 10u level. We started in rec ball. During year one we were approached by a parent on our team who had a "select" team she coached and invited us to play. The select teams were made up of girls who would go play local tournaments outside of rec and were on average, the better players in rec along with some who didn't play rec and were good players. Some still played rec ball, we did, but if there was a conflict in games select won out. Some called it travel ball, but there was very little travel, meaning overnight, as there were a lot of teams and tournaments available in a one hour radius of Atlanta. Early on the teams in those teams in those tournaments were usually made up of girls from a particular area - for example you didn't see a lot of girls from Marietta on a team with girls from Covington. Every now and then we would go to a tournament with some of the big name orgs and teams from the area, as would some of the other "select" teams from around. And usually we would all get smoked when we played those teams.

At some point, probably during 2nd year of 10u for us, a few of these teams/coaches decided to jump to the next level, especially after seeing some of those next level teams in action. They started to add better players and weed out the lesser ones, started to recruit, started going to tournaments that were further away and included more teams from outside the area, and started playing in local tournaments with teams from outside the area, and turned into "A" teams or "B" teams, some becoming parts of big organizations, some starting their own. We moved up with our team for the first year but my oldest decided to stay with rec/select, didn't like the full blown travel ball.

She eventually stopped playing after 14u, just not her thing. Now kid #2...oh, the miles we have put on the car and the hotel points we have accumulated. She's all about the game.

 

[quincy]

A lot of it was to do with your population. We do not need to travel to get our butt kicked.

 

[spleen1015]

My DD started playing travel 1st year 10u. Her team would go to tournaments, lose 4 games and be outscored 44-0 on the weekend. That was the first 6-8 tournaments. Eventually they started winning games and playing 6-7 games a tournament. 2nd year 10u, they were on of the better 10u B teams and played 7 games every tournament. There's no doubt in my mind that they were good that 2nd year because they played that first year and got their butts kicked. It always works that way for most 1st year 10u teams.

I think waiting until later just puts you behind. You can recover, but you're behind for 1-2 more years. That's not the case for everyone, every team, but around here that's the way it seems.

There are even 4-6 8u travel teams each year in the area and those teams seem to be pretty good first year 10u.

 

[Jdaddy]

It would be interesting to track travel players, documenting their entry points (ie, 10U, 12U, etc.), and looking at the outcomes.

Not sure where I stand on this. I formed a team of first-year 10U players six years ago. Of my original 12, only 4 still play travel. Maybe 2 more play high school but not travel.
But the question isn't necessarily how many still play, but how many enjoyed it while they did play. I think they all did.

I don't think my daughter would be as good as she is today (not saying she's any good, but she's still playing) if she hadn't started that early. I don't think she would've been athletic or motivated enough to catch up. But, I do recall seeing a girl quit last year who was really good and just got burned out because her team thought it was a good idea to have 11-year-olds play 20+ tournaments a year. Maybe OK for some, but not for her.

So I don't know. Best answer is probably that each kid is different, and it's very important to provide the proper level of stimulation for each, not too much, not too little, tailoring it to your particular kid.

I agree each situation is probably different. I know of seven girls from that original team that are still playing travel, three at a high level. Hard to believe we were as bad as we were, lol! We were bad because we were behind. They were all straight out of rec ball. However, i believe all of these seven would have caught up in a year, whether they started travel at 8,10, or 12.