- Jun 18, 2010
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I also have found little difference in costs for sports.
Just an educated guess: would the same reports show that the number of kids in travel ball, tournament ball, AAU, or any other advanced level is also growing? There are significantly reduced numbers for the rec programs around me, but there are dozens of travel ball teams that I don't remember hearing about a few years ago. I think cost is a huge factor for some, and the fact that when so much talent isn't playing at the rec level it diminishes the experience for the ones who are there. It's the law of unintended consequences in a way; the more advanced the sport becomes, fewer people have any interest in trying to learn it as it seems impossible to keep up with the kids who are already playing.
I don't know of any players who bypassed rec ball altogether, but the difference I see is most girls would play rec through 12u, then if they were still interested move on to travel ball at 13. The rec leagues did well through 16U, relatively speaking (enough where 8 teams were in the league in a combined 14u/16u league just a few years ago.) Now, we're lucky if we can field 6 teams at the upper level, and 12U was down to only 8 teams last year. We used to have 2 All Star teams at the 12U level, but only had enough talent for one last year. While all this is going on, the number of travel teams for 12U have exploded, and there are quite a few 10U travel teams locally.That's an interesting thought. Just curious how travel ball works at the lower levels in your area. In my area, the players typically start in rec. They play 2 or 3 years of rec on average and then either move to travel ball or away from softball to other sports. Do you have players that immediately start in travel ball bypassing rec altogether?
In general, the experience here is similar to 1bucketmom. While my DD was at the rec level, our school district had 3 teams at 10u and 3 teams at 12u. Now they have 2 at 10u and 1 at 12u. Travel ball has expanded some at the lower levels, but not enough to equal out the combined totals. 14u has the most travel ball teams locally, but that is because rec is virtually non-existent in that age category (hear at least) and most schools locally do not have a junior high program. So if the typical 7th or 8th grade girls wants to play softball, her only choice is travel ball. Many choose other sports for those two years and then never return to softball when high school starts.