Travel Ball is Killing Rec Ball

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Jan 3, 2019
85
18
Florida
KEYS to bringing rec back (which will benefit the sport as a whole):
  • Interested, committed, and qualified volunteers to develop and lead organizations
  • Ability and resources to play the long-game -- realistically it will take two to three years to get a foot hold on team counts
  • Honest recognition of the value and place for BOTH rec ball and travel ball -- it really is not an "either/or" proposition if done correctly
  • Quality programming that engages participants
If organizations like Little League and PONY were smart, they would be embracing this and be out there aggressively recruiting local organizations who they can help support.

There you go making sense again ;)

I agree with this, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. The "interested, committed, and qualified volunteers" are parents that are mostly into it for their own DD. They join the league board for their own best interests. Also with the decline of HS ball, travel/showcase tournaments will only continue to grow.
 
Jul 14, 2018
982
93
I don't think you should have to take out a second mortgage on the house just to have your kid be able to play at a higher level, but I do think you need something to keep the parents in check and get them to stay until at least the season is over.

This is a super-important point, The biggest problem with Rec teams in my area is that the parents pay $100 to get their kid in the program, and then by the end of May, a bunch of them aren't even showing up anymore. I don't even fault them much -- Rec is for kids to try something out, maybe they like it and maybe they don't. I don't think an eight year old is learning any great life lesson about commitment by being forced to do something they hate (or in the case of softball, they may be afraid to do).

The Rec leagues I see that have been decimated by travel programs are the ones who don't let travel players participate. Of course the good players are going to want to play more softball and get better. When you turn those players away, you're killing your own program.
 
Oct 4, 2018
4,611
113
My older daughter plays rec ball. It was competitive and fun for years. But the best 13 of them left to form a travel team (my daughter decided not to join when invited, due to other sports commitments she has).

So now she's on a rec team that simply can't play ball. She is also the star of the All Star team, and in their first two practices they had to go over basics of catching and throwing. For hours. It's a 12U team and about half of the All Star team is in their first or second season playing softball.

Ugh.

Painful.

We're now trying to think how we can have her play travel ball and not screw up the other sports she plays. Not sure if it's possible.
 
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Oct 2, 2017
2,283
113
My older daughter plays rec ball. It was competitive and fun for years. But the best 13 of them left to form a travel team (my daughter decided not to join when invited, due to other sports commitments she has).

So now she's on a rec team that simply can't play ball. She is also the star of the All Star team, and in their first two practices they had to go over basics of catching and throwing. For hours. It's a 12U team and about half of the All Star team is in their first or second season playing softball.

Ugh.

Painful.

We're now trying to think how we can have her play travel ball and not screw up the other sports she plays. Not sure if it's possible.
This is exactly why I made the post that I did concerning REC ball
 
May 11, 2018
91
18
I pulled my DD from rec for several reasons.
1) driving an hour in traffic to a game to face a team who doesn't have a pitcher who even practices and it turns into dad pitch.
2) my DD practiced all the time pitching and hitting. the rest of her team doesn't but parents want their kids pitching and playing infield.
3) a small group of dads who are friends and control the whole rec league and their kids get all the play time.
4) rec politics you have to coach if your kid wants play time and you have to be friends with the guy who decides who coaches.

parents who think a college scout is showing up to rec game are the people who are killing rec.
rec softball and other sports should be just 3-4 weeks then rec should turn into something more competitive for the girls who practice.
 
Feb 18, 2014
348
28
I'm sorry but what is required to thrive as a solid high school team is not going to come from Rec. There are many things that can be taught and big strong athletic kids may be capable of learning them quickly. Pitching and hitting are not learned quickly. Skilled pitchers will decimate inexperienced hitters, the same is true the other way. We see a lot of travel players that play in mediocre tournaments that can't understand why they get destroyed by players that have pushed themselves against the best they can. In our last game our outfield didn't see a ball. It was a walk from a perfect game and the three times they were able to put a ball in play were a weak hit to third, a weak hit to pitch and a weak hit to first. Short and second could have been picking flowers. And we only have three girls that have played high level travel, one of which is DD, the pitcher.
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
The best players trying to find the best competition has been around forever. 30 years ago my father moved me from the local league at 13 to a Pony league in a bigger town a few miles away which had better players. For Legion I had the option of playing in my hometown or playing for the Legion team which was affiliated with the town I went to HS. The latter had a much better team and played better competition so I played there. I went to HS where my Dad taught, and not in my hometown, partly because the basketball and baseball teams were better. The kids I played with in LL, that stuck around and played in the local rec at 13-15 and my town's Legion team were good players, many went on to play HS.

The problem, if you want to call it that ( and I am not sure I am ready to), is that now is that there are so many options that some of these players moving out of their local rec are not all that good which leaves some of rec leagues very diminished. What I do see as a problem is that this then means that kids who cannot afford to play TB but are good players and have the talent to be great players, don't get a chance to play against decent competition. 3 kids on my Legion team got drafted, 2 of those kids lived in public housing......
 
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Jul 14, 2018
982
93
Pitching and hitting are not learned quickly. Skilled pitchers will decimate inexperienced hitters, the same is true the other way.

This is another thing that Rec leagues have working against them: softball is hard. There are always a couple of very athletic girls who can get by, but if you don't have a pitcher who puts in the time to learn how to throw strikes, it's tough to have any kind of game. And you won't find the time necessary playing 10 weeks of Rec ball.
 
Apr 28, 2014
2,316
113
DD and I spend sunday nights during winter working with 8-12 year old pitchers.
Many of them can barely throw a strike. After 8 weeks (hour per week) they are okay. But it's very obvious who puts in the work and who doesn't. Soffball is a bad sport if the pitching is awful. Some parents can't afford the time or money to have their kids play both rec and travel so they opt for travel instead. Hard to argue that thought process.
As you all know learning to pitch is time consuming and requires significant sacrifice by the parents as much as the child. We have kids who have able bodied dads who drop them off and pick them up not wanting to spend the time catching for their daughters.
Not an easy fix for this issue.
 

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