Travel Ball is Killing Rec Ball

[_MIA_]

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.

I would say that one of the issues is that in general the average kid spent more time playing ball a few decades ago but I am not sure if that is true for females.

 

[BT3100]

I would say that one of the issues is that in general the average kid spent more time playing ball a few decades ago but I am not sure if that is true for females.

Most likely true for both, IMO

 

[_MIA_]

Most likely true for both, IMO

Yeah I never paid attention to icky girls growing up so I have no idea

 

[SiB57]

So this is a really long thread, and some of this has been mentioned, but I wanted to chime in with something I'm seeing in my local league. I've posted before about the problem's were facing.

Rec ball is terrible locally. We're lucky to get enough girls to fill 1 team at the higher age level (middle school) and maybe 2 or 3 teams at around 10U. We have to play the surrounding towns to get enough teams to play.

Every kid with even a little bit of talent goes to our town travel program at 10U, and most at 8U. It's essentially become the new rec, except you pay ~$1,000 for the year to play in it (league costs, uniforms, tournaments, etc.) Any kid with any talent in our town travel league goes to one of the million club programs that just need a pitcher, catcher, and stud 4th hitter to have a competitive team (I'm sure you've all seen those posts.)

What's even more brutal, I'm finding out this year as I take a much bigger role in the organization, is that the talent level of coaches are all leaving, too. Every single coach from 10U and up in our rec program will be a first year coach (at least first year head coach.) One coached aged out, every single other coach's kid is now on the town travel team and is coaching or assistant coaching that team. Me included, I coached my younger daughter's 6U rec team last year and am now coaching our 8U town travel team. My assistant coaches coached one of our other 6U teams and one of our 8U teams, etc.

And a lot of the good town travel coaches kids move on to club ball and no longer coach in our league, either. So then you're moving asst coaches up to head coach, and pulling in more coaching talent from rec, just like the kids.

We're going to be begging for warm bodies to throw in as coaches. And that's not great for the kids, either because they're going to have all different levels of experience and knowledge.

I'm off to a clinic tonight to work with whatever rec girls, and their parents/potential coaches, who show up, and show them a few things. We had 5 kids and one parent who will coach show up last week. I'm hoping for more this week, but I'm not counting on it. The girls that are still playing rec don't want to put any more work into softball, if they really wanted to play and not just hang out for a couple of hours on the ball field, they'd have already moved to the travel program. The biggest question I get from girl's parents who haven't played before are "what days are we playing" and "how long is a game." They're used to soccer and even LAX where they can schedule their time so that 6-7:00 on Tuesday will be softball time, and if it's any time other than that, we can't make it.

 

[John Robertson]

Like I said in several post I have 2 daughters. Both play travel 10u youngest got picked up as an developmental player on 10u team. Both daughters play Rec. My oldest has been out the rec game for 3yrs. She comes to me and says daddy I want to play rec just to get some pitching reps in to help me In travel and school ball. Even kids at that age agree that rec doesn’t have the caliber players as travel. It’s sad so say. This is in South Louisiana.

 

[justanotherguy]

Is it already that time of year for this post again? Did someone put it on an annual calendar reminder?

 

[whiporee]

I read this whole thread, and it's interesting that no one has really pointed out the money. Not the money spent, but the money made. Int he last few years, we've had an invasion of national organizations come in and strip our teams -- the rec leagues that used to fund both rec and travel are finding they can't field travel teams any more because the national organizations are taking all the girls. So these national organizations will have three or four teams at any age group and rack up the trophies, because their A group is better than their B group, which is better than their "open" group. But they are on a higher level than the similarly-grouped teams they are playing. So they win a lot, which increases the organization's prestige, so they make it seem like the only way your girl can play for a "winner" is to join one of them.

These organizations have their own facilities and "pro" coaches. They have their own "organization" tourneys and boast of their ability to get girls in front of recruiters. it sounds like a great deal. But they charge 2500-3500 a season. And now we're in a spot where the mid-level travel teams can't really compete (I live in Colorado, where you can't play outside until mid-April a lot of the time. This year's been an exception so far).

I haven't seen their P&Ls, but my guess is those organizations are making a pretty good bunch of money. Not only from club fees, but from in-house provate coaches and in-house facility rentals. All in the name, of course, of making the girls better players. They've found a way to monetize the sport to levels we haven't seen, and I think that's doing more damage than the old rec/travel debate.

 

[CrazyNani]

I agree! We need to work together with Park & Rec. Most players come out of Parks & Rec.

Our TB teams work with Rec. During the Rec season, all Rec. games are on weeknights, leaving the weekends open for the Spring travel games. At least they do this for 14u. Rec ends at the end of May here and the Summer travel season picks up. In the meantime, the girls have their hands full with 2 Rec games a week, travel on weekends and practices in between.

 

[cvsoftball]

too many YouTube coaches and not enough DFP coaches.

 

[3girls]

My girls played rec and travel. Never on a national team...they’ve been recruited to play on some of the biggest name travel teams in our area, but the cost of travel and time commitment to travel to Sunday practice was a pass for me and the girls.

Our rec league team could go to many A/B tournaments and compete. In my daughters age group, they had three of the top pitchers in the area. There was some teams that didn‘t stand a chance in the rec league, but every year there was 3 or 4 good teams in the league. They had a blast playing with their friends and having bragging rights over friends from the next town.