Travel Ball is Killing Rec Ball

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Feb 14, 2019
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It's like anything else in life...there are good people and bad people out there just as there are good orgs and bad orgs. I've coached on both sides of the fence; as a small town independent team and as a part of a larger organization. Done right, there's not a whole lot of difference between the two, beyond name recognition and a bigger support system. It's up to you as a parent/coach to be selective, do your homework and use common sense before you join ANY team or org, big or small. The big money machines can't continue to run if people stop feeding them their hard earned cash...
 
Oct 29, 2019
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Well My wife and I have pretty much decided she’s too young for choosing which sports to give up so she gives up none. She’ll keep getting asked to play on this team and that team but she couldn’t play for em all even if we allowed it. So when she gets older and decides I like this sport or that sport best we’ll revisit the travel stuff.


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It will get better in middle school as she will have sports she can play during school hours.

My kid plays on a higher level travel team in softball. She also plays Volleyball, Track, and probably soccer in middle school. She had no prior experience in any of these sports but has a lot of fun.

We still play rec softball. Our local league has 2 levels "Gold" and "Silver". She plays up an age level in "Gold" and it's worth it. I tell her it's good training for high school when every player isn't an all-star and she will have to deal with frustrations.

A few of the dads/coachs in our rec league who have athletic kids combined the better players off the rec teams and go play some lower level select tournaments a couple times a season. Maybe this is an option for you.

In general 10u can be tough to watch. Pitchers are hard to come by at that age. At 12u even in rec the girls are putting pitches across the plate and it turns into a real game.
 

ian

Jun 11, 2015
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Like I said in my previous post, the main issue I see with all of this is the kid who has a bunch of talent but cannot afford TB gets left behind in the current model. As people who love diamond sports, we should want to see talented kids gravitate towards our sport regardless of their parent's monetary situation. AAU basketball doesn't appear to have this issue so the question is how can TB softball/baseball become more like AAU basketball?


If a kid has talent the travel team will cut a deal so the kid plays with the org. I found this out when my son tried out for multiple teams this winter. I told the big name team their fees were too expensive and we were going with another team. They cut the fee by 50%.
 
Oct 3, 2019
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I haven’t read the entire thread so somebody or multiple people may have already said the same things. I was anti travel ball and now coach an 8u team. My background so everyone knows where I’m coming from is I’m a step parent and I coached both of my step kids (the boys). They have to go to their biological fathers for almost 2 months during the summers right when travel ball is in full swing. There were other factors too but travel ball is/was never a real option for them. My daughter on the other hand is biologically mine and doesn’t have go anywhere in the summers and the circumstances are obviously way different.
So with the boys literally from the time they were in t-ball and coach pitch we played rec league. It’s little league sanctioned and we generally enjoyed it. As a parent/coach though there were a lot of things I/we meaning my wife and I couldn’t stand. My wife spent 3 years on the board as well just FYI. First and foremost is the parents. We did draft every year for but ultimately your not going to get all the good players and your going to end up with a few crazy parents. The biggest difference between rec vs travel is in the rec league you are stuck with them no matter how much of a pain in the rear they are. On my travel team if parents are being disruptive or causing drama I can tell them to hit the road but more importantly you can weed them out ahead of time. I take the time to ask around and find out about potential players and their parents. It’s usually 2-3 weeks after tryouts do we start contacting people so we can vet them. We have almost zero drama. The biggest issue we deal with is getting the uniforms to fit each year.
The second thing is getting to keep these kids together for more than just 3-4 years. So like I mentioned before in our local rec league we draft each year. So for coach pitch they completely redraft each year. Coaches kids are the only ones protected. Coaches can’t even pick assistant coaches until after drafts. In the kid pitch level you get to keep the kids from your previous year unless their parents put them back in the draft. So in my case I took over a team with only 2-3 returning players my first year and I drafted all 9 year olds, basically my son and all his friends. Once they all aged out at 12 though we don’t have any local leagues for them. The middle school season is short and almost pointless really so after their last year of little league they have to go play travel or just not play. You end up getting 3-5 players you get for multiple years but for the most part your starting over each year. I was lucky because of how I drafted my first year and I had 6 kids I kept for 4 years. The issue with this is it takes time to get to know kids and build relationships with them. Figure out what makes them tick and how to handle each kid. Some kids need a little more assurances and pats on the back while other ones you have to be a little more stern with. Overall though staying together and building relationships is what makes teams click. Kids being friends building chemistry. It’s hard to do with so much turnover and limited practice time each
When I said I drafted all 9 year olds you have to understand we play 9-12 in our kid pitch or major division. We don’t have enough kids to break it up 9-10 and 11-12. There is another local rec league that takes a lot of the kids so it hurts the overall turnout. The second rec league is pretty much in shambles and they barely function and have teams but still the kids they do have prevent the other league from being able to split up age groups better. So at times you’ve got 9 year olds stepping in the box against a 12 year old or before little league changed the birthday cutoffs, 13 year olds. We took beatings our first year and half. Physically my kids just couldn’t compete. I look back on it and our games were almost pointless at times that first year. We got better but no matter what we did in practice or how many times they saw it, mentally they just couldn’t get over that intimidation factor. Literally this 3/4 graders playing against middle school aged kids. On the softball side of things we may be lucky to have 3 teams in each age group even playing 9-12 in the upper division.
It’s such a hassle to even get practice times. Early on it’s not bad if the weather cooperates but early spring it’s raining a lot so good luck. Once the games start though, every field has a game Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. We’d practice a lot on Wednesdays just because most of my kids didn’t do Wednesday night church but we always lost a few. You could lucky during the week and get the batting cage if it was your turn but they would split up into 1 hour blocks, 2 each night. If you got the later one you pretty much could forget it because we didn’t have hardly any light to see. So once the games started we’d get 1 practice a week on Wednesday and usually a game during the week and 1 on Saturday.
The last thing though is we just like the tournament set up better. We enjoy spending Saturdays at the fields. I have no aspirations or false ideas that just because my daughter plays travel ball she’ll be getting an athletic scholarship. In my humble opinion there are 2 things that determine that more than anything else. #1 Genetics and being on another level than 95% of the population. #2 A tireless work ethic. If you don’t fall into one of those categories or at least a blend of the 2 you can forget it. I coach and do this to spend time with my daughter. She loves it so far. She’s only 7 but going into her second year of play travel. She loves spending all day on Saturdays with her friends. I hear people say things like it’s too serious at this age or parents who put their kids in it this young are forcing them etc. We play to win but we have talks all the time with the girls how mistakes are ok and how to respond to a failure. Winning isn’t everything for us. If my daughter ever gets to the point she’s done then we’ll be done but in the meantime she’s spending hours outside, playing, learning, being social etc. I’d much rather be doing this than sitting at home watching TV. Yeah it’s long days especially if your winning but there are not many things better than getting to hang medals around girls necks or your daughter running into your arms for a big hug after you just won a tournament. I seriously about shed a tear when my DD came out and I got to put that medal around her neck, give her a hug, and tell her I loved her. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that much pure joy on her face. We talk to our girls about seeing the lights. If they get to see the lights then we’ve had a good day. You know how awesome it is to see smiles on their faces when one of them looks up when they turn the lights on and they all start yelling “Coach look!!!”. Try it sometime, it’s pretty awesome.
I think too many people just assume everyone plays travel to get their kids a scholarship or it’ll make them start varsity as a freshman year in high school. You hear people talk about competition level and whatever else. I also think a lot of people do it just for a status symbol. The reasons you hear people just automatically say this is why they went to travel ball most of the time are bs. I don’t think a lot of people really think about it or they just did it because it was the cool thing. There are a lot of people though who have justified reasons and it may not necessarily be a knock on rec leagues. To just generally say travel ball is killing rec league’s I don’t think is fair. You have to look at why. You have to look at what rec leagues don’t offer and maybe thats what’s causing the rise of travel teams. It’s 10x more work running a travel team than just coaching at the rec league because of getting equipment,uniforms, scheduling etc but it’s so worth it for all the reasons above and really more.
When my son was younger, our Little League had a "Junior" 13yr old league, where the kids first transition to the larger diamond. The following year they went to "Senior League". No problem with teams to play as there were multiple teams representing the towns in our county. These teams had Fall Ball games that went into early winter.
 
Feb 18, 2014
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If a kid has talent the travel team will cut a deal so the kid plays with the org. I found this out when my son tried out for multiple teams this winter. I told the big name team their fees were too expensive and we were going with another team. They cut the fee by 50%.
This is a reason to not play for an Org. They can find others to fund the special kids.
 
Jun 8, 2016
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They cut the fee by 50%.

Does this fee include travel expenses, tournament entry fees,uniforms,etc or just it just cover the basic fee that everyone in the org has to pay every month? Because if it is the latter, while nice, you wouldn't be saving all that much especially as one gets older and travel expenses start to dominate the total cost.
 
Apr 1, 2017
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Our org has a 'scholarship' fund for kids that need it. There is a player on my team this season using it, but I don't even know if it covers everything, partial, etc. That is discussed between the family and our treasurer.
 
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Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
Our org has a 'scholarship' fund for kids that need it. There is a player on my team this season using it, but I don't even know if it covers everything, partial, etc. That is discussed between the family and our treasurer.
Our does too. I think they wave the 50 dollar a month org fee.
 
Mar 10, 2020
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Rec is mostly parent coaches Same with starter travel ball.
Rec has player rules.
Travel is coaches rules.
Travel has more choices for everybody.
Who cares how people want to spend their money.
Now that the topic has been kicked around again.
Do what you want.
 

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