Trust me, they care. The reason USSSA started the USA Elite Select World Fastpitch Championship is directly due to PGF.
USA, USA, USA!!! The ASA rebrand...
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Trust me, they care. The reason USSSA started the USA Elite Select World Fastpitch Championship is directly due to PGF.
All of the college coaches who are here in SoCal for the 14U/16U national championships this week would disagree!
Yes PGF rules the roost for a full week during one tournament. What about the other 51 weeks in the year? (cue the crickets) In a single weekend ASA and USSSA will host more tournaments than PGF does in an entire year. This makes PGF a minor player in the big picture. Kind of like comparing Lamborghini to Toyota. The lambos are faster and flashier but Toyota out sells them a zillion to one.
People like to crow about "All of the college coaches" that attend PGF or some other national event. And this matters because? It is not much more than propaganda by the associations and especially the TB coaches to get families to pony up the bucks for a trip to the West coast. Sure college coaches attend PGF. Unfortunately for most coaches even SoCal is a better place to spend a summer weekend over where they coach. Especially if the school is picking up the tab. I suspect that if the AD's ever started asking what they actually accomplished during those trips for many college coaches it would be game over.
Those ignorant to the recruiting process are lead to believe that if they are at one of these events with "All of the college coaches" at some point Patty, Cllint, Tim, or Hutch will come over, sit down and see their kid do something amazing. Then not knowing a thing about the kid, her GPA, intended major, where she is from, etc. the coach of DreamU will have her locked in on their radar. Recruiting process complete! So outside of some absurd fantasy such as this, someone please explain why having "All of the college coaches" at an event matters if they are not coming to look at your kid?
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I guess kind of... It was always their plan as they moved up the food scale to have a program in place. It was probably more that there was a huge gap in the market on the East Coast that ASA was failing to fill.
I have talked to some USSSA directors in Central Florida where they are based. At this time they really don't care all that much about California. They figure if they can get most of the rest of the country - especially the east coast - that eventually they will get there but it isn't worth the money and effort of taking on CA directly until they are ready.
^^^^^This right here!!!
To call this post, "Chuck Norris kicking Captain Obvious in the nugs", would be the understatement of the century!
If I can't get a Top Div 1 Coach from East Bumblefrick University in the Midwest, to give more than one minute of their time watching my DD play in a local Showcase, why in the heck would I want to fly to LA or Fla. to go to a tournament?
All of these Showcases in "exotic" areas of the US, are done for a myriad of reasons...but to justify my family spending several thousand dollars to go to one P5 Showcase in Fla or So Cal is crazy. Especially when my DD will probably end up playing for Tumbleweed U. in the middle of nowhere.
Awesome post riseball!!
My daughter's PC is the PC for a D1 college and after one training session we discussed potential TB teams for my DD and the recruiting process. When I brought up National TB team in our area that has kids committing to the Oregon's and Alabama's of the softball world, she laughed. She said do you want to pay $12,000 a season to subsidize other kids from around the country that are being flown in to play in tournaments. Those out of the area kids are getting recruited by the Alabama's and Oregon's. If those coaches come to watch the team, they are watching their players to see how they are developing, not yours.
Not mention that a good number of the national travel teams that fly the committed players of the elite D1 programs to these high profile national events were not the team that helped get the player an offer to a Power 5 school. They came from a more regional but still very good TB team that played in some national events.
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FYI, the guys that founded PGF were longtime 18G coaches along with being major showcase organizers and they kept their businesses separate from PGF (i.e. Haning/Hay - Surf City Tourneys; Barsalona - Diamond 9; Rico - SoCal's Finest/TCS). They created PGF to unseat ASA as the preeminent national championship without harming their showcase businesses. Expanding local/regional events is difficult because it requires finding numerous experienced organizers across the country to run them. They have a few (e.g. Ohio), however they're hard to come by.
Which is why I say that it is what it is. Trouble comes from folks attempting to make it sound like something that it clearly is not. It is another mythical National Championship/All Star tournament held in Southern California, with some very good talent. Nothing more, nothing less. It is not a must attend recruiting event and if you do well you get some well deserved bragging rights for a couple of months. But at the next level a PGF/ASA/XYZ or even NJCAA National Championship and $1 will get you the soft drink of your choice. Go there, play hard, have fun, but keep it real.
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Lets not confuse entering into a specific market with a potential threat to the existence of a business. USSSA is not going to put PGF out of business, and the opposite scenario of PGF upending USSSA or ASA is laughable. It is as others have pointed out two or more distinctly different business models. If anything the actions of PGF have helped, not hurt USSSA and ASA so long as they leverage the opportunities that are presented. Currently USSSA seems to understand this much better than ASA. USSSA is reacting and getting better, while ASA has a bad case of "This is how we have always done it".
I agree with your "fantasy" scenario. What you're failing to recognize is that a lot of the teams that are here have kids who have been on the radar and getting looked at over an extended period of time. Two kids on our 01 sister team have verballed this week, and my best friend's kid on a different team has gotten four offers. Yes, I saw Hutch, Patrick and Clint's son walking around yesterday, and I've also seen coaches from multiple teams having conversations with the D1 folks selling their kids, with a lot of the Texas squads especially active. What that shows me is that they've done their legwork over the long haul, and PGF nationals is the venue where the goal of committing comes to fruition. To assume that college coaches are coming here to merely "vacation" smacks of condescension.
And while I agree PGF is becoming, more and more, like ASA with nickel-and-diming, it is a body that listens and responds to feedback from the college coaches. The fifty recruiting days colleges are allowed starts August 1 - any surprise that 14U and 16U play during the first week of August? It wasn't that way two years ago. By comparison, USSSA Western World Series is the last week of July. Cue the crickets. Besides, USSSA in SoCal is the "participation trophy" of tournaments, a place to end the season after failing to qualify for PGF, ASA or TCS.
From the posts I've read on this thread, it apparent that some governing bodies have more sway in certain regions of the country than others, and that's fine. Seeing that USSSA is based in Florida, I'm not surprised that people there value it more, I'm sure that their presence is dominant. I can report from the ground, however, that PGF isn't a bit player. Not on this side of the country, anyway.
