What I'd like to see out of Rec and Travel Ball

[CoachHenry]

The below outlines my experiences. I see in this forum that some have had different experiences that give them different perspectives. Fair enough.

There are several reasons why travel ball (tourney team, select, etc) are formed. More often then not a coach has a rec all-star team and gets the wild idea that it would be great to keep those kids together and they only way they could do it is to leave the rec and go TB the next year. So a TB team is born. In other cases a TB organization exists that handles ages xx up to and sometimes though high school but usually they stop at HS. Players go as individuals to try out for the teams and if they do they don't sign up for the rec program. Different ways exist but that seems to cover the bulk of it.

Now lets chat about WHY a player would want to leave a rec program and go travel ball. These reasons wildly vary but maybe I'll cover the bulk of them from what I've seen.

1 - A player's skill advances beyond most of the other kids on his/her team and he/she can't just naturally play ball because there isn't enough players similar to him that can play along. This player gets frustrated and board.

2 - A rec program is run very poorly and to play any sort of semblance of baseball you have to leave the program.

3 - A player has friends on a TB team and wants to play with them.

4 - Mom and Dad want the player to play on a TB team for their own wants and needs regardless of the kid.

5 - Combinations of the above

Whoops, I have to go to a meeting. I'll continue when I get back.

[Jake Patterson]

I'll take these one at a time as we definately do have a different perspective.

There are several reasons why travel ball (tourney team, select, etc) are formed. More often then not a coach has a rec all-star team and gets the wild idea that it would be great to keep those kids together and they only way they could do it is to leave the rec and go TB the next year. So a TB team is born.

Most times it is the father of one of the better players who feels his son "has a shot."

1 - A player's skill advances beyond most of the other kids on his/her team and he/she can't just naturally play ball because there isn't enough players similar to him that can play along. This player gets frustrated and board.

My experience is it's usually the parent who thinks their son's skill is advanced, not the child. Development in a child is a variable at best. Some who are successful at a younger age are not successful when they get older and vice versa.

2 - A rec program is run very poorly and to play any sort of semblance of baseball you have to leave the program.

This is certainly a reason, but I have found player usually switch because dad feels Jr.'s skills are being wasted on Rec.

3 - A player has friends on a TB team and wants to play with them.

Agree

4 - Mom and Dad want the player to play on a TB team for their own wants and needs regardless of the kid.

these are typically the delusional parents who live vicariously through their children.

Again, few HS and College coaches agree with TB at the younger ages. They will support showcases in HS, but feel this has not helped baseball and in fact has hurt it. They openly admit they are the ones to blame for this, but take the "it's what my competition is doing" tact. Study after study has shown too much baseball is bad for children. I would argue too much of anything is bad. When players hit Jr. High it is reasonable for them to start narrowing their athletics choices down. School Ball, and TB/Jr. Legion/Junior League is a reasonable amount of baseball at that age (30-50 games). More than that is too much. In HS school ball and Legion is enough (40-60 games). Again, more than that is bad.

The above opinions are based on discussions held with college and pro coaches at several WBC's.

[korp]

I think the quality of the program is also parents lots of times since kids just want to have fun and don't worry about that lots of times. Having friends on a team can also be a reason why they would stay in a rec league .... ie all their friends play in the league. I do believe those reasons are why little league is missing out on a lot of players in the older stages.

[azmatsfan]

I'd say that's a pretty fair list. My son falls into the category 1. He's 9 and playing LL right now. He's disappointed that he can't play Majors because he's too young, and honestly he doesn't feel challenged. That's why he also plays TB in the Fall. He gets to play against better competition.

And I think some paint TB with too broad of a brush. I've witnessed those teams that play year round, a tournament every other week, pitching kids over 90 pitches on back to back days, dropping the weaker kids for a new player so they'll be more competitive. It makes me sick seeing that and I wouldn't want my son to play in that atmosphere. But from my experience that's the minority of teams. Most of the teams are "neighborhood" teams formed from a Cal Ripken league or Little League. My son's team only plays the Fall season, and they'll probably play six or seven tournaments. That's maybe an extra 20-25 games. The coach moves the kids around during pool play, but then plays to win during the tournament. They focus on developing the ball players and playing the game the right way. And we're certainly not the only travel club that's run this way. That's why I think it's dangerous to say that TB isn't good for baseball. I think it's great that there are these opportunities for kids now. It's up to the parents to not push their kids and make sure they're playing in a healthy environment.

[CoachHenry]

I'll take these one at a time as we definately do have a different perspective.

Most times it is the father of one of the better players who feels his son "has a shot."
My experience is it's usually the parent who thinks their son's skill is advanced, not the child. Development in a child is a variable at best. Some who are successful at a younger age are not successful when they get older and vice versa.
This is certainly a reason, but I have found player usually switch because dad feels Jr.'s skills are being wasted on Rec.

Agree

these are typically the delusional parents who live vicariously through their children.

Again, few HS and College coaches agree with TB at the younger ages. They will support showcases in HS, but feel this has not helped baseball and in fact has hurt it. They openly admit they are the ones to blame for this, but take the "it's what my competition is doing" tact. Study after study has shown too much baseball is bad for children. I would argue too much of anything is bad. When players hit Jr. High it is reasonable for them to start narrowing their athletics choices down. School Ball, and TB/Jr. Legion/Junior League is a reasonable amount of baseball at that age (30-50 games). More than that is too much. In HS school ball and Legion is enough (40-60 games). Again, more than that is bad.

The above opinions are based on discussions held with college and pro coaches at several WBC's.

I agree with quite a bit of your views but feel you are bit more jaded then what I have come to see. While I do see the negatives of course the "living through the kid" or "kid has a shot" and so on is not what I get from the standard parent I interact with. It's quote possible in your area that TB is more cut-throat then in my area.

The kind of ball my nephew plays is more then reasonable in my mind. They are in the top rung of the nation, play many states away every weekend, etc. Their players, now in HS are certainly better players then normal teams but as I told my BIL a few years ago when we discussed my son, I don't want him to pay that kind of price to be that good. I just don't see how that would improve his life, and what I want him to get out of sports.

OK now I'll move on to the next part of the purpose of this thread.....

[CoachHenry]

I'd say that's a pretty fair list. My son falls into the category 1. He's 9 and playing LL right now. He's disappointed that he can't play Majors because he's too young, and honestly he doesn't feel challenged. That's why he also plays TB in the Fall. He gets to play against better competition.

And I think some paint TB with too broad of a brush. I've witnessed those teams that play year round, a tournament every other week, pitching kids over 90 pitches on back to back days, dropping the weaker kids for a new player so they'll be more competitive. It makes me sick seeing that and I wouldn't want my son to play in that atmosphere. But from my experience that's the minority of teams. Most of the teams are "neighborhood" teams formed from a Cal Ripken league or Little League. My son's team only plays the Fall season, and they'll probably play six or seven tournaments. That's maybe an extra 20-25 games. The coach moves the kids around during pool play, but then plays to win during the tournament. They focus on developing the ball players and playing the game the right way. And we're certainly not the only travel club that's run this way. That's why I think it's dangerous to say that TB isn't good for baseball. I think it's great that there are these opportunities for kids now. It's up to the parents to not push their kids and make sure they're playing in a healthy environment.

My son tried out for the rec all start team and made it. They played pickup games against other all start teams and played a few tourneys during the rec season. During the week they would go back to their normal teams. They found it difficult to play the kind of ball they would on the all-star team because the average skill was lower.

Us coaches were aware that there was an overall TB league that we could play in but we did not want to do that. We would have preferred to work with the rec system (which I was a board member) and see what could be done. Several "Oh you just think you are better then everybody else" type comments lead to failure of progress. So, the next year we took our kids TB. We played a light schedule, a few tourneys here and there, and had a blast. My son's last year of TB (14 yrs old) had 10 of the original 13 kids still on the team. Two went full time AAU basketball and one just opted to not play anymore.

I would like to proudly say that we were one team that did TB "right" for the type of kids that we had. Along the way we witnessed FAR more teams that did a great job then did a poor job. However to agree with Jake Patterson a bit the higher up the rung we went, the more competitive the tourneys that we played in, the higher percentage of teams that I felt did it "wrong". After playing in a few of those ultra-competitive tourneys we chose to not do it anymore. Again we felt that it wasn't worth the price on the kids. We knew we prepared the kids for HS tryouts and were fair to them.

[callyjr]

I'll tell you why we are going to choose TB next year rather then LL rec.


We played a few tourneys last year, one of my coaches 8 yr old boy says on the way home from our LL game couple weeks ago, quote "when are we going to play the good teams, this league sucks, I want to play the good teams"
This kid has a great attitude, his dad played AA ball and we do not push our kids past having fun, we move the kids around each inning. The tourneys are for extra games, however it gives them a little taste of playing with some better players.

This is an 8yr old playing in minors LL with 9/10 yr olds. LL is soo bad in our area my 7 yr old is probably in the top 15 of the entire division, He should not even be playing kid pitch according to most of you, let alone be one of the top kids in the division but thats our rec league. We actually have it good as our team is loaded(LOL) with talent. Our league also won Districts last year at the 9/10 level, but we won't this year.

In our situation, good ole boys would suck it up and play baseball with a league like this and a team that still has 5 kids that cannot catch or throw, or join a league that plays ball like what we used to when growing up. I am far from thinking about HS, College or Pro ball. Just want to see my 7yr get a pitch to swing at so he can improve and have fun.

Go check out your local LL rec program before you continue to judge our decisions.


Here is an email I got from a parent of a kid that I invited to come practice us. You tell me where her head is. Also Tyler is a 10yr olds and Trev is a 7yr old. Tyler was an Allstar last year in LL and in playing in a different program this year.
*****************
We agree that little league has been a great disappointment over the last few years, that's why Ty is playing where he is. Even though the time commitment is huge and there is a lot of traveling, it's totally worth it !!!! Ty has such great instruction where he's at, they're so informative and work on even the smallest details during practices... It's amazing to see the difference!!! Trev's LL coach didn't have any of the pitchers warming up before he sent them out there! I told the coach that Trev wanted to practice pitching but that I wasn't going to let him try it on his team because of the lack of warming up. Someone said it wasn't this coaches style to have them warm up! Style or not, I expressed my concern to him... he seems very responsive and now is having them do it. Thankfully!

We are thinking about possibly letting Trev tryout for a JBO team or something next year. Getting away from little league all together! It has become more of a place for parents to drop off there kids and / or just to get the kids off the couch. Most kids don't even want to be there...

Anyway, we'll look for when the next practice is Tahnks for your understanding of the scheduling conflict!
***********************

Cally

[CoachHenry]

As I wrote in my above post, I never wanted to leave the rec system. A friend of mine is the director of parks and recs and we have conversations on what the rec system can do to keep kids in the system. Several possible we chatted about that SHOULD work WON'T work because they would cause a riot.

Things like create an "A" and a "B" layer that woudl allow similarly skilled kids to compete with each other. It's no good for a lower skilled kid to rarely get a hit because higher skilled pitchers strike them out or cause them to barely put the ball in play and it's also bad for rec (because they leave the program) for the higher skilled players to not have enough kids on a team to play baseball like he can.

Another was to choose the all-star team early and have them play a light TB schedule with some moderate tourneys as well as play in the league on their normal teams.

Same as above but they are on the TB all-star team only.

Each of the above would be able to have kids move onto and off of the team as needed. The downside to this is that some kids won't make the "A" league or the all-star TB team, etc. just like some don't make the typical end of the year all-star team but this would be a bit out of the norm so it would cause a fuss.

I don't know if any of the above is actually a good idea but it was some things we discussed. We both have daughters in softball at the 8yr old level and in a few years the number of teams in the rec drops down to two and the level of play is pretty low. We are trying to figure out a way that the girls playing in the rec then wouldn't be the equivilent of them playing hop-scotch in a few years.

[PhilliesPhan22]

Baseball at that age should be about teaching, sportsmanship, teamwork, and respect for the game. Sports parents are just as bad a show parents.

[CoachHenry]

Baseball at that age should be about teaching, sportsmanship, teamwork, and respect for the game. Sports parents are just as bad a show parents.

Agreed. You can accomplish that in rec, TB, HS, LL, etc.

I'm sure we could all trade horror stories about parents.

[DerekD]

He's 9 and playing LL right now. He's disappointed that he can't play Majors because he's too young, and honestly he doesn't feel challenged.

Ground rule? I was certain that 9's could play majors. We had an 8 in our league that wasn't allowed to play majors this year.

[azmatsfan]

I've been asked several times which I prefer, Little League or Travel Ball. My answer is, "I'd like the skill level of TB, but in the atmosphere of LL."

[CoachHenry]

I've been asked several times which I prefer, Little League or Travel Ball. My answer is, "I'd like the skill level of TB, but in the atmosphere of LL."

That would be good. And you can approach it but probably never get there.

[azmatsfan]

Ground rule? I was certain that 9's could play majors. We had an 8 in our league that wasn't allowed to play majors this year.

It's a local rule in our league. The thinking is that for every 9 that moves up, an 11 would be kept down. I can understand the reasoning. And personally I don't mind him playing Minors. He's getting an opportunity to play a wider variety of positions and be the number one pitcher in Minors. And he'll still have 3 years of majors if he wants. Although it is tough when he has to hold back on his throws for fear of injuring some of the less experienced players.

[AltaLomaStorm]

Totally agree - and whether it is TB or LL, what is best for each child differs. We did not especially like what occurs in LL and when the opportunity to play on a local TB team presented itself, we decided to participate. It has been over two years now and we could not be happier.

Does this mean LL or Rec ball sucks? Not at all! This is why I like azmatsfan's statement of a "healthy environment." Each family has to decide what is healthy for THEM. To paint either with such a broad brush, pro or con, is misinformed and well, ignorant.

Again I agree with the spirit of this message, but your position and points are those usually argued by a parent involved with TB. Small field - keep it fun - keep it simple.