Little league Baseball

Wild Bill said:

This is just one asshole's opinion and specific to baseball, though it's probably true in other sports. Football, for example, is different - size, speed and strength are king. I don’t give a shit how much football you played or what competition you faced as a kid. If you’re bigger, faster and stronger than everyone else, you can get your feet wet in 8th grade, physically develop as a freshman and dominate by sophomore year if you have a significant size or athletic advantage.

Baseball is much more skill-dependent, and those skills are developed through years of reps when kids are young. If you develop the skills early, you just have to hope the size, strength and athleticism follows. Waiting for the physical traits to show up first and then trying to develop the skills to compete will be really difficult and probably isn’t realistic.

Click to expand...

Yep. And hockey (big here in Massachusetts) is similar. The baseline technical skill involved is so much that you probably DO need specialized training to be a competitive high school player.
Football is the opposite. Lots of good athletes pick up football relatively late (which is why so many NFL draft picks played other sports well into high school). It's the sport where raw athleticism probably means the most, relative to specialized skill.
Basketball and soccer probably fall somewhere in the middle, at least when it comes to playing in high school. A good athlete can pick them up late, while a skilled player can stick around. Though basketball obviously favors certain physical traits that you're either born with or not.

Here's what the travel team explosion is doing... it's making the D3 athlete very good. And here's some things to think about in that lens:

1) D3 schools for the most part are extremely expensive and they don't offer athletic scholarships. All that money you spent developing your athlete... prepare for another $100k+ college so they can "play the game they love"

2) If schools in Iowa is like the rest of the country, they are starting to see a trickle down effect of the new D1 landscape. Wartburg college (pretty decent D3 football program) took a handful of FCS & FBS transfers this year.

Re baseball - can't you just play Legion ball in the summer? A few of my friends (mid-30s Millennials) were successful D1 players just doing HS/Legion ball without getting wrapped up in the whole travel for-profit scene.

The best kids aren't even playing little league anymore. The best kids are playing travel ball 12 months out of the year. My cousins son is like a top 20 kid in Indiana for the class of 2031 and was hitting the ball 300 feet as a 12 year old. He plays on one of the top travel teams in the US.

tussin said:

Re baseball - can't you just play Legion ball in the summer? A few of my friends (mid-30s Millennials) were successful D1 players just doing HS/Legion ball without getting wrapped up in the whole travel for-profit scene.

Click to expand...

That’s what I did. Legion ball was awesome but not sure that’s an option anymore.

At a younger level, was wondering if CYO ball was still a thing.

NDFAN2008 said:

The best kids aren't even playing little league anymore. The best kids are playing travel ball 12 months out of the year. My cousins son is like a top 20 kid in Indiana for the class of 2031 and was hitting the ball 300 feet as a 12 year old. He plays on one of the top travel teams in the US.

Click to expand...

Did "elite" travel ball make this kid or did this kid make his travel ball elite?

95% of HS players of any sport should be graduating to intermural and club sports. My 14 year old swims, plays baseball, basketball, golf and kills my arm at the beach throwing the football around non-stop. Being "committed" to any of those sports would be absurd and cost him the fun of playing different sports. Since he isn't "committed" he would never make a team at the 2000+ student high schools. Since he is at a start up charter school with 200 kids per class he can play all those sports if he wants to. Hell he is being asked to scrimmage with the soccer team.

A little bit of coaching and confidence goes a long way at the lower levels. Too many kids give up too soon and don't develop basic ability to throw a ball without looking like a spaz. Boys especially need to develop hand eye coordination, run around and compete at something.

That's the other side of this....how many people live in smaller districts where their kids have a better opportunity to not only make a team but play multiple sports? My kids attend Carmel in Indiana. Carmel's enrollment is over 5200 kids and growing every year. Varsity sports at Carmel rival some low-level colleges in terms of talent. The northside of Indy, in general, is like that. Fishers, HSE, Zionsville, and Westfield compete at pretty high levels. I'm not saying it's impossible for my kids to make a team. It's just less likely. Which definitely factors into our decision making in terms of "how much time and money are we willing to invest in youth travel and development?" If it's unlikely our kid plays in HS, then why on earth would be think it's possible to play beyond that and why would we waste time/money on a pipe dream? We just adjust accordingly and focus on fun, rec and intramural leagues. You can still achieve a lot of the same values from sports in those lower tier leagues.

tussin said:

Re baseball - can't you just play Legion ball in the summer? A few of my friends (mid-30s Millennials) were successful D1 players just doing HS/Legion ball without getting wrapped up in the whole travel for-profit scene.

Click to expand...

Yes. My son & his HS teammates all played Legion ball which consisted of area Legion games during the week but the coach would schedule Showcase tourneys on the weekends. This allowed all the kids to get some playing time & allowed those who wanted to play beyond HS to get some reps vs better competition. Fun part was that almost every season, they’d enter the American Legion tourney in Omaha which took place during the CWS. Always a blast. We got to go the year ND played in it so it was doubly fun.

RDU Irish said:

Did "elite" travel ball make this kid or did this kid make his travel ball elite?

95% of HS players of any sport should be graduating to intermural and club sports. My 14 year old swims, plays baseball, basketball, golf and kills my arm at the beach throwing the football around non-stop. Being "committed" to any of those sports would be absurd and cost him the fun of playing different sports. Since he isn't "committed" he would never make a team at the 2000+ student high schools. Since he is at a start up charter school with 200 kids per class he can play all those sports if he wants to. Hell he is being asked to scrimmage with the soccer team.

A little bit of coaching and confidence goes a long way at the lower levels. Too many kids give up too soon and don't develop basic ability to throw a ball without looking like a spaz. Boys especially need to develop hand eye coordination, run around and compete at something.

Click to expand...

Likely a talented kid that got pushed hard by both his parents and team/competition.

It's a bit of a fallacy that travel baseball requires a year round commitment, preventing kids from playing other sports and forces families to take out a second mortgage.

It really depends on where you live, but travel baseball can cost as little as $500–$1k per year. It can certainly get more expensive, but you can probably find some reasonbly priced team when you consider the actual costs involved - facility rental to practice, umpires fees, tourney fees, uniforms, etc

Money is relative and $1k isn't exactly cheap, but everything is more expensive now including youth sports. I just paid $400 last month for my son to play Pop Warner. They have an 8 game schedule, practice on a patch of grass at the local park, and have already canceled one of the games. It’s cheaper than baseball, but I get far more for my money with baseball.

I’m sure there are a few morons out there encouraging 10 year olds to commit to a single sport, but it isn’t common in my experience. My son’s baseball schedule runs from November through June, but from November through mid-March, they only practice twice a week. During that time, most of his teammates also play basketball or wrestle. From mid-March through June, baseball takes over with practices and tournaments, and by July, he’s completely done. Every kid on his team plays multiple sports, and several play three.

BleedBlueGold said:

That's the other side of this....how many people live in smaller districts where their kids have a better opportunity to not only make a team but play multiple sports? My kids attend Carmel in Indiana. Carmel's enrollment is over 5200 kids and growing every year. Varsity sports at Carmel rival some low-level colleges in terms of talent. The northside of Indy, in general, is like that. Fishers, HSE, Zionsville, and Westfield compete at pretty high levels. I'm not saying it's impossible for my kids to make a team. It's just less likely. Which definitely factors into our decision making in terms of "how much time and money are we willing to invest in youth travel and development?" If it's unlikely our kid plays in HS, then why on earth would be think it's possible to play beyond that and why would we waste time/money on a pipe dream? We just adjust accordingly and focus on fun, rec and intramural leagues. You can still achieve a lot of the same values from sports in those lower tier leagues.

Click to expand...

I feel this. My wife and I made the choice to move our kids from a 4A district of 1,200 kids to a 2A district of 400. I want my kids to be able to play all the sports they enjoy all the way through. Plus join choir if they want. Plus be in a theatre production. The ability to do all of those exists far more at smaller schools because you’re forced to share in order to support all of those programs. If my kids are anything like me, they’ll have to work their tails off to be slightly above average and I’m okay with that. My big thing is I want their time playing a sport they love to end on their terms and not because the school they attend forces them into specialization early in order for them to be able to make a varsity roster.

Wild Bill said:

Likely a talented kid that got pushed hard by both his parents and team/competition.

It's a bit of a fallacy that travel baseball requires a year round commitment, preventing kids from playing other sports and forces families to take out a second mortgage.

It really depends on where you live, but travel baseball can cost as little as $500–$1k per year. It can certainly get more expensive, but you can probably find some reasonbly priced team when you consider the actual costs involved - facility rental to practice, umpires fees, tourney fees, uniforms, etc

Money is relative and $1k isn't exactly cheap, but everything is more expensive now including youth sports. I just paid $400 last month for my son to play Pop Warner. They have an 8 game schedule, practice on a patch of grass at the local park, and have already canceled one of the games. It’s cheaper than baseball, but I get far more for my money with baseball.

I’m sure there are a few morons out there encouraging 10 year olds to commit to a single sport, but it isn’t common in my experience. My son’s baseball schedule runs from November through June, but from November through mid-March, they only practice twice a week. During that time, most of his teammates also play basketball or wrestle. From mid-March through June, baseball takes over with practices and tournaments, and by July, he’s completely done. Every kid on his team plays multiple sports, and several play three.

Click to expand...

That is a reasonable set up but I'm going to push back on that cost. A couple of overnights and your hotel bill will crush that budget. I don't consider sleeping in your own bed being on a "travel" team. If it is mostly local, relatively convenient and SEASONAL - sounds like a great balance to me.

MacIrish75 said:

I feel this. My wife and I made the choice to move our kids from a 4A district of 1,200 kids to a 2A district of 400. I want my kids to be able to play all the sports they enjoy all the way through. Plus join choir if they want. Plus be in a theatre production. The ability to do all of those exists far more at smaller schools because you’re forced to share in order to support all of those programs. If my kids are anything like me, they’ll have to work their tails off to be slightly above average and I’m okay with that. My big thing is I want their time playing a sport they love to end on their terms and not because the school they attend forces them into specialization early in order for them to be able to make a varsity roster.

Click to expand...

my man, this is exactly my philosophy too. I coached in the school district for soccer and any kids that didnt make the team (which was rare we needed everyone) were instantly scooped up by lacrosse coaches. Basically everyone got to play varsity in something if they so choose.

RDU Irish said:

That is a reasonable set up but I'm going to push back on that cost. A couple of overnights and your hotel bill will crush that budget. I don't consider sleeping in your own bed being on a "travel" team. If it is mostly local, relatively convenient and SEASONAL - sounds like a great balance to me.

Click to expand...

Hotel and travel costs drastically vary depending on where you live and the level of competition you fall in.

For lower level teams, there is really no need to travel much if you live in a moderately populated area. There are plenty of teams within an hour’s drive and local tournaments almost every weekend. These teams aren't searchign for elite competition, so they can easily play 40 games or more with minimal travel and few, if any, overnight stays. This is where the majority of "travel" ball players fall.

Higher level teams looking for elite competition generally travel more b/c there are few, if any, comparable teams nearby and only a handful of facilities capable of hosting tourneys that attract elite competition. I live near Chicago, and fortunately, a facility recently opened in the suburbs that draws elite teams from across the Midwest. We played five or six tournaments there last season without traveling. We traveled for two others, but that was a choice - not a necessity to find quality competition. Travel at this level can be expensive, but only a small percentage of players fall into this category.

Then there is the elite within the elite. Those teams get invites to tourneys around teh country that require more travel and longer stays. That is not cheap but totally optional for teams. It's not a surprise cost - these teams talk about it in advance and parents kinda decide if they want to join a taem looking to travel more. A very small fraction of players fall into this category.

Most players fall into the first group, a smaller number fall into the second, and very few fall into the third. Yet whenever people discuss the cost and travel demands of travel baseball, they pretend the third group is the standard with costs, travel adn level of play. It isn’t.

Plenty of group 1 teams voluntarily pay group 2 or 3 prices and travel more than necessary, but that has less to do with competition and development and more to do with giving travel-ball moms somewhere to prance around with their tits out and overserve themselves at the hotel while the dads have weekend long dick measuring contests.