re: Do 90% of these kids really need to be on these competitive travel ball teams?

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I have boxes

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my wife has a friend from work that we will occasionally have dinner with(her and her husband,) they are a roly poly looking couple from Brooklyn with zero athletic background with a couple of roly poly looking young daughters that have no athletic experience either, one of the girls started playing softball this year and they've purchased what's basically a China cabinet with back lighting to display the hardware that the kid is starting to amass, she has a couple of rings in there that are as big and gaudy as any Super Bowl ring I've ever seen

The part I don't get about travel ball isn't even on the athletic/talent side. Your kid could be the best player to ever live and I still wouldn't get it.. from the perspective of the parents.

I understand that once someone has kids they're not in the bars every weekend with their friends, but plenty of people have kids and choose not to become recluses. They still get together with their friends who also have kids and boil crawfish, go to various local events/festivals, take trips, hang out in someone's backyard, etc. Even sometimes attend Friday night or Saturday night events without the kids.

With any sort of time consuming serious level sport, especially one you have to travel for, you can't do those. You're spending your weekends in a lawn chair at a ballpark. How are people okay with this? I feel like it would be miserable for all parties involved, including the kid.

*I do not have kids and am not overly familiar with travel ball, so the above could be inaccurate. Just going by what I remember from when I was a kid.

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There’s plenty of folks who go all in on one sport early on. And as they get into high school age there’s pressure from coaches to not play other sports out of selfish means. I saw it all of the time working high school.

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there is nothing wrong with picking 1 sport once in high school. better to pick 1 and be really good at it than be kind of crappy at 2(i was the one that did 3, always average at all)

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Your average kid isn’t implementing a strength training program before picking up a baseball. Especially when many start as early as teeball.

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wouldnt have to if Physical education hadnt become a shite show.

Was noticing this watching the littlest play t ball. You laugh but even with 5 years olds there’s usually one, maybe two kids on a team that are natural born athletes. Most of the kids are just… normal. (Including my own). Unless it’s your kid who’s clearly the fastest, most coordinated, etc, just sit back and enjoy watching your kids just be normal kids.

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Not just baseball, but also AAU basketball, girls volleyball, etc.

I get it for the elite players that really could benefit from playing ahainst elite competition they won't get playing in a local rec league. And they may have a future beyond HS. But most of these kids waste so much time just driving around to these games and waiting in between games at tournaments. Wouldn't they be better off spending that time playing local games at fields near where they live?

The other shitty part about this phenomenon is that kids don't play pickup sports at all anymore. Everything is structured, and ran by overly obsessed parents.

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As a parent of a kid that probably won't play past HS, no they don't need to be on travel teams.

BUT

If you don't play on travel teams, then you basically have to give up baseball because even the average kids are getting a million reps all year long.

My son is 6 and shows promise in baseball but by no means do I think he will go pro. Next year we will try the travel ball thing for a year and see how it goes. If its not a fun experience for him and/or our family then we will just drop baseball outside of the summer league at the playground.

It really frustrates me that I have to make this decision for my son at 7 years old and that it isn't based on ability at all. When I was a kid, you had to be good enough to make an all star team to play baseball for more than 2 months a year. Now its either pay to play travel ball or basically give up the sport completely.

Most sports probably should be 99% development, 1% competition until age 12-13. Then…let the competitions begin.

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Most sports probably should be 99% development, 1% competition until age 12-13. Then…let the competitions begin.

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I'll add that the only reason I am even considering putting him on a travel ball team is that I know and trust the coach to be development oriented over winning at all costs.

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As a parent of a kid that probably won't play past HS, no they don't need to be on travel teams.

BUT

If you don't play on travel teams, then you basically have to give up baseball because even the average kids are getting a million reps all year long.

My son is 6 and shows promise in baseball but by no means do I think he will go pro. Next year we will try the travel ball thing for a year and see how it goes. If its not a fun experience for him and/or our family then we will just drop baseball outside of the summer league at the playground.

It really frustrates me that I have to make this decision for my son at 7 years old and that it isn't based on ability at all. When I was a kid, you had to be good enough to make an all star team to play baseball for more than 2 months a year. Now its either pay to play travel ball or basically give up the sport completely.

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yea it kind of sucks. you could milk a year more out of rec but at that point, gets harder and harder to make good teams.

it sucks you got to make a decision(atleast in south louisiana)....do i want my kid to have the ability to possibly play HS sports at 7/8 but you almost have to. just to give them a fighting chance if they even decide they want to. but like for instance...but when the top High schools in the state are taking at most 10-12 kids and many times half of that depending on talent...yea its a big deal to start early. the early pressure on families to make the decision sucks too.



i prefer the texas model where they take 25-30 freshman and end up with 75 or so across the board on the team, but those schools also have 2-3 fields for the varsity, freshman and JV teams to play on and have coaches for each. Louisiana barely get 2 or 3 coaches and 1 field per team, much less more than 1 turfed fields.

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so the season is only march-june for 90% of teams in the south

- usually done by 6 most weekends so still go do those things

- you arent playing every weekend. most of the good orgs do like every other weekend

- even when playing we do stuff with the other parents from the team as we are friends with them

- tournaments are usually within 90min drive

we still do all of the things you just named an i have 2 in travel and oldest does multiple other sports.


so not sure why you think you cant do those things. nor are our weekends busy...yep. do we always want to do those things...nope. sometimes we just want to chill.

but overall we still take 2 vacations during the summer, 1-2 during the rest of the year. still get together with friends all the time if we choose, still go to local events all the time. sure we miss some and we have other friends now than when we were in single but thats pretty normal.

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The downvoters are either parents to unathletic kids, or hate you for doing for your kids what they wont, which makes them feel guilty.

Those downvotes are their guilty tears.