re: FYI for all you Travel ball parents

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Wow what losers. I mean can you imagine having your 8 year old not ever play organized sports?

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Bruh, if your kid hasn't made All-Stars by 6, you might as well not even let him play sports. Could probably still do band or something.

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maybe in Brazil, but not in Europe..my neighbor played professional soccer in England...he played competitive growing up and once he was identified as good...a club moved him out of his house to another city at 14 to focus on soccer 100%...school was taught by tutors, he belonged to the club

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Right. Selling players is how many clubs make money. It’s not about development it’s about finding the future pros.
Which is a part of my theory that paying for high level clubs is silly. If your kid is good they will find you. If not then spending more to play in exotic locations won’t help you.

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hear this a lot.

Why do you think rec sucks? Because all the parents who would make good coaches, all the parents who make sure their kids go to practice, and all the kids who have any talent whatsoever, long abandoned the rec concept.

So what's left in rec is poor, single parent families who have trouble getting their kids to practice and games.

Travel Ball = White Flight. Prove me wrong

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I don’t think you can say it’s one or the other. Another key factor is the everyone gets a trophy mindset taking over Rec. No coach wants to start over every 6 months with a whole new group of kids and parents. That’s another reason why every Rec league is constantly lacking people willing to coach.

I have two boys who played travel ball. Started because rec ball was so bad (I was a coach) and I wanted them to have a chance to play high school ball if they chose to do so. For the record, our high school team has 20 kids on it and all but one player played travel ball at some level and he is a very fast pinch runner (only). There are some outliers, but if you look at the roster of your high schools team, you will see that that is peppered or at least travel ball players and they probably make up the bulk of the roster.

That said, I see both sides of the issue. Yes, it is competitive and some people take it waaay to seriously. Yes, there were times when my boys were disappointed they didn't make a particular team or when they did make that team, but were not the star. It was very hectic for several years with no real break in the summer. They became good baseball players, but also played multiple sports other than baseball.

That said, I would not trade a minute of that time that I spent with my sons. We have traveled all over the country and spent alot of quality time together. Both boys learned discipline, dealing with adversity, teamwork and how to manage there time. Those are lessons, that team sports teach that they cannot learn playing Fortnite or Seige.

The aftermath:

One quit baseball in 10th grade (he wanted to set the school record for Varsity letters-which he did with 13 letters-). The other son is playing Varsity as a 10th grader (and quit all other sports against our wishes).

Travel baseball has its faults (so many kids hurt their arms when they are 13 and going throw growth spurt it is crazy) but I think my kids learned alot of life lessons that will serve them well in their future whic does not include college baseball. Just my two cents.

My problem with "travel ball" and more so with the "elite teams" is that it is starting to affect high school baseball. The high school season has become to many just a set up for the summer elite season. Here in the BR area, there is virtually nothing in American Legion league, but that has been the case for a long time (and it's a shame). For a while though, at least the "Metro League" was decently competitive. Now, it's a farce. Nothing more than practice. They now basically play M-TH and the games on Wed and Thurs are played without the better players because they leave to go play on the travelling elite teams out of state. Nobody gives a shite who wins. Most of the players are not even playing their real positions. Even the "elite" players will play other positions during the weekday games for various reasons. There's just no competition. I'm sure if the HS coaches didn't mandate playing, there would probably be no league. And one of the main reasons those coaches do that is because they make money off of it during the summer months when school is out....I'm pretty sure it is probably even "tax free".

I always like these threads.

Let’s us all know who the poor people and parents of loser, fat and unathletic kids are.

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But U-Trip requires 75 points (or whatever) in order to "qualify" for one of the four weeks of World Series at one of the 28 locations they are held!!!!!!!!!!

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Right...LOL....utrip has about 20 “World Series” champions in each age group each week starting in the summer....I highly doubt they would ever turn away any teams $ for not “qualifying”

I umpire a lot of the World Series in Lafayette, Sulphur, Dallas, and orange beach. Some of the World Series have 2-4 brackets in one age group to determine a world champion because there are so many teams in that age group. I’ve seen brackets for seeds 1-8, 9-16, 17-23, and 24-32. LOL

And none of the winners play each other, so there are 4 world champions in that age group all from the same World Series LOL