This guy nails it re Travel Ball

Short-form videos are destroying families.

It certainly seems to introduce a lot of odd dynamics to an already challenging job of parenting.

Sorry not sorry his kids suck at sports

Travel ball is completely bullshite taking advantage of parents desires, dreams, and aspirations for their children.

Your kid nor is any other kid in the league going to play in the Majors one day, and if he is good enough he doesn’t need year round training growing up.

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It would not be safe to put her on the field in a rec league.

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would not be safe to put her on the field in a rec league. That goes for thousands of travel ball players in

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Holy shite, congrats on the future lesbian

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My daughter would either not play softball or kill some girl in a rec league

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She's a guy??????

Dumb. If you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, just sit in the corner and shut up.

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I recently got my first full glimpse of travel ball and all of the absurdity that surrounds it.

My daughter is 8. She loves playing sports (basketball, soccer, softball, etc). But that is mostly because she just likes playing with her friends. Her school has a basketball team, so there is no need to play "travel basketball". She plays on a little rec league soccer team. For the last few years she's played softball on a little rec league team. Softball is not her favorite of the sports, but she likes being with her friends.

Well, some of those friends (i.e. parents) decided they want to play in a more competitive travel league this year. We had a parents' meeting to discuss what that looked like. The would be coach, who is just a guy who works at a factory, not some former baseball player/scout, comes in talking about how he wants to play in 8 tournaments starting in fall and going until July. Practice will be at least 2x per week, for roughly ~9 months, with the availability to hit at batting cages on the "off days", etc. "The girls are going to be 'turning two', throwing out runners at 2nd, executing bunts, etc!"

My response was WTF?! They are 8! If you want to turn a kid off of a sport the quickest way to do so is to make it a "chore". Unfortunately, this set up is the only way my child can play with her same group of friends. The options are either agree to this ridiculous BS, play on a team with none of her friends, or just quit softball altogether.

She's not going to be a college softball player (and we don't want her to be one). She just wants to play with her friends. Sadly, many parents have ruined youth sports. If a kid really loves baseball, basketball, et at 12, 13, 14 and wants to go "all in", that's fine. But this crap at 7, 8, 9 years old is ridiculous

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Thats my take but I do allow for the fact that it ain't my kid and folks can do what they think is best.

We have a friend couple whose daughter was a excellent softball player. She, by all accounts, wanted to play at a higher level and her parents were all in. She excelled through about 10th grade and started slipping in the 11th. She quit altogether in the 12th. Softball, still did very well in school and went to UT San Antonio on a full academic scholarship. She was really good...she was on the cusp of the surge of womens collegiate softball so she was probably a shoe in for a athletic scholarship...but she simply got tired of the grind....and it was a grind for the entire family. I don't think they regret...the parents are still good friends with a group of about 8 parents from those days....but they spent a LOT of time playing softball.

I played football from age 8 through my senior year of high school and from age 12 - my freshman year I played on a rec league team, a middle school team, a JV High School team and a Varsity High School Team (I did not play much on that team LOL) as well as a regional all star team. Simultaneously for 2 seasons. From mid July through the end of Februrary (all stars started when High School football finished). 6 days a week either practicing or suited up for and playing in most games, most of the time on both sides of the line of scrimmage for the entire game - not in the JV and Varsity High School games though. I LOVED it...I ate it up, I did not think of anything else. It was a LOT. By the time I was a junior in High School I was completely burnt out on playing football. 2 a days my senior year were the worst 6 weeks of my life....I despised it. I stuck with it because I felt like my team "needed" me....childish emotions, they'd have lost in the first round of the playoff with or without me LOL...it was just too much. It is also not without risk....I have aches and pains to this day that I have had since I was 12 playing in 2 and suited up for 2 games a week. Had I not been done with football mentally by my junior year I would have probably played at a small college somewhere....I had some schools reach out....but halfway through my senior season it was obvious to anyone concerned I was just done.