Travel Sports

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like a lot of variables have to fall into place for the experience to be worth the commitment - roster size, coach, skill of players, etc. Do you think starting younger 10U is beneficial or is waiting ok too? DS is an athletic kid and excels at a variety of sports…not sure we are ready to commit to baseball 24/7 at this point, but also feel somewhat forced into it if he wants to succeed long-term (all-stars, high school, etc.). Not trying to raise an MLB star by any means, but want a happy kiddo who can do what he loves and have fun doing it.

I would just play LL and then pay for private instruction. None of the play matters much at all until the kids hit puberty, so you want to create muscle memory and good habits.

You will have no problem joining travel teams at 13u.

Sure. Bc there's always a team willing to take your money.

But by 12, if you haven't started, you absolutely will be behind. Around that age, breaking balls really start to break and kids need to learn how to identify the spin, etc. That doesn't happen in rec.

By 13/14 kids can change speeds and locations well. My 14u old struck out last week on 3 pitches. 78 mph fastball. 63 mph change up. 80 mph fastball.

Looking. Foul. Swinging.

If you want to make the jump at 13/14, you won't stand a chance against pitching like that.

You layer in any hopes of playing in HS, and your DS absolutely needs to join a travel team. It sucks. But it is what it is

Total aside but who is clocking every pitch speed at a 14U game, and more importantly, why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like a lot of variables have to fall into place for the experience to be worth the commitment - roster size, coach, skill of players, etc. Do you think starting younger 10U is beneficial or is waiting ok too? DS is an athletic kid and excels at a variety of sports…not sure we are ready to commit to baseball 24/7 at this point, but also feel somewhat forced into it if he wants to succeed long-term (all-stars, high school, etc.). Not trying to raise an MLB star by any means, but want a happy kiddo who can do what he loves and have fun doing it.

I would just play LL and then pay for private instruction. None of the play matters much at all until the kids hit puberty, so you want to create muscle memory and good habits.

You will have no problem joining travel teams at 13u.

Sure. Bc there's always a team willing to take your money.

But by 12, if you haven't started, you absolutely will be behind. Around that age, breaking balls really start to break and kids need to learn how to identify the spin, etc. That doesn't happen in rec.

By 13/14 kids can change speeds and locations well. My 14u old struck out last week on 3 pitches. 78 mph fastball. 63 mph change up. 80 mph fastball.

Looking. Foul. Swinging.

If you want to make the jump at 13/14, you won't stand a chance against pitching like that.

You layer in any hopes of playing in HS, and your DS absolutely needs to join a travel team. It sucks. But it is what it is

Total aside but who is clocking every pitch speed at a 14U game, and more importantly, why?

Pocket radar can be integrated into game changer. It tracks automatically once the integration is set up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like a lot of variables have to fall into place for the experience to be worth the commitment - roster size, coach, skill of players, etc. Do you think starting younger 10U is beneficial or is waiting ok too? DS is an athletic kid and excels at a variety of sports…not sure we are ready to commit to baseball 24/7 at this point, but also feel somewhat forced into it if he wants to succeed long-term (all-stars, high school, etc.). Not trying to raise an MLB star by any means, but want a happy kiddo who can do what he loves and have fun doing it.

I would just play LL and then pay for private instruction. None of the play matters much at all until the kids hit puberty, so you want to create muscle memory and good habits.

You will have no problem joining travel teams at 13u.

Sure. Bc there's always a team willing to take your money.

But by 12, if you haven't started, you absolutely will be behind. Around that age, breaking balls really start to break and kids need to learn how to identify the spin, etc. That doesn't happen in rec.

By 13/14 kids can change speeds and locations well. My 14u old struck out last week on 3 pitches. 78 mph fastball. 63 mph change up. 80 mph fastball.

Looking. Foul. Swinging.

If you want to make the jump at 13/14, you won't stand a chance against pitching like that.

You layer in any hopes of playing in HS, and your DS absolutely needs to join a travel team. It sucks. But it is what it is

Total aside but who is clocking every pitch speed at a 14U game, and more importantly, why?

Pocket radar can be integrated into game changer. It tracks automatically once the integration is set up

+1 my kid’s 13U team doesn’t use this, but many of the opposing teams do. So the info is available on that team’s GC feed. Also by 14U, a lot teams have done PG tourneys so there will often be some basic data re: velocity under the kid’s player profile if he pitched in the tournament.

Also the “impact pitchers” (my DS is not one of these) often have been to showcases or have top private coaches etc etc. and are more likely to have an accurate measure. People don’t really care to measure the kids throwing low 60s or whatever.

[Anonymous]

Youth travel sports is like playing Russian roulette. You never know what you will get until you get there.

I would do travel if you know the following:

A) the location for practices and DHs aren’t that far away. In NOVA, there are an incredible number of resources and locals teams willing to play each other. Map them out. Pick the teams closer to home.

B) at least one parent you like or you can carpool with. Specifically, if your kid has been playing little league all of this time, you will find one player family on a travel team. Talk to them about what it is like. If they like it, they will tell you. If they don’t, they will tell you.

What they won’t tell you is if your kid will get on the team. Just do not ask this. Don’t ask. It gets weird. There is a lot of politics. Ask if they like the coaching. If there is a lot of benching. Those are most important. You can ask If GC is accurate. Jk. It never is.

C) Your kid wants this more than you do. I mean it. Put up a paper calendar with practices and game days for the rest of rec league now and if your kid is bugging *you* to get ready and their uniform is on, they have loaded up the car and filled their chug jug, and they are ready to go 15 minutes before you need to leave: this is their sport. If you have to nag or remind them even once- this is not it. Don’t do travel. It’s not something they love, they will not get out of bed for at 6 am without whining: it is not their sport.

We learned this with our kids. They hated soccer and swim but loved baseball. At 8- they were the ones doing all of the prep work to go to their LL games and it showed.

D) there are a lot of good points about benching. What people won’t tell you is how hard it is to break favoritism on travel sports and how it feeds into the rec sports. It’s why “C” is so important. Because they have to love it so much that all they want to do if figure out how to get better. How to play more. How to support their team.

A lot of people will ask about benching and I will tell you at ages younger than 12U most of these kids are being coached by their dads. (15U+ is professional coaching where they look at your kids height and weight and they look at the parents too for height and weight too until about 17u when things kinda all hit puberty. I don’t think the dad’s height is always a factor, but I do know I overheard it once that it was an issue.) Favoritism runs amok at the younger ages. This is why a lot of people start at 8U because they want to insure they get a place on the team.

But C is the most important factor. Your kid has to be the one driving the travel train. If all your kid is doing in the dugout is figuring out the pitching and supporting their team, your kid needs to do travel. If they weekdays throwing the ball outside and watching baseball, it’s worth doing.

It has to be them. Their attitude towards baseball is the reason to do this.

Finally— the one thing you should know is that travel baseball does not mean you have a guaranteed spot on the high school baseball team. Far from it in the larger high schools. There are other threads about this- but you need to treat travel as their reward for good grades and responsible behavior.

Puberty effs the kids over. (That and the leap to the big field). The stats are really trending to a certain type of kid who can get on a college or hs team: fast, tall, strong and smart. Some parents think travel baseball is the road to college baseball. It is not. You need to have at least a 3.5 UW GPA for pre-reads and at least 5 APs. So if travel baseball is going to take too much time away from schoolwork and they are already struggling in school- make sure they are willing to put in the extra work in school for baseball now, but not guaranteed later.

They have to love it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Youth travel sports is like playing Russian roulette. You never know what you will get until you get there.

I would do travel if you know the following:

A) the location for practices and DHs aren’t that far away. In NOVA, there are an incredible number of resources and locals teams willing to play each other. Map them out. Pick the teams closer to home.

B) at least one parent you like or you can carpool with. Specifically, if your kid has been playing little league all of this time, you will find one player family on a travel team. Talk to them about what it is like. If they like it, they will tell you. If they don’t, they will tell you.

What they won’t tell you is if your kid will get on the team. Just do not ask this. Don’t ask. It gets weird. There is a lot of politics. Ask if they like the coaching. If there is a lot of benching. Those are most important. You can ask If GC is accurate. Jk. It never is.

C) Your kid wants this more than you do. I mean it. Put up a paper calendar with practices and game days for the rest of rec league now and if your kid is bugging *you* to get ready and their uniform is on, they have loaded up the car and filled their chug jug, and they are ready to go 15 minutes before you need to leave: this is their sport. If you have to nag or remind them even once- this is not it. Don’t do travel. It’s not something they love, they will not get out of bed for at 6 am without whining: it is not their sport.

We learned this with our kids. They hated soccer and swim but loved baseball. At 8- they were the ones doing all of the prep work to go to their LL games and it showed.

D) there are a lot of good points about benching. What people won’t tell you is how hard it is to break favoritism on travel sports and how it feeds into the rec sports. It’s why “C” is so important. Because they have to love it so much that all they want to do if figure out how to get better. How to play more. How to support their team.

A lot of people will ask about benching and I will tell you at ages younger than 12U most of these kids are being coached by their dads. (15U+ is professional coaching where they look at your kids height and weight and they look at the parents too for height and weight too until about 17u when things kinda all hit puberty. I don’t think the dad’s height is always a factor, but I do know I overheard it once that it was an issue.) Favoritism runs amok at the younger ages. This is why a lot of people start at 8U because they want to insure they get a place on the team.

But C is the most important factor. Your kid has to be the one driving the travel train. If all your kid is doing in the dugout is figuring out the pitching and supporting their team, your kid needs to do travel. If they weekdays throwing the ball outside and watching baseball, it’s worth doing.

It has to be them. Their attitude towards baseball is the reason to do this.

Finally— the one thing you should know is that travel baseball does not mean you have a guaranteed spot on the high school baseball team. Far from it in the larger high schools. There are other threads about this- but you need to treat travel as their reward for good grades and responsible behavior.

Puberty effs the kids over. (That and the leap to the big field). The stats are really trending to a certain type of kid who can get on a college or hs team: fast, tall, strong and smart. Some parents think travel baseball is the road to college baseball. It is not. You need to have at least a 3.5 UW GPA for pre-reads and at least 5 APs. So if travel baseball is going to take too much time away from schoolwork and they are already struggling in school- make sure they are willing to put in the extra work in school for baseball now, but not guaranteed later.

They have to love it.

I don't quite get what you are referring. You seem to be thinking of D3 or academic D1. My kid plays on a 17u team with 65% of the players committed D1, some to Power 5 schools that not surprisingly have very high overall acceptance rates no matter if you play a sport or not...they care you meet NCAA minimums, that's it (which I think is like a 2.0 GPA? and they don't care about APs).

[Anonymous]

I think it depends on the quality of your little league. We were part of a really good one and it was plenty of baseball and good coaching. My son started travel ball at 13u, made the team he wanted, and has had a great experience. LOTS of travel teams are just parent-coached anyway before 13u. Why pay for that??
Now, if your little league is really small and non-competitive, then I can see it, I guess.

My son is a sophomore at a very competitive FCPS high school and he's already playing occasionally on the varsity team. Without doing the travel plus little league rat race.

[Anonymous]

So should I, as the short mom, send my tall husband to tryouts? Just being facetious but wow! Who knew the parents’ heights would be eyed up too?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So should I, as the short mom, send my tall husband to tryouts? Just being facetious but wow! Who knew the parents’ heights would be eyed up too?!

If its basketball or baseball tryouts yes 100% send your tall husband.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So should I, as the short mom, send my tall husband to tryouts? Just being facetious but wow! Who knew the parents’ heights would be eyed up too?!

If its basketball or baseball tryouts yes 100% send your tall husband.

Seriously? My boys biological father was a tall sperm donor. DH is short. They will be totally mistaken if they look at his height!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So should I, as the short mom, send my tall husband to tryouts? Just being facetious but wow! Who knew the parents’ heights would be eyed up too?!

If its basketball or baseball tryouts yes 100% send your tall husband.

Seriously? My boys biological father was a tall sperm donor. DH is short. They will be totally mistaken if they look at his height!

Don't send a short dad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So should I, as the short mom, send my tall husband to tryouts? Just being facetious but wow! Who knew the parents’ heights would be eyed up too?!

LOL- yes, actually, I would. I always send my tall DH.

If it is between two kids of similar size, skill, and attitude- they will often look at the parents, sure. Both their size and their attitude/likability. They’ll keep the kid with a big athletic dad who seems relaxed & friendly vs the kid with the short dad hanging on the fence obnoxiously barking instructions at their kid during the tryout. As an example. They don’t want problem parents around, and if it looks like the kid will likely grow soon - of course that is a small plus in the kid’s favor.

Size isn’t the main factor but if seeing a tall dad gives the kid a slight edge- might as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So should I, as the short mom, send my tall husband to tryouts? Just being facetious but wow! Who knew the parents’ heights would be eyed up too?!

If its basketball or baseball tryouts yes 100% send your tall husband.

Seriously? My boys biological father was a tall sperm donor. DH is short. They will be totally mistaken if they look at his height!

Don't send a short dad.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Youth travel sports is like playing Russian roulette. You never know what you will get until you get there.

I would do travel if you know the following:

A) the location for practices and DHs aren’t that far away. In NOVA, there are an incredible number of resources and locals teams willing to play each other. Map them out. Pick the teams closer to home.

B) at least one parent you like or you can carpool with. Specifically, if your kid has been playing little league all of this time, you will find one player family on a travel team. Talk to them about what it is like. If they like it, they will tell you. If they don’t, they will tell you.

What they won’t tell you is if your kid will get on the team. Just do not ask this. Don’t ask. It gets weird. There is a lot of politics. Ask if they like the coaching. If there is a lot of benching. Those are most important. You can ask If GC is accurate. Jk. It never is.

C) Your kid wants this more than you do. I mean it. Put up a paper calendar with practices and game days for the rest of rec league now and if your kid is bugging *you* to get ready and their uniform is on, they have loaded up the car and filled their chug jug, and they are ready to go 15 minutes before you need to leave: this is their sport. If you have to nag or remind them even once- this is not it. Don’t do travel. It’s not something they love, they will not get out of bed for at 6 am without whining: it is not their sport.

We learned this with our kids. They hated soccer and swim but loved baseball. At 8- they were the ones doing all of the prep work to go to their LL games and it showed.

D) there are a lot of good points about benching. What people won’t tell you is how hard it is to break favoritism on travel sports and how it feeds into the rec sports. It’s why “C” is so important. Because they have to love it so much that all they want to do if figure out how to get better. How to play more. How to support their team.

A lot of people will ask about benching and I will tell you at ages younger than 12U most of these kids are being coached by their dads. (15U+ is professional coaching where they look at your kids height and weight and they look at the parents too for height and weight too until about 17u when things kinda all hit puberty. I don’t think the dad’s height is always a factor, but I do know I overheard it once that it was an issue.) Favoritism runs amok at the younger ages. This is why a lot of people start at 8U because they want to insure they get a place on the team.

But C is the most important factor. Your kid has to be the one driving the travel train. If all your kid is doing in the dugout is figuring out the pitching and supporting their team, your kid needs to do travel. If they weekdays throwing the ball outside and watching baseball, it’s worth doing.

It has to be them. Their attitude towards baseball is the reason to do this.

Finally— the one thing you should know is that travel baseball does not mean you have a guaranteed spot on the high school baseball team. Far from it in the larger high schools. There are other threads about this- but you need to treat travel as their reward for good grades and responsible behavior.

Puberty effs the kids over. (That and the leap to the big field). The stats are really trending to a certain type of kid who can get on a college or hs team: fast, tall, strong and smart. Some parents think travel baseball is the road to college baseball. It is not. You need to have at least a 3.5 UW GPA for pre-reads and at least 5 APs. So if travel baseball is going to take too much time away from schoolwork and they are already struggling in school- make sure they are willing to put in the extra work in school for baseball now, but not guaranteed later.

They have to love it.

+1 every word of this is spot on, based on my experience with my two DSs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Youth travel sports is like playing Russian roulette. You never know what you will get until you get there.

I would do travel if you know the following:

A) the location for practices and DHs aren’t that far away. In NOVA, there are an incredible number of resources and locals teams willing to play each other. Map them out. Pick the teams closer to home.

B) at least one parent you like or you can carpool with. Specifically, if your kid has been playing little league all of this time, you will find one player family on a travel team. Talk to them about what it is like. If they like it, they will tell you. If they don’t, they will tell you.

What they won’t tell you is if your kid will get on the team. Just do not ask this. Don’t ask. It gets weird. There is a lot of politics. Ask if they like the coaching. If there is a lot of benching. Those are most important. You can ask If GC is accurate. Jk. It never is.

C) Your kid wants this more than you do. I mean it. Put up a paper calendar with practices and game days for the rest of rec league now and if your kid is bugging *you* to get ready and their uniform is on, they have loaded up the car and filled their chug jug, and they are ready to go 15 minutes before you need to leave: this is their sport. If you have to nag or remind them even once- this is not it. Don’t do travel. It’s not something they love, they will not get out of bed for at 6 am without whining: it is not their sport.

We learned this with our kids. They hated soccer and swim but loved baseball. At 8- they were the ones doing all of the prep work to go to their LL games and it showed.

D) there are a lot of good points about benching. What people won’t tell you is how hard it is to break favoritism on travel sports and how it feeds into the rec sports. It’s why “C” is so important. Because they have to love it so much that all they want to do if figure out how to get better. How to play more. How to support their team.

A lot of people will ask about benching and I will tell you at ages younger than 12U most of these kids are being coached by their dads. (15U+ is professional coaching where they look at your kids height and weight and they look at the parents too for height and weight too until about 17u when things kinda all hit puberty. I don’t think the dad’s height is always a factor, but I do know I overheard it once that it was an issue.) Favoritism runs amok at the younger ages. This is why a lot of people start at 8U because they want to insure they get a place on the team.

But C is the most important factor. Your kid has to be the one driving the travel train. If all your kid is doing in the dugout is figuring out the pitching and supporting their team, your kid needs to do travel. If they weekdays throwing the ball outside and watching baseball, it’s worth doing.

It has to be them. Their attitude towards baseball is the reason to do this.

Finally— the one thing you should know is that travel baseball does not mean you have a guaranteed spot on the high school baseball team. Far from it in the larger high schools. There are other threads about this- but you need to treat travel as their reward for good grades and responsible behavior.

Puberty effs the kids over. (That and the leap to the big field). The stats are really trending to a certain type of kid who can get on a college or hs team: fast, tall, strong and smart. Some parents think travel baseball is the road to college baseball. It is not. You need to have at least a 3.5 UW GPA for pre-reads and at least 5 APs. So if travel baseball is going to take too much time away from schoolwork and they are already struggling in school- make sure they are willing to put in the extra work in school for baseball now, but not guaranteed later.

They have to love it.

I don't quite get what you are referring. You seem to be thinking of D3 or academic D1. My kid plays on a 17u team with 65% of the players committed D1, some to Power 5 schools that not surprisingly have very high overall acceptance rates no matter if you play a sport or not...they care you meet NCAA minimums, that's it (which I think is like a 2.0 GPA? and they don't care about APs).

I'll also add: college baseball has a broad definition.

If kids want to keep playing past HS, many can go play JUCO. And to be fair, the baseball is pretty good in JUCO. Obviously not D1 good, but still competitive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Youth travel sports is like playing Russian roulette. You never know what you will get until you get there.

I would do travel if you know the following:

A) the location for practices and DHs aren’t that far away. In NOVA, there are an incredible number of resources and locals teams willing to play each other. Map them out. Pick the teams closer to home.

B) at least one parent you like or you can carpool with. Specifically, if your kid has been playing little league all of this time, you will find one player family on a travel team. Talk to them about what it is like. If they like it, they will tell you. If they don’t, they will tell you.

What they won’t tell you is if your kid will get on the team. Just do not ask this. Don’t ask. It gets weird. There is a lot of politics. Ask if they like the coaching. If there is a lot of benching. Those are most important. You can ask If GC is accurate. Jk. It never is.

C) Your kid wants this more than you do. I mean it. Put up a paper calendar with practices and game days for the rest of rec league now and if your kid is bugging *you* to get ready and their uniform is on, they have loaded up the car and filled their chug jug, and they are ready to go 15 minutes before you need to leave: this is their sport. If you have to nag or remind them even once- this is not it. Don’t do travel. It’s not something they love, they will not get out of bed for at 6 am without whining: it is not their sport.

We learned this with our kids. They hated soccer and swim but loved baseball. At 8- they were the ones doing all of the prep work to go to their LL games and it showed.

D) there are a lot of good points about benching. What people won’t tell you is how hard it is to break favoritism on travel sports and how it feeds into the rec sports. It’s why “C” is so important. Because they have to love it so much that all they want to do if figure out how to get better. How to play more. How to support their team.

A lot of people will ask about benching and I will tell you at ages younger than 12U most of these kids are being coached by their dads. (15U+ is professional coaching where they look at your kids height and weight and they look at the parents too for height and weight too until about 17u when things kinda all hit puberty. I don’t think the dad’s height is always a factor, but I do know I overheard it once that it was an issue.) Favoritism runs amok at the younger ages. This is why a lot of people start at 8U because they want to insure they get a place on the team.

But C is the most important factor. Your kid has to be the one driving the travel train. If all your kid is doing in the dugout is figuring out the pitching and supporting their team, your kid needs to do travel. If they weekdays throwing the ball outside and watching baseball, it’s worth doing.

It has to be them. Their attitude towards baseball is the reason to do this.

Finally— the one thing you should know is that travel baseball does not mean you have a guaranteed spot on the high school baseball team. Far from it in the larger high schools. There are other threads about this- but you need to treat travel as their reward for good grades and responsible behavior.

Puberty effs the kids over. (That and the leap to the big field). The stats are really trending to a certain type of kid who can get on a college or hs team: fast, tall, strong and smart. Some parents think travel baseball is the road to college baseball. It is not. You need to have at least a 3.5 UW GPA for pre-reads and at least 5 APs. So if travel baseball is going to take too much time away from schoolwork and they are already struggling in school- make sure they are willing to put in the extra work in school for baseball now, but not guaranteed later.

They have to love it.

I don't quite get what you are referring. You seem to be thinking of D3 or academic D1. My kid plays on a 17u team with 65% of the players committed D1, some to Power 5 schools that not surprisingly have very high overall acceptance rates no matter if you play a sport or not...they care you meet NCAA minimums, that's it (which I think is like a 2.0 GPA? and they don't care about APs).

I'll also add: college baseball has a broad definition.

If kids want to keep playing past HS, many can go play JUCO. And to be fair, the baseball is pretty good in JUCO. Obviously not D1 good, but still competitive.

The transfer portal has upended the JUCO route. Kids used to go JUCO because you could transfer to a 4-year and start playing immediately while you had to sit out a year transferring 4 year-to-4 year.

Since the 4-year transfer restriction is no more, JUCO is no longer as attractive. It still has appeal if you think you are MLB material as there is no waiting period to get drafted.