How many kids on a travel ball roster?

[Anonymous]

What is a reasonable number of kids on an 11U or 12U travel baseball roster? There are no pitching specialists yet and everyone theoretically bats.

I ask because our team just sent out rosters with 15 kids. That means if everyone shows, 6 kids will sit every inning and, unless the team is great at batting, each kid will bat maybe once or twice over a 6 inning game. Seems sort of crazy to me, but I may have been spoiled by our last team with only 11-12 kids on the roster.

[Anonymous]

Are the coaches dads or paid coaches with no kids on the team?

If the coaches are dads with players on the team you are screwed with 15 players.

[Anonymous]

Are there a few kids who are playing other sports and will miss a lot of games? I wouldn’t be happy with paying for so much sitting, even if it was rec!

[Anonymous]

15 usually

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are there a few kids who are playing other sports and will miss a lot of games? I wouldn’t be happy with paying for so much sitting, even if it was rec!

At that age, my kid's team had about 11-12 players. Once they reached 14u and especially high school aged, the roster was more like 15-16 because our coach accepts that kids play other sports. And seriously, you wouldn't believe how sometimes a team that large would have to find guest players because many of its full-time kids had other commitments.

[Anonymous]

That seems like a high number for an 11u/12u travel team. My son’s was 11 or 12. Agree once at 14u level there are more kids, some maybe even be POs.

[Anonymous]

I've seen similar numbers on a few travel softball teams and I always wonder why anyone would pay for that. The coaching during practice better be so flipping amazing that it beats out every other competing organization.

[Anonymous]

Turn out appears to be an issue post Covid. At least in basketball. The year-round sports thing is annoying in this regard. Half our AAU basketball team was doing summer league swimming. The coach was kind of dense on this and wouldn't reschedule the practice from the Friday night social hour, so practices basically just stopped. We had turnout issues anyway. Interestingly enough the multi-sport kids are the ones that turn out consistently when there isn't a sport conflict.

[Anonymous]

15 is way too many at that age.

Roster the age. 12u should have 12, at most 13.

15-16 isn't needed till 8th or 9th grade

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Turn out appears to be an issue post Covid. At least in basketball. The year-round sports thing is annoying in this regard. Half our AAU basketball team was doing summer league swimming. The coach was kind of dense on this and wouldn't reschedule the practice from the Friday night social hour, so practices basically just stopped. We had turnout issues anyway. Interestingly enough the multi-sport kids are the ones that turn out consistently when there isn't a sport conflict.

Practice or boozing, how do you pick the priority?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Turn out appears to be an issue post Covid. At least in basketball. The year-round sports thing is annoying in this regard. Half our AAU basketball team was doing summer league swimming. The coach was kind of dense on this and wouldn't reschedule the practice from the Friday night social hour, so practices basically just stopped. We had turnout issues anyway. Interestingly enough the multi-sport kids are the ones that turn out consistently when there isn't a sport conflict.

Practice or boozing, how do you pick the priority?

Pool noodles and pot latch food vs practicing in a hot gym. Any other event would have been negotiable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Turn out appears to be an issue post Covid. At least in basketball. The year-round sports thing is annoying in this regard. Half our AAU basketball team was doing summer league swimming. The coach was kind of dense on this and wouldn't reschedule the practice from the Friday night social hour, so practices basically just stopped. We had turnout issues anyway. Interestingly enough the multi-sport kids are the ones that turn out consistently when there isn't a sport conflict.

Practice or boozing, how do you pick the priority?

Pool noodles and pot latch food vs practicing in a hot gym. Any other event would have been negotiable.

Noodles all day!

[Anonymous]

At that age, 12.

[Anonymous]

12, 13 at most. The other 3-4 are just $$.

[Anonymous]

That is way too many kids, and not at all the norm. I would not want my kid on a true 15 kid roster at that age. There will be so much drama.

I would ask the coach/organization politely for clarification on roster size, without jumping to conclusions. See what they say.

It could be something like expected absences due to playing other sports (for example a couple of kids who won’t be at most games because they have football etc), it could be that some kids are technically rostered from a lower age team as subs but won’t be at games unless players are absent, it could be that there are “practice players” who will only fill in if there is an absence. I have seen all of the above over the years in various teams. More common in organizations with multiple teams (kids will often be dual rostered on more than one team- technically- but do not regularly play on both).