Travel teams in elementary (3rd grade)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the sport. Some, like certain baseball/softball programs, will require them to also do the house league. Kids definitely do multiple sports at that age -- say there's soccer 3x a week, they also do lacrosse on Sundays.
As for whether it's too much-- only you can answer that. Is your child begging to play the sport as much as they can, and are they in the backyard practicing by themselves? If so they're probably ready. If you are the one who heard about the league without them asking, maybe not.
Also, most travel leagues, especially at that age, don't actually "travel" much. You'll go outside your community but likely won't go more than 1.5 hours at any given time. Just for planning. Tell us the sport and we can give more guidance.

This is a good synopsis. My DS plays travel baseball and started in 8U (most of team was in 2nd grade). It was roughly 3x a week in the fall, and 5x a week in the spring, since players have to also play local little league.

In fall a few boys play a second sport, and in winter probably half the team plays basketball. There’s usually 1x a week indoor winter practice after a break in November-December.

Frequency of tournaments and distance traveled varies widely by club, and even by team. Right now we do 1-2 tournaments per season, and mostly local. I expect that to gradually increase in number and intensity over time.

I freely admit this is probably a stupid question. What, in this context, is a tournament? Do they spend a whole weekend playing a game each day for 3 days in a row? Or is it like 2 weeks of games 2-3x a week against different teams in a bracket?

For baseball, usually two games Saturday and a game or two on Sunday. After those two days, they are ranked then it’s single elimination starting Sunday afternoon. If you win you keep playing with you are champs or are eliminated. Usually max would be 4 games on one day, but that’s very rare. On non tournament weekends, a rec game on Saturday would be normal. Most kids also play another sport such as soccer for flag football. So they’d have games for that too. In third grade, most would play both soccer and flag IME. Sundays are for travel games, which are usually a double header which is two two hour games. They are usually within an hour away. So if you start at 9, you’d have to be there at 8 and it’s an hour away, you’d be gone from 7am-2:30pm on Sundays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the sport. Some, like certain baseball/softball programs, will require them to also do the house league. Kids definitely do multiple sports at that age -- say there's soccer 3x a week, they also do lacrosse on Sundays.
As for whether it's too much-- only you can answer that. Is your child begging to play the sport as much as they can, and are they in the backyard practicing by themselves? If so they're probably ready. If you are the one who heard about the league without them asking, maybe not.
Also, most travel leagues, especially at that age, don't actually "travel" much. You'll go outside your community but likely won't go more than 1.5 hours at any given time. Just for planning. Tell us the sport and we can give more guidance.

This is a good synopsis. My DS plays travel baseball and started in 8U (most of team was in 2nd grade). It was roughly 3x a week in the fall, and 5x a week in the spring, since players have to also play local little league.

In fall a few boys play a second sport, and in winter probably half the team plays basketball. There’s usually 1x a week indoor winter practice after a break in November-December.

Frequency of tournaments and distance traveled varies widely by club, and even by team. Right now we do 1-2 tournaments per season, and mostly local. I expect that to gradually increase in number and intensity over time.

Our exact experience with travel baseball. Maybe we are on the same team haha

+1

This is a good summary for baseball. My son started on a “travel” team young but they didn’t do much actual travel. They played in a local travel league and mostly local tournaments the first few years. Maybe one out of town tournament per season and made a fun weekend of it.

They didn’t start traveling more until middle school and almost all of those tournaments were just a few hours drive away.

There are a few super “elite” teams that travel more - and further- earlier on, but it isn’t the norm IME.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As others have said, it depends on the sport/league.

My kids started travel soccer in 3rd and 4th and no, it wasn’t too intense because as PP said, actual travel was minimal (1.5 hour drive maybe 3x per season for either games or tournaments). Practices 3x week, so still time for something like scouts. Some teammates did/do a second sport, but found it challenging and that’s more than I’m willing to deal with.

In our experience, pressure and travel didn’t start until middle school. And fwiw, expecting nothing from it beyond exercise, friendships and learning to work at something.

Good to know. I certainly hope my kid decides to switch out travel for the rooty-poot no-cut soccer school team once he’s in middle school 🫣

Not sure if you’re kidding here but our MS soccer team is super competitive and all the kids have been playing travel for years.

[Anonymous]

It’s such a racket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s crazy to spend so much time driving for a kid to play a sport, in my opinion. It’s also environmentally a problem for so much car travel. The time spent traveling could be spent on so many other things, like playing in the yard or just having downtime. As a psychologist, I think this kind of thing is contributing to overall mental health struggles as kids grow.

There are pros and cons. For my sons (started travel sport in 2nd grade but it is mostly local), the hard work/expectations, the structure and listening to a professional coach without mom and dad hovering has been great in building confidence, poise and independence. There can be a bunch of pressure too that we work to balance downtime annd just being a kid in other ways. I think it isn’t wholly good or wholly bad - it’s kid and family dependent - but I am proud of how my boys have developed to date.

[Anonymous]

Dd started gymnastics team level in 3rd grade and its a lot-- 3rd grade was manageable (6 hours a week) -- however this year in 4th it's 9 hours a week plus 10 meets. Next year (and subsequent years) will be even worse if she continues so we are seeing if it's worth it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s crazy to spend so much time driving for a kid to play a sport, in my opinion. It’s also environmentally a problem for so much car travel. The time spent traveling could be spent on so many other things, like playing in the yard or just having downtime. As a psychologist, I think this kind of thing is contributing to overall mental health struggles as kids grow.

Yeah but you have to be on a travel team in elementary to have a shot of being on a team in middle school, and if you're not on a team in middle school you'll never get on a hs team, and if you're not a hs team you'll never get into Directional State University.

[Anonymous]

Soccer is a bit less than other sports, it seems from this thread. Most travel teams practice 2x a week with games 1x a weekend on average for 8 weeks in the fall and 8 weeks in the spring. Summers are largely off and there might be 1-2 tournaments per season.

We didn't start travel teams until my son was in 5th grade and my daughter was in 6th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the sport. Some, like certain baseball/softball programs, will require them to also do the house league. Kids definitely do multiple sports at that age -- say there's soccer 3x a week, they also do lacrosse on Sundays.
As for whether it's too much-- only you can answer that. Is your child begging to play the sport as much as they can, and are they in the backyard practicing by themselves? If so they're probably ready. If you are the one who heard about the league without them asking, maybe not.
Also, most travel leagues, especially at that age, don't actually "travel" much. You'll go outside your community but likely won't go more than 1.5 hours at any given time. Just for planning. Tell us the sport and we can give more guidance.

This is a good synopsis. My DS plays travel baseball and started in 8U (most of team was in 2nd grade). It was roughly 3x a week in the fall, and 5x a week in the spring, since players have to also play local little league.

In fall a few boys play a second sport, and in winter probably half the team plays basketball. There’s usually 1x a week indoor winter practice after a break in November-December.

Frequency of tournaments and distance traveled varies widely by club, and even by team. Right now we do 1-2 tournaments per season, and mostly local. I expect that to gradually increase in number and intensity over time.

I freely admit this is probably a stupid question. What, in this context, is a tournament? Do they spend a whole weekend playing a game each day for 3 days in a row? Or is it like 2 weeks of games 2-3x a week against different teams in a bracket?

For baseball, usually two games Saturday and a game or two on Sunday. After those two days, they are ranked then it’s single elimination starting Sunday afternoon. If you win you keep playing with you are champs or are eliminated. Usually max would be 4 games on one day, but that’s very rare. On non tournament weekends, a rec game on Saturday would be normal. Most kids also play another sport such as soccer for flag football. So they’d have games for that too. In third grade, most would play both soccer and flag IME. Sundays are for travel games, which are usually a double header which is two two hour games. They are usually within an hour away. So if you start at 9, you’d have to be there at 8 and it’s an hour away, you’d be gone from 7am-2:30pm on Sundays.

You mean 4 games a day in the league… not that a kid would play 4 games in a day, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the sport. Some, like certain baseball/softball programs, will require them to also do the house league. Kids definitely do multiple sports at that age -- say there's soccer 3x a week, they also do lacrosse on Sundays.
As for whether it's too much-- only you can answer that. Is your child begging to play the sport as much as they can, and are they in the backyard practicing by themselves? If so they're probably ready. If you are the one who heard about the league without them asking, maybe not.
Also, most travel leagues, especially at that age, don't actually "travel" much. You'll go outside your community but likely won't go more than 1.5 hours at any given time. Just for planning. Tell us the sport and we can give more guidance.

Depends on the league. Our softball organization (has house, house+, and travel) does not require house participation for 3rd graders and runs travel practice 2x per week plus friendlies and tournaments - though the current 3rd/4th grade coach at least isn't doing nearly as many tournaments as even the 4th/5th grade coach.

I know Arlington requires house participation for softball through 10U, but I don't know of any others that do.