Travel Baseball - What are we getting ourselves into?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love how anytime baseball comes up on an anonymous mommy board suddenly NOVA is home to 10 bazillion D1 recruits.

Ever think those are the types to post a lot?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a son in 15u baseball. He didn't start travel until 12u so we don't have experience with the younger ages, but as others have said, you're playing ball on major holiday weekends- Memorial Day, Labor Day, 4th of July, etc.

If 9u does doubleheaders on the weekends, it's a big time suck. You're easily looking at 7+ hours depending on where games are held.

If your team travels for tournaments, some are stay to play which means the hotels will be even more expensive than if you booked your own stay. I think many (but I'm sure not all) teams 12u and younger have parent coaches; it seems 13u and up is when you start getting majority professional coaches (which will increase your fees, of course).

Depending on the organization, there may be an expectation that you book training with their affiliated instructors. My son's never been on a team that requires that, thankfully. Again, not sure what the younger ages require but there are often winter workouts (usually not included with team fees).

My son's loved playing. He hasn't loved every single aspect of it but has kept returning to baseball every season. I think we may be stepping back from fall travel though as it's a lot of baseball playing school ball right into summer travel right into fall travel with a few short months of rest before gearing up for high school workouts and tryouts.

This. Travel is a waste on an 8-year old. Until age 12, kids are just learning the game and developing their baseball IQ. Rec is perfectly fine for that. If he shows interest, travel at 12 or even later is useful and can be a lot of fun.

Signed, mom of two youth players, one now plays at a D1.

+1 from another parent of a college player who didn’t start travel until 13u. It is fine if they want to do it, but not necessary.

Are all these people who started at 12 and 13U in the DC area? I feel like several people I know were shut out by waiting, their kids are good but the kids who have been on Travel since 8 or 9 are occupying all the spots.

I am the pp and yes, from DMV. There is a lot of movement between teams at 13u and up. Players move around all the time and organizations expand (or begin) at that age. If a 13u player new to travel can’t find a place to play, they weren’t looking very hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love how anytime baseball comes up on an anonymous mommy board suddenly NOVA is home to 10 bazillion D1 recruits. My now sophomore in college son played travel with a close in outfit, pitched for his large, close in HS and literally not a single team mate of his went D1. I think 3 out of the ~ 40ish kids he played with from rec to travel to HS went to respectable D3 schools.

For our son, it was simply the love of the game. He knew he wasn't D1 and, honestly, having known D1 athletes from my own childhood, it wouldn't have been for him. It is your ENTIRE life.

So if your kid just wnats to play lots of ball, yeah, have at it. The money isn't an issue unless you're so broke 3k a year will break you.

And it's true about younger siblings. Don't make their life about their siblings life. I have regrets about the amount of time our daughter spent on the sidelines watching her brother instead of living her own life. We realized this and corrected course but I see many who don't.

Also learn to ignore the loudmouth older guy who comes into any talk about baseball. He is living through his very mediocre son.

Madison and Gainesville always send several to D1 each year, and there are plenty of NOVA kids playing for privates like SJC (last year's Gatorade player of the year was a SJC pitcher from Nova)

Also, you have three kids drafted in the 1st and 2nd round of the MLB in the last three years from NoVA (Eldridge, Triantos and Morabito).

Exactly. Three kids. In three years. From a metro area of 6.5 million.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a son in 15u baseball. He didn't start travel until 12u so we don't have experience with the younger ages, but as others have said, you're playing ball on major holiday weekends- Memorial Day, Labor Day, 4th of July, etc.

If 9u does doubleheaders on the weekends, it's a big time suck. You're easily looking at 7+ hours depending on where games are held.

If your team travels for tournaments, some are stay to play which means the hotels will be even more expensive than if you booked your own stay. I think many (but I'm sure not all) teams 12u and younger have parent coaches; it seems 13u and up is when you start getting majority professional coaches (which will increase your fees, of course).

Depending on the organization, there may be an expectation that you book training with their affiliated instructors. My son's never been on a team that requires that, thankfully. Again, not sure what the younger ages require but there are often winter workouts (usually not included with team fees).

My son's loved playing. He hasn't loved every single aspect of it but has kept returning to baseball every season. I think we may be stepping back from fall travel though as it's a lot of baseball playing school ball right into summer travel right into fall travel with a few short months of rest before gearing up for high school workouts and tryouts.

This. Travel is a waste on an 8-year old. Until age 12, kids are just learning the game and developing their baseball IQ. Rec is perfectly fine for that. If he shows interest, travel at 12 or even later is useful and can be a lot of fun.

Signed, mom of two youth players, one now plays at a D1.

+1 from another parent of a college player who didn’t start travel until 13u. It is fine if they want to do it, but not necessary.

Are all these people who started at 12 and 13U in the DC area? I feel like several people I know were shut out by waiting, their kids are good but the kids who have been on Travel since 8 or 9 are occupying all the spots.

I am the pp and yes, from DMV. There is a lot of movement between teams at 13u and up. Players move around all the time and organizations expand (or begin) at that age. If a 13u player new to travel can’t find a place to play, they weren’t looking very hard.

We are in MD and I definitely do not feel like we had tons of options for travel teams when we were looking at the 13u stage. More specifically we were looking for teams that 1. Had space, 2. Practice locations within a reasonable commute, and 3. Were the right level of competitiveness/amount of games and travel.

[Anonymous]

I honestly font know why people do the travel team. Seems like a waste of time. Enjoy your summer and let your kid enjoy it too!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love how anytime baseball comes up on an anonymous mommy board suddenly NOVA is home to 10 bazillion D1 recruits. My now sophomore in college son played travel with a close in outfit, pitched for his large, close in HS and literally not a single team mate of his went D1. I think 3 out of the ~ 40ish kids he played with from rec to travel to HS went to respectable D3 schools.

For our son, it was simply the love of the game. He knew he wasn't D1 and, honestly, having known D1 athletes from my own childhood, it wouldn't have been for him. It is your ENTIRE life.

So if your kid just wnats to play lots of ball, yeah, have at it. The money isn't an issue unless you're so broke 3k a year will break you.

And it's true about younger siblings. Don't make their life about their siblings life. I have regrets about the amount of time our daughter spent on the sidelines watching her brother instead of living her own life. We realized this and corrected course but I see many who don't.

Also learn to ignore the loudmouth older guy who comes into any talk about baseball. He is living through his very mediocre son.

Madison and Gainesville always send several to D1 each year, and there are plenty of NOVA kids playing for privates like SJC (last year's Gatorade player of the year was a SJC pitcher from Nova)

Also, you have three kids drafted in the 1st and 2nd round of the MLB in the last three years from NoVA (Eldridge, Triantos and Morabito).

Exactly. Three kids. In three years. From a metro area of 6.5 million.

Considering only like 20 HS kids in the entire country are drafted into the MLB each year in the first or second round...3 kids out of 60 is actually quite impressive.

However, the metro area is more than just NoVA...so now you would have to add Jackson Merrill from Severna Park, James Wood out of Olney, and some others.

[Anonymous]

NP. For everyone saying you should skip travel and enjoy your summer, don’t your kids do summer all stars through their regular rec little league? Ours has an A and B team for each age group, so most kids serious about baseball make one of the teams. That means we don’t play travel yet but our summers are plenty full of baseball already. I don’t know how we would fit in a whole other team on top of our already busy summer tournament schedule.

[Anonymous]

For those of you saying let your kids enjoy their summer, did it occur to you that some kids love to play and that’s what they want to do? Both of our boys wanted more baseball always. We started them in rec when they were coach pitch age, then went to a more select house team, then travel by 11u. It worked for our family, we had a lot of fun, and the boys are happily playing for their HS team and some of their best friends are guys they’ve played with for years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love how anytime baseball comes up on an anonymous mommy board suddenly NOVA is home to 10 bazillion D1 recruits. My now sophomore in college son played travel with a close in outfit, pitched for his large, close in HS and literally not a single team mate of his went D1. I think 3 out of the ~ 40ish kids he played with from rec to travel to HS went to respectable D3 schools.

For our son, it was simply the love of the game. He knew he wasn't D1 and, honestly, having known D1 athletes from my own childhood, it wouldn't have been for him. It is your ENTIRE life.

So if your kid just wnats to play lots of ball, yeah, have at it. The money isn't an issue unless you're so broke 3k a year will break you.

And it's true about younger siblings. Don't make their life about their siblings life. I have regrets about the amount of time our daughter spent on the sidelines watching her brother instead of living her own life. We realized this and corrected course but I see many who don't.

Also learn to ignore the loudmouth older guy who comes into any talk about baseball. He is living through his very mediocre son.

Madison and Gainesville always send several to D1 each year, and there are plenty of NOVA kids playing for privates like SJC (last year's Gatorade player of the year was a SJC pitcher from Nova)

Also, you have three kids drafted in the 1st and 2nd round of the MLB in the last three years from NoVA (Eldridge, Triantos and Morabito).

Exactly. Three kids. In three years. From a metro area of 6.5 million.

That's three kids drafted in the first or second round of the MLB draft--not three kids who went D1. Only 10% 0f NCAA baseball players get drafted at all, let alone in the first or second round.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to everyone who posted. We were on the fence and now we are off, firmly in the “no” camp. We will take the advice to cross-condition our son in as many sports as he shows interest, keep him playing and practicing, and revisit in a few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks to everyone who posted. We were on the fence and now we are off, firmly in the “no” camp. We will take the advice to cross-condition our son in as many sports as he shows interest, keep him playing and practicing, and revisit in a few years.

NP here by the way

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has to be all in.
You have to be all in.
Would he be joining for 9U in the fall?

It really depneds on the organization, but we have two kids in travel baseball. Fees are about $3000 a year plus $100 a week for training plus all the new gear and the bats are $300-$400. Travel is required usually once in the spring plus memorial day, 4th of July and probably at least 2 other tournaments. For my 11U we will have have probably 7-8 weekends this year that require a hotel and at least one parent to be with him. The hotels can range from 2-3 nights and are usually around $200 a night. We have one this summer that's $500 a night for 3 nights and another that's $400 a night for 2 nights. It really adds up and is a lot if you have other kids. We usually would bring our whole family, but some families can't or don't want to do that. The younger siblings usually don't love sitting out for 5 hours in 95 degree heat watching baseball.
You cannot do sleepaway camp until August and it limits when you can go on family vacations.
You cannot miss tournaments. If you are not on board with this, do not sign up.

This is one of the most concise and accurate assessments of travel sports I’ve ever read. They real do drain you of everything: money, time, vacations.

I’m the mom of two boys, the first did travel soccer and it nearly broke our family due to time commitments. The second wants nothing to do with travel after being dragged along to tons of soccer events, games, tournaments.

+1 on how these travel leagues demand all of your free time. I get that some kids “love” the game, but kids need to learn that there’s more to life than baseball, soccer, etc…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP. For everyone saying you should skip travel and enjoy your summer, don’t your kids do summer all stars through their regular rec little league? Ours has an A and B team for each age group, so most kids serious about baseball make one of the teams. That means we don’t play travel yet but our summers are plenty full of baseball already. I don’t know how we would fit in a whole other team on top of our already busy summer tournament schedule.

Our LL All Star team is 12 kids out of…100ish? I think there were 9 teams this year in our division. Those 12 kids got to play for 2 more weeks, the tournament is over before June ends. It’s not an all summer thing.

[Anonymous]

Yes there is more to life than baseball or soccer (or whatever travel sport you fill in the blank with), but for those kids who love playing and love their team, it can be a tremendous experience. One DS loves his sport, his team, and is passionate about it. He would be miserable playing rec with kids who didn’t have the same interest/drive/skill. Other DS wants nothing to do with travel sports and has other interests. Both are fine and we figure out a way to make it work for our family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I honestly font know why people do the travel team. Seems like a waste of time. Enjoy your summer and let your kid enjoy it too!

Because that’s where their friends are. All of my kids’ friends play sports all summer. They aren’t hanging out at the pool and riding bikes around the neighborhood. It’s not like that anymore. My kid did 7 hours of baseball camp then 3 hours of practice. Hopefully 5 games over the next 5 days.