Baseball??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As far I know, there is still enough in the area school pipelines for JV and Varsity teams. My recent exposure to that pipeline is a few years old but even then the feeder system from travel teams and little leagues was feeling the competition from lacrosse. The game and the skills aren't easy to pick up on the fly so I think for baseball that feeder system is really important. Despite it's reputation among the masses, to play baseball well you have to be a good athlete. It's a lot easier to pick up a lacrosse stick and hide in a running crowd as a beginner, We have the Nats though to inspire the little kids!

All good points. I played lacrosse myself but love baseball as a fan and would be very sad to see it die out. There are kids for whom baseball is a great fit athletically for whom lacrosse is not, and vice versa. It's also good to get those early throwing and catching and hitting skills to make the splash in rec league softball. I hope both sports will thrive.

My DC goes to a school where lacrosse is very big, but the middle school had many more boys going out for baseball than lacrosse last year. I have my theories about why that was true, but it was fascinating, and it will be interesting to see if it was just an anomaly or whether it will carry through to the upper school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Baseball is a tough sport. Lot's of life lessons. My son has remarked that those have been valuable skills as he took on new challenges in his life.
Schools are having a harder time fielding teams as the popularity of lacrosse has grown. I hope baseball remains viable in youth sports.

Interesting; I'm not aware of any of the local private schools that lack a varsity and a JV with good numbers.

Neither Bullis nor Episcopal has fielded an IAC JV baseball team for the last three years. I suspect other smaller schools also have had a lack of participation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of football and lacrosse talk on here, but what about baseball? Anyone have a kid playing baseball? Which high schools are the most competitive? Is it hard to make the teams? Harder or easier to excel at compared w/ lacrosse?

I agree with previous posters who said it's harder to be good at baseball than lacrosse if starting older, like in middle school. It may be more difficult to make a high school baseball team without playing competitive ball/"travel ball" in the years leading up to high school. Learning the game and fine-tuning the skills for each sport takes time, but baseball in particular builds upon each preceding year. You start off with tee ball or coach pitch, then machine pitch, then stealing bases, player pitch, then the distance between the bases increases and the field gets larger.