Travel Sports

[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.

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

Also ask how many jerseys the team will use. 1 jersey: consider the team based on the factors above. 2 jerseys: proceed with caution. 3 jerseys: run away, you’ve found a money grab program.

[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.

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

Also ask how many jerseys the team will use. 1 jersey: consider the team based on the factors above. 2 jerseys: proceed with caution. 3 jerseys: run away, you’ve found a money grab program.

The worst is 1 jersey, but a page long list of other items that must be purchased

[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.

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

Also ask how many jerseys the team will use. 1 jersey: consider the team based on the factors above. 2 jerseys: proceed with caution. 3 jerseys: run away, you’ve found a money grab program.

I’m looking at you, Stars, with your infinite number of jerseys and pants.

I would add, if the coaches show up in uniform as well- avoid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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

Also ask how many jerseys the team will use. 1 jersey: consider the team based on the factors above. 2 jerseys: proceed with caution. 3 jerseys: run away, you’ve found a money grab program.

[b]I’m looking at you, Stars, with your infinite number of jerseys and pants.

I would add, if the coaches show up in uniform as well- avoid.

Yes! I was just about to post that we have 4…nice for long tournaments, but if the pants don’t fit, you can’t get a new pair for the sets that have matching pants until the team store opens.

[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.

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

Also ask how many jerseys the team will use. 1 jersey: consider the team based on the factors above. 2 jerseys: proceed with caution. 3 jerseys: run away, you’ve found a money grab program.

Yeah, 1 jersey? You really want to be doing a load of laundry on Saturday night and hanging it to dry and hoping it dries before your sunday 8:00 AM game?

Or how about if you got a long tournament, over the course of 3-4 days? those extra jerseys and pants means you're doing laundry 1 time instead of every night at the hotel. Usually waiting for a machine to open.

The best way to do it is to have casual t-shirt style jerseys for the fall, then 2 nicer jerseys for the spring. You can make that work for tournaments without too much laundy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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

Also ask how many jerseys the team will use. 1 jersey: consider the team based on the factors above. 2 jerseys: proceed with caution. 3 jerseys: run away, you’ve found a money grab program.

Yeah, 1 jersey? You really want to be doing a load of laundry on Saturday night and hanging it to dry and hoping it dries before your sunday 8:00 AM game?

Or how about if you got a long tournament, over the course of 3-4 days? those extra jerseys and pants means you're doing laundry 1 time instead of every night at the hotel. Usually waiting for a machine to open.

The best way to do it is to have casual t-shirt style jerseys for the fall, then 2 nicer jerseys for the spring. You can make that work for tournaments without too much laundy

“Long tournaments” and hotels. Two more warning signs that it’s a money grab.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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

Also ask how many jerseys the team will use. 1 jersey: consider the team based on the factors above. 2 jerseys: proceed with caution. 3 jerseys: run away, you’ve found a money grab program.

Yeah, 1 jersey? You really want to be doing a load of laundry on Saturday night and hanging it to dry and hoping it dries before your sunday 8:00 AM game?

Or how about if you got a long tournament, over the course of 3-4 days? those extra jerseys and pants means you're doing laundry 1 time instead of every night at the hotel. Usually waiting for a machine to open.

The best way to do it is to have casual t-shirt style jerseys for the fall, then 2 nicer jerseys for the spring. You can make that work for tournaments without too much laundy

“Long tournaments” and hotels. Two more warning signs that it’s a money grab.

Yes, bc paying for 3 nights to a Holiday Inn is a money grab for the team? Who is exactly grabbing the money in this scenario?

The tournament directors? Maybe. That would be fair. But not the team.

The hotels? Sure. Sometimes they even jack the prices for tournament weekends. But not the team.

The uniform providers? Sure. But they are a for-profit business; of course they are trying to make money. But not the team.

You can object to the price for the teams that elect to participate in those far-off tournaments, but the team isn't necessarily profiting off that. In fact, many teams will provide families a with a cost breakdown of where the money goes and you can see that its all accounted for.

The real "money-grabs" are when the coaches offer private/separate 1:1 training and expect each player to sign up, and THAT money goes directly into their pockets.

But traveling to a 4-5 day tournament doesn't mean a team is just out for the money. In fact, that's what makes it a "travel" team. You want to play the best teams from areas where you don't normally play.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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

Also ask how many jerseys the team will use. 1 jersey: consider the team based on the factors above. 2 jerseys: proceed with caution. 3 jerseys: run away, you’ve found a money grab program.

Yeah, 1 jersey? You really want to be doing a load of laundry on Saturday night and hanging it to dry and hoping it dries before your sunday 8:00 AM game?

Or how about if you got a long tournament, over the course of 3-4 days? those extra jerseys and pants means you're doing laundry 1 time instead of every night at the hotel. Usually waiting for a machine to open.

The best way to do it is to have casual t-shirt style jerseys for the fall, then 2 nicer jerseys for the spring. You can make that work for tournaments without too much laundy

“Long tournaments” and hotels. Two more warning signs that it’s a money grab.

Yes, bc paying for 3 nights to a Holiday Inn is a money grab for the team? Who is exactly grabbing the money in this scenario?

The tournament directors? Maybe. That would be fair. But not the team.

The hotels? Sure. Sometimes they even jack the prices for tournament weekends. But not the team.

The uniform providers? Sure. But they are a for-profit business; of course they are trying to make money. But not the team.

You can object to the price for the teams that elect to participate in those far-off tournaments, but the team isn't necessarily profiting off that. In fact, many teams will provide families a with a cost breakdown of where the money goes and you can see that its all accounted for.

The real "money-grabs" are when the coaches offer private/separate 1:1 training and expect each player to sign up, and THAT money goes directly into their pockets.

But traveling to a 4-5 day tournament doesn't mean a team is just out for the money. In fact, that's what makes it a "travel" team. You want to play the best teams from areas where you don't normally play.

I agree with a bunch of this, but no 10u or 11u or even 12u team has to do multi-day tournaments requiring hotel stays. Especially in the DMV with the opening of Patriot Park, many popular tournaments now take place here and plenty of good teams travel to the DMV vs. Ruther Glen or Richmond.

If any team is expecting a player to hire the team coaches for private instruction, that is a red flag. However, good teams will know good private instructors and encourage you to avail of that.

At older ages, the best teams play in the tournaments that college coaches actually attend which 99% intersect with the best travel teams from across the country (though, there are East Coast and West Coast equivalent tournaments). There are fewer and fewer of those because college coaches are spending as much if not more time convincing other college players to transfer vs. recruiting HS kids.

[Anonymous]

Look, I’ve been through this, twice. Now with a son as HS starter in the strongest baseball conference in the DMV. I can report unequivocally that from a development standpoint there is no reason an 11U should be traveling out of town for weekend tournaments. There is more than enough quality competition within a 10 mile radius of where we all live. Now, are these tournaments fun? Of course they are. We have incredible memories from those years. But they are a splurge and completely unnecessary. They will not move the needle on your child’s development. Save these trips for the high school years when they are trying to get seen by different colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look, I’ve been through this, twice. Now with a son as HS starter in the strongest baseball conference in the DMV. I can report unequivocally that from a development standpoint there is no reason an 11U should be traveling out of town for weekend tournaments. There is more than enough quality competition within a 10 mile radius of where we all live. Now, are these tournaments fun? Of course they are. We have incredible memories from those years. But they are a splurge and completely unnecessary. They will not move the needle on your child’s development. Save these trips for the high school years when they are trying to get seen by different colleges.

Totally agree. It's 100% a choice.

Though the travel at the 12U age is definitely the most fun and an experience those kids will remember for ever.

I'm not objecting to anyone saying its unnecessary. I agree. Kids can develop just find and play local tournaments in VA, MD, and PA. Especially those PA teams; they always seem to be the toughest.

But I am objecting to the PP that says any team that travels to Ripken or Cooperstown is doing it because its a money-grab for the team; it 100% is not. That poster does. not. know. what they are they are talking about.

I will add though, since we're talking about travel sports in general, its different for softball, especially at the 10u or 12u level. You do have to go to nationals or some of the larger tournaments to face the best competition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look, I’ve been through this, twice. Now with a son as HS starter in the strongest baseball conference in the DMV. I can report unequivocally that from a development standpoint there is no reason an 11U should be traveling out of town for weekend tournaments. There is more than enough quality competition within a 10 mile radius of where we all live. Now, are these tournaments fun? Of course they are. We have incredible memories from those years. But they are a splurge and completely unnecessary. They will not move the needle on your child’s development. Save these trips for the high school years when they are trying to get seen by different colleges.

Totally agree. It's 100% a choice.

Though the travel at the 12U age is definitely the most fun and an experience those kids will remember for ever.

I'm not objecting to anyone saying its unnecessary. I agree. Kids can develop just find and play local tournaments in VA, MD, and PA. Especially those PA teams; they always seem to be the toughest.

But I am objecting to the PP that says any team that travels to Ripken or Cooperstown is doing it because its a money-grab for the team; it 100% is not. That poster does. not. know. what they are they are talking about.

I will add though, since we're talking about travel sports in general, its different for softball, especially at the 10u or 12u level. You do have to go to nationals or some of the larger tournaments to face the best competition.

Genuine question as a softball parent of a younger kid: can a kid not on the ~1 national level softball teams I can think of the area for 10U or 12U catch up? It seems like they must be able to.

The top-tier softball teams around here, and to your point there really aren't many of them seems so insane for elementary schoolers. Yes I know some kids know at a young age they really want it, and that's great, but other kids grow into that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look, I’ve been through this, twice. Now with a son as HS starter in the strongest baseball conference in the DMV. I can report unequivocally that from a development standpoint there is no reason an 11U should be traveling out of town for weekend tournaments. There is more than enough quality competition within a 10 mile radius of where we all live. Now, are these tournaments fun? Of course they are. We have incredible memories from those years. But they are a splurge and completely unnecessary. They will not move the needle on your child’s development. Save these trips for the high school years when they are trying to get seen by different colleges.

You mean the IAC, right .

Would be fun if they had a tournament for ultimate DMV bragging rights..top 2 IAC, top 2 WCAC, NoVA District/Regional champs, Top 2 from the league that includes Spaulding, etc.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand the money grab comments. We are a softball family, not baseball, but both my girls' teams do/have a lot of things cited as money grabs (lots of uniform choices, longer tourneys, hotel stays, etc.). The teams/orgs don't make any money on any of that. Both girls play for non-profit organizations and on both teams the financials are all available for us to see at any time. We see everything that comes and goes out. Maybe it is totally different in baseball but I think some people just make crap like that up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look, I’ve been through this, twice. Now with a son as HS starter in the strongest baseball conference in the DMV. I can report unequivocally that from a development standpoint there is no reason an 11U should be traveling out of town for weekend tournaments. There is more than enough quality competition within a 10 mile radius of where we all live. Now, are these tournaments fun? Of course they are. We have incredible memories from those years. But they are a splurge and completely unnecessary. They will not move the needle on your child’s development. Save these trips for the high school years when they are trying to get seen by different colleges.

You mean the IAC, right .

Would be fun if they had a tournament for ultimate DMV bragging rights..top 2 IAC, top 2 WCAC, NoVA District/Regional champs, Top 2 from the league that includes Spaulding, etc.

That would be an amazing tournament that would almost certainly be won by a WCAC team. And I’ve never met a WCAC player who’d been to a goofy tournament like Cooperstown.

https://www.prepbaseballreport.com/national-HS-program-rankings

[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).

PP here. Sorry. Was busy with baseball.

I have a really hard time believing this to be true considering the showcase coaches I have talked to said that the number one thing the kids should care about is academics at this point. And I will also point out- there are a lot of D1 colleges and just because it is D1 doesn’t mean it’s a good school. And just because they get recruited for a D1 college does not mean they will get a full ride. It’s why the broken leg rule is so important.

However- if you are in a nationally ranked travel team and your kid is the next Shohei Ohtani- sure. That would be the exception. I could see a 2.00 GPA being ok. Or maybe football recruitment being ok with this.

Remember- the showcase travel programs are all businesses. And they make their money by attracting people with money to pay for their fees. So when you have kids going to lower tier D1 schools, UMC/wealthy parents are looking at those college commits and going: nope.

But this is also why, I argue that “C” must be the important factor in spending this kind of money. Because if they really love the sport, they will work hard to get good grades, be competitive academically, and willing to sacrifice other things to get private coaching and do more travel.

I will also argue one other thing: if you find that the lifestyle is effecting you/your family in a negative manner- anxiety to win at all costs, tantrums when they don’t do well, stress blindness or paralysis or illness, depression or rage (parent or kid) from losing- you need to ease off and try new things. Your mental health is important too.