Travel Baseball - What are we getting ourselves into?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

My kid is playing baseball in college…yet was happy playing other sports and we never did Summer travel until sophomore year in HS.

Everyone played LL and the teams were mostly drafted fairly and somehow he and others were perfectly fine playing with plenty of less skilled players.

If your kid is “miserable” in this situation that’s really not a healthy thing. My kid remembers far more LL moments (and HS team too) than any travel game or tournament against some random team.

[Anonymous]

My DS is a rising senior who is currently in the recruiting process as a pitcher, looking at academic D3 schools. He did not play on a travel team until last summer (17u), and I'm glad we did not give in to pressure to start him much earlier than that. A few reasons:

• He was able to enjoy sleepaway camp until he was 15 and, as much as he loves baseball, I don't think he would trade that experience for the world. He was also able to enjoy spending extended time at the end of the summer with friends and family at our vacation home.

• Playing on rec teams in the summer gave him a chance to improve his pitching in a more casual setting and allowed him to get experience playing other positions (he only pitches for his travel team). He fills in for left field and third base on his HS team in games when he's not pitching.

• Travel ball can be a drain on family time. While it does foster a decent amount of forced togetherness, spending summer weekends on hot fields in far-flung places gets old fast. If your vacation budget isn't unlimited, you might resent spending it on three-night stays in Alpharetta, GA or Cortland, NY.

If your ultimate goal is for your child to eventually play in college, I don't know that starting travel ball before he is at least in his teens will make a difference. We're in NYC and maybe things are different here, but I'm fairly confident that DS's college recruiting chances would have been the same regardless of when he jumped on the travel bandwagon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS is a rising senior who is currently in the recruiting process as a pitcher, looking at academic D3 schools. He did not play on a travel team until last summer (17u), and I'm glad we did not give in to pressure to start him much earlier than that. A few reasons:

• He was able to enjoy sleepaway camp until he was 15 and, as much as he loves baseball, I don't think he would trade that experience for the world. He was also able to enjoy spending extended time at the end of the summer with friends and family at our vacation home.

• Playing on rec teams in the summer gave him a chance to improve his pitching in a more casual setting and allowed him to get experience playing other positions (he only pitches for his travel team). He fills in for left field and third base on his HS team in games when he's not pitching.

• Travel ball can be a drain on family time. While it does foster a decent amount of forced togetherness, spending summer weekends on hot fields in far-flung places gets old fast. If your vacation budget isn't unlimited, you might resent spending it on three-night stays in Alpharetta, GA or Cortland, NY.

If your ultimate goal is for your child to eventually play in college, I don't know that starting travel ball before he is at least in his teens will make a difference. We're in NYC and maybe things are different here, but I'm fairly confident that DS's college recruiting chances would have been the same regardless of when he jumped on the travel bandwagon.

What's in Cortland? Very familiar with East Cob, Lakepoint, Hoover and Prospect Select in Boston.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS is a rising senior who is currently in the recruiting process as a pitcher, looking at academic D3 schools. He did not play on a travel team until last summer (17u), and I'm glad we did not give in to pressure to start him much earlier than that. A few reasons:

• He was able to enjoy sleepaway camp until he was 15 and, as much as he loves baseball, I don't think he would trade that experience for the world. He was also able to enjoy spending extended time at the end of the summer with friends and family at our vacation home.

• Playing on rec teams in the summer gave him a chance to improve his pitching in a more casual setting and allowed him to get experience playing other positions (he only pitches for his travel team). He fills in for left field and third base on his HS team in games when he's not pitching.

• Travel ball can be a drain on family time. While it does foster a decent amount of forced togetherness, spending summer weekends on hot fields in far-flung places gets old fast. If your vacation budget isn't unlimited, you might resent spending it on three-night stays in Alpharetta, GA or Cortland, NY.

If your ultimate goal is for your child to eventually play in college, I don't know that starting travel ball before he is at least in his teens will make a difference. We're in NYC and maybe things are different here, but I'm fairly confident that DS's college recruiting chances would have been the same regardless of when he jumped on the travel bandwagon.

What's in Cortland? Very familiar with East Cob, Lakepoint, Hoover and Prospect Select in Boston.

This was last summer, and I couldn't tell you the name of any of these tournaments. If I recall, they were mostly teams from across NY state, so maybe it was a smaller tournament? In any event, we were able to squeeze in tours of Hamilton, Colgate, and Cornell along the journey, so we did get more out of the trip than just baseball.