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.
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.
Here is the disconnect...showcases like Headfirst and Showball are academic D3 and D1 programs. They care about grades and test scores, however, for the most part these are not Power 5 D1 baseball programs. They also won't send many players to the MLB.
Sure, you may see a Duke or Northwestern attend one of these, but for the most part they are recruiting their players by going to the top PG and PBR tournaments in FL and GA (and of course trying to get players through the transfer portal). Wake Forest, Arkansas, LSU, Alabama, etc. aren't going to Showball or Headfirst...even though Wake does have a high academic ranking, but it is a Top 5 ranked baseball team.
I am well aware that baseball doesn't give out much money. Very few players get full rides, and then you have 25% - 50% scholarships...but many (probably majority) are just getting acceptance and the opportunity to play.
Duke clearly doesn't care about the SAT scores or grades of their basketball players because they expect their top recruits to only play for 1 year and then go the NBA. Baseball has higher standards...but they also want Duke baseball players getting drafted to the MLB in high rounds as Junior or Seniors.
Yes, I agree that UMC parents aren't going to send their kid to Towson just to play D1 baseball (though, again, some might).
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