Baseball: KOA’s BABL or B-CC’s Select?

[Anonymous]

My 11 yr. old is skilled enough for Travel but he is not ready to make the time commitment but is desirous of a higher leavel of play. I am looking in to KOA and B-CC. Does you son have direct experience with KOA or B-CC and is there a major difference between the two? KOA’s try outs are Monday and we will do them but is B-CC worth looking jnto also???

[Anonymous]

KOA- "professional" coaches
BCC Select: Parent coaches.

The main question is if you want the favoratism to be done by a fellow parent on the team or a "professional" coach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:KOA- "professional" coaches
BCC Select: Parent coaches.

The main question is if you want the favoratism to be done by a fellow parent on the team or a "professional" coach.

DP - my kid is a little older but we are looking to switch teams. If not Koa or BCC, do you have other recommendations for a kid who wants to play higher level baseball but doesn’t want the madness of the highest-level tournament winning type teams? What teams/programs would you put on your list (I think we are in the same general area as OP. We’d like a team in MoCo or Howard County.

[Anonymous]

"KOA- "professional" coaches
BCC Select: Parent coaches.

The main question is if you want the favoratism to be done by a fellow parent on the team or a "professional" coach."

There is favoritism at KOA based on how much money you spend sending your kid to their clinics and classes. From what we saw, this is how they pick their select/travel teams.

[Anonymous]

There’s favoritism in every sport and every league at all levels. All teams and leagues and orgs have their own biases. It is arguably worse with KOA and MCLL then BCC and RBBA in my estimation but any really skilled player can get a fair shake in all of the leagues. It is the edge-case player who gets leapfrogged when favoritism is a factor.

[Anonymous]

We’ve done both leagues and here is my take. The players in both leagues are similar. For both, the quality of the coach assigned for your team can vary. For KOA, the “professional” coaches definitely know the game of baseball, but don’t necessarily understand young boys and how to work with them effectively. For BCC, the parent coaches have a much better idea how to work with young boys - based upon personal experience. BCC vets the parent coaches so they also have baseball skills and know the game to coach it effectively. After experience with both, we prefer BCC.

[Anonymous]

Tryout for both. And then after a year realize for that amount of money (KOA at least!) you can find a travel
team.

[Anonymous]

Any program is fully dependent on what coach you get. As an earlier poster stated some parent coaches are better at coaching kids than pro coaches. But some do not know how to coach the sport or run a practice or set a lineup. Some pros can be clueless about leading an 11U team also. I have seen my own kids either develop a passion for a sport because of a great coach or decide to quit because of a clueless coach and that is in numerous sports at relatively high levels. Baseball can be the hardest because a bad coach can really make practices tedious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tryout for both. And then after a year realize for that amount of money (KOA at least!) you can find a travel
team.

Isn’t Koa a travel club? I see them at tournaments my kid’s travel team plays in.

[Anonymous]

Koa has multiple levels including travel. BABL is the next level down.

[Anonymous]

We've done BCC Select for a number of years. We like the vibe (competitive, but friendly). All except for one year (out of about 7 or 8 years), we've had great coaches.

[Anonymous]

We did KOA for a number of years including BABL and travel. We had many friends do select. If we had to do it over again, We would have done BCC select and then a different travel. As several posters have noted, while you can get Dad favoritism as coaches, some of the unprofessionalism is far worse at KOA - not just favoritism but basic 101 and you pay a lot of money for it. KOA is a huge organization that funds a lot of administrative staff and overhead, you eventually see it’s about money not about kids. There are a few good coaches at KOA who are also good with kids, but most leave for other places if they are good. Our kids found the BABL practices tedious so it wasn’t even good coaching of skills.

For other poster not looking for crazy travel teams - look at Kidball, Win within if closer to DC. Stay away from rockville league - that is too many games per week and can hurt kids arms. A lot of small travel teams have popped up in last few years so there are more options but I’m not sure of all of them. NVBTL. (Local baseball league) has a listing.

[Anonymous]

As a coach myself and head of an organization I’d say choose the coach first. A bad coach can ruin the entire game/experience for a child in no time. This certainly would be at the forefront of my mind when making a decision.

[Anonymous]

How would people review BCC travel? My son is a good player. And what's important to me is that he improves but also has fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How would people review BCC travel? My son is a good player. And what's important to me is that he improves but also has fun.

My impression of BCC baseball is they are really struggling and have been for a couple of years. They were unable to field a 11u travel team last year and can barely get together 4 teams for select. I am sure pandemic is not helping.