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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't get why so many parents are signing their youth kids up for travel. Are rec and local teams terrible from 2nd grade and on? Does every halfway decent kid have to join a travel team if they want to play? [/quote]

As a parent heavily involved in our rec league and with 3 kids playing rec, the answer is yes. When everyone good leaves for travel, it's hard on the kids who legitimately care and want to play who stay in rec for whatever reason. You find a unicorn team where the players are really working and the coaching is good, but so often it's something parents seem to view as extra babysitting. They aren't fun to sit on the sidelines with because they aren't even there, they don't help out with much (leading to burnout for the few volunteers who do step up), and they don't care if their kids don't care and take the whole team down with a bad attitude. Joy.[/quote]

This is true.

DD is "pretty good" at basketball.  But we keep her in rec because of other activities (band & theater).
[/quote]

This is exactly the child who should be in rec basketball.
But for a kid that wants to play at a higher level, who plays year round, who lives and breathes the sport with a passion - no offense, but she doesn’t want to play with your daughter.  She wants to play with other kids who feel the same about basketball.[/quote]

Totally agree.  But honestly, those kids are pretty rare.  Instead, the kids who are average, get pulled into the travel world.  And those kids would often be better served on rec.  "Travel" used to mean elite.  Now, it means whatever parent is willing to cut the check

And even though my daughter plays rec, she's probably better than 30-50% of the travel players we've seen.  That's not to say that she should be playing travel; its that those other girls should be playing rec.

Or, some sort of level in between.[/quote]

Rec is often a disaster and parents are willing to pay more to avoid it.[/quote]

Right, but its a chicken and egg / Catch-22 thing.

IMO, probably 25-35% of kids on travel don't have the skills to be there.

If those kids played rec, rec would be less of a disaster.    So they returned to rec, they'd get more playing time, have more fun, spend less money, travel less, and potentially even grow more as a player.

Essentially, rec would be less of a disaster, if "okay" kids didn't try to move up to travel.

BTW, my daughter, who I said is "pretty good" at basketball, is also on an B-level softball team.  So I see both sides of it.  She probably couldn't even do travel basketball bc of her softball committments.  But I see it that sport too.  You watch some C-level teams and think "half of these girls would be better served in rec", but the families won't do rec because the only ones left in rec and the true beginners.  [/quote]

Sorry but for us the parents ruined rec. It’s not the skills of the kids it’s the coaching and politics of the adults.[/quote]

Totally agree. Rec was fine until 10ish and then the adults (ahem…dads) all seemed to go completely crazy. Moved to travel with paid non parent coaches. Far less drama. [/quote]

I’m sure there’s no politics with travel 🙄 [/quote]

I’m not the PP, but as a parent with kids in both for many years, the politics of travel is nothing like the nastiness of the politics for rec. It doesn’t even compare. [/quote]

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