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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sorry the coach lied.  Many coaches are really terrible at this age - any coach who thinks winning is important at age 11 (select team or not) has a screw loose and is getting some sort of weird validation from being a winning coach instead of developing athletes and setting a good example for kids.

My only advice is to find a more casual, local-only travel team that’s not trying to be “competitive” (I take it that’s what you were trying to do, but don’t give up because of one crappy coach!). We have always sought out teams like this for our son, and I think it has only helped his development as a player, teammate, and quite frankly as a person[b].  He is in high school now and nobody knows or cares who was on the “elite” team three or four years ago.[/b]

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Very true. Any parent of a high school baseball player could tell some stories and give examples….performance at the younger ages has little correlation to performance later on at the high school level +. Many of the youth “stars” never even make the HS baseball team, and many youth “weak players” do. I’ve seen this over and over again. Lots of surprises. [/quote]

It's called puberty.

You don't know how a kid will develop until they actually do.[/quote]

Although...it is exceedingly rare that a professional athlete didn't dominate at every age.

You will hear of them form time-to-time...a player like Jackson Merrill who barely made the JV team as a HS freshmen, but then went on to be a first MLB pick after his senior year in HS.

95% are players like Messi (trained at FC Barcelona starting at 5), or Freddie Freeman or Bryce Harper or again nearly all pro athletes that were dominant players at 5, 10, 15, etc.[/quote]

The actual point is the average Little League superstar is not going to grow up to be another Bryce Harper or Freddie Freeman.  A lot of these kids won’t even be on their HS teams, meanwhile coaches are ruining the game for all of the other average kids who just want to play.

Harper and Freeman would have been just fine regardless of whether or not their less talented teammates actually got to play regularly when they were kids.[/quote]

I don’t what to say.  Our HS team has two LLs that feed into it and the starting 8 were all on their 12u LL All Star teams from both of those leagues…with the five starting pitchers also 12u All stars in LL.

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You are missing the point.  It’s also, quite frankly, incredibly weird that you know the Little League history of all the kids in your High School.  (I assume there are NO former Little League all-stars who DIDN’T make the team, right?)  Some of you REALLY need to get a life.[/quote]

DP here.  If you coached little league, you know all the all stars in your league for the year ahead and the year behind your kid.  That's not weird at all.

What I find weird is that the varsity team is entirely little league all stars.  Like I said, about half the kids on our varsity team (we also have 2 little leagues feed into our high school) were not all stars on the little league team and probably not on any of the younger teams either.

Most all stars definitely do not make make it onto the team.[/quote]

I have two high school aged sons who play/played  (and are two years apart) and my DH coached LL a couple of seasons- we know or know of most of the baseball kids around my sons’ ages. I’d say nearly all kids who make varsity showed some potential at age 12 but they didn’t necessarily make the all star teams. A lot of kids might be super athletic, have a great arm, super fast or whatever- and be noticed for that but not make the all stars teams at age 12 for various reasons. Often they just aren’t as polished, or just aren’t particularly focused on baseball at that age.

Nearly all kids who eventually make varsity were in the above group one way or another, but the reverse is definitely not true. 80%+ of the little league all stars never make varsity for various reasons. There aren’t enough spots.

The x factor in terms of who does make varsity (of those who want to do so- many kids drop baseball on their own before then) is puberty/size/athleticism etc which you can’t really tell at 12. A lot of good youth players just don’t grow much or end up having the physical attributes (speed strength etc) needed. In the meantime a lot of other kids (maybe the tall awkward kid with a great arm or the extremely athletic kid who wasn’t super into baseball at 12) pass them by. 
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