Rec Ball/ Travel Ball

[kbailey45us]

Baseball seems to be more strict on the travel players in rec ball so this is just a question of curiosity. Is it normal for a travel team to form an Allstar team, because their kids played rec ball, and go out and dominate? Just seems a little unfair and may even cause a kid to say screw this because they can't compete? Basically the travel team we played for split up to form 2 rec teams locally. The Allstar team is all of them along with other travel players.

 

[YOCOACH]

In the SB world, many All-Star teams move onto the TB scene. For the most part, they will compete at what many would consider the "C" level. Whether they dominate or not at that level will depend, in general, on the size of the area they recruit from and the tournaments they play in. Personally, I've never seen a "C" level team compete, and by compete I mean win 1/2 of all games they play let alone dominate at the "B" level. Most get crushed without further development of the players. At the "A" level, forget it and don't even think about trying to play it right out of the gate. It's a learning curve and quite honestly, a journey in and of itself. It's a process with no shortcuts. The coaches need to learn how to develop the players to play at the aforementioned levels or face the very real possibility of the team folding. The coaches will also need to prepare the families for the future struggles and sell them on the process.

 

[kbailey45us]

In the SB world, many All-Star teams move onto the TB scene. For the most part, they will compete at what many would consider the "C" level. Whether they dominate or not at that level will depend, in general, on the size of the area they recruit from and the tournaments they play in. Personally, I've never seen a "C" level team compete, and by compete I mean win 1/2 of all games they play let alone dominate at the "B" level. Most get crushed without further development of the players. At the "A" level, forget it and don't even think about trying to play it right out of the gate. It's a learning curve and quite honestly, a journey in and of itself. It's a process with no shortcuts. The coaches need to learn how to develop the players to play at the aforementioned levels or face the very real possibility of the team folding. The coaches will also need to prepare the families for the future struggles and sell them on the process.

No this was a travel ball team that split to form 2 rec teams during the regular season. The all star team is all the travel girls with a couple from other travel teams. They are literally obliterating other teams. Is thay normal? We literally left the team we were on because rec ball was more important. This isn't something where I'm gonna call people and complain or anything I am literally just curious. To each their own. My daughter would have felt bad for doing this.

 

[kbailey45us]

In the SB world, many All-Star teams move onto the TB scene. For the most part, they will compete at what many would consider the "C" level. Whether they dominate or not at that level will depend, in general, on the size of the area they recruit from and the tournaments they play in. Personally, I've never seen a "C" level team compete, and by compete I mean win 1/2 of all games they play let alone dominate at the "B" level. Most get crushed without further development of the players. At the "A" level, forget it and don't even think about trying to play it right out of the gate. It's a learning curve and quite honestly, a journey in and of itself. It's a process with no shortcuts. The coaches need to learn how to develop the players to play at the aforementioned levels or face the very real possibility of the team folding. The coaches will also need to prepare the families for the future struggles and sell them on the process.

Gonna edit my post to reflect what I meant.

 

[YOCOACH]

Gonna edit my post to reflect what I meant.

I see. Around my area, there are several large rec leagues that have, what we call internediate teams. These teams will play 4-5 B/C tournaments all within a 20 monute drive. The players also play rec ball. The coaches of these teams used to try and keep them together under the guise of 'needing to practice as a team and prepare for tournaments.' As you surmised, they went out and trounced the other teams in the rec league, so much so, that participation rate for the various leagues dropped precipitously. Many families saw these teams, their coaches and the league BOD as playing politics and playing favorites. So they left and went to one of the smaller leagues that didn't have such teams. It got to the point where the larger rec leagues had to do something about it. They responded in 2 ways. One way was the girls on those internediate teams wanted to participate in rec ball, they would be spread evenly throughout all of the available rec teams or the girls from those teams were forced to enter the draft pool and drafted. The second was a majority of those leagues went to a yearly draft. At the end of each year, all teams are disbanded. The following year, all players enter the draft pool and new teams are formed. This limited the ability of coaches to stack a team. As a result, most of those coaches quit the rec leagues and went strictly to TB. Most of those same coaches' (now) TB teams ended up disbanding because they tried to prevent their players from playing rec ball by mandating it. They claimed that the rec leagues had poor coaching. Kind of Ironic considering they were coaching for the rec league as little as the previous year and then some years before that.

 

[_MIA_]

The 12U LLWS softball champs last year consisted of all TB players from a few different TB teams (mostly one team) They never actually played any league games because I don't think there is actually a league in that area..they just formed a team via "tryouts".

 

[gdc03120]

@pattar - Is that even legal in LLWS for softball? I assumed they all had to be residents of the same district/region - same situation that that team from Chicago got dinged for a while back.

I'll throw my $0.02 in - I'm the organizer/overseer of a 16U rec-league in upstate NY. We are mainly set up as a 1-month league for the girls interested to stay active over the summer from the end of June to the end of July (before fall sports start back up). When I started in 2014, we had 6 teams, then 8, 10, 11, 8, 8, then covid hit, last year 4, and this year 5. One thing we have noticed though - the increase in TB teams in this area has killed our participation rates dramatically. Girls don't think they can balance our league (M-TH) with TB tournaments (weekends, etc), and therefore the selection of girls left over is hard to come by. Many want to work (can't fault them), or others are torn between two lovers (multiple sports doing the same thing, work, family, etc). We do this NOT just to pad our resumes or anything, but because we know if we can help the lesser girls to improve, it helps improve the game overall. I'm also a softball umpire in this area, and the disparity in talent between the better schools and the weaker schools is legit night and day. Two "better" schools could play to a 3-1 final. A mix of each could be 29-1 (an actual score I had for a JV contest this year). But the recruiting process is challenging when the better girls go the TB route and the remaining girls are conflicted.

 

[_MIA_]

@pattar - Is that even legal in LLWS for softball? I assumed they all had to be residents of the same district/region - same situation that that team from Chicago got dinged for a while back.

I think there is only one LL in OK so I believe it was legal by the letter of the law, if not in spirit.

 

[Orange Socks]

Our Rec ball league requires all players to enter the draft and are fair game unless they are tied to a coach. DD played Summer All stars with a core group of girls for 5 summers. We did not have a fall league since the fields are converted to soccer fields. Most played other sports until the spring. You can tell which girls played All stars the previous summer.

No for the soccer part of our Assoc. The last season I coached they allowed a private school to bring in their already formed teams, which was a disaster for the other teams who had to go through the draft. Why was it unfair? These teams were divided by grade. All 3rd graders and all 4th graders. They didn't evenly divide their teams which they were supposed to do. They also practiced every day at school. It was looked like they were playing foosball. Pass pass Wham! The coaches would show up with lawn chairs and clip boards and would sit quietly. Looking back, I could have learned from that. Meanwhile, all of the other coaches were running up down the sideline yelling instructions at the players. I quit coaching soccer that year and found a fall ball softball league nearby.

 

[Vertigo]

@pattar - Is that even legal in LLWS for softball? I assumed they all had to be residents of the same district/region - same situation that that team from Chicago got dinged for a while back.

If there isn’t a LL team within the area one lives you can join one in another area. However, it does have to be approved by the District Administrator.

Also, LL requires all players to play in a certain amount of games in order to be eligible to play on the All-Star teams. However, I honestly don’t know how they would check to be sure this even occurred. When I coached a LL All-Star team and also was the site TD at our field for some of the District games, this info was never asked to be validated. I don’t believe it was validated at the District All-Star Coaches’ meeting, either. The only thing I recall being verified was that each player resided within our boundaries, attended a school in our boundaries or had a waiver signed by the DA if they did not. Also birth certs were checked.