I don't know what this issue is, but when I was in High School it was pretty rare when the best baseball or softball players didn't come out for the teams. You might have a couple who chose to do track to help with another sport, but we always had 30-40 kids tryout of for JV and for Varsity. DD is going to go to a school with over 1800 kids and I've heard it's hard to find kids to play.
I honestly think a lot of it has to do with sport specialization, as well as kids having jobs. Taking the latter out of the equation, 10-20 years ago you saw many more multi-sport athletes. These athletes could have success playing volleyball, basketball, and then softball because their athleticism could carry them to a good level of success. With specialization and travel/club sports, you have to be a pretty darn good player to make a softball roster at most high schools with 1,800 kids. I think that's a big factor.
Nobody does anything for fun anymore and some on this site think that is a good thing. I played golf, basketball and baseball formally and darn near every other sport you could imagine on the streets or in backyards. Now you have to excel at everything to make mommy and daddy happy or specialize in a sport or get black balled by schools and/or tb teams etc. Essentially there is no sense in doing anything if it doesn't have a purpose.
Sport specialization has a lot to do with it as well as travel sports in search of that elusive scholarship. I look at the "top" organizations in my area rosters to see what schools the signed players are going to and think to myself they could have probably walked on received what they did in scholarship funds.
Nobody does anything for fun anymore and some on this site think that is a good thing. I played golf, basketball and baseball formally and darn near every other sport you could imagine on the streets or in backyards. Now you have to excel at everything to make mommy and daddy happy or specialize in a sport or get black balled by schools and/or tb teams etc. Essentially there is no sense in doing anything if it doesn't have a purpose.
I still think colleges look at multi-sport athletes. DD attended a UCLA softball camp and at orientation Coach Inouye-Perez stated that she is looking for well-rounded athletes and she went around the room and asked the 25 camp instructors (who were all current or former college softball players) how many sports did they play in high school). 90% of the players played at least two sports and several played 3 or more sports.