The worst tryout I've ever seen

[The Man In Blue]

Don't get me wrong, you can "travel ball" on a budget. Like @Chilixa describes, this was the limitation we put on our daughters for softball and volleyball. It is what I would call "day trip ball" with maybe one bigger trip each season. We scrapped and pinched to make that happen (all of my umpiring money went back into that for years, all of my hotel points from work went back into that, etc.).

While we can say that is "cheap" compared to the teams that travel the country (at Atlanta last week, I overheard a parent conversation in which one family's softball budget was $40,000 for the season and they went over), it is still a significant barrier to entry to many. No child or family should have to pay burdensome costs just to see if their child might like the game. This is where community ball should play a crucial role.

Even just the cost to get into playing the game prevents many talented athletes from ever discovering it. There is a reason soccer and basketball are as popular as they are around the globe.

The problem is that organizations like the ones who will accept any team who can write the check are killing off community programs. The perception is out there that a kid MUST be on an 8u travel team (something that should NOT even exist, IMO) immediately, begin skill specific coaching at 5 years old, and that playing on a community team means you are no good.

Even Little League has begun to abandon its core values in an effort to remain relevant in the high visibility area of television viewership.

This is the White Flight of the sport. The only ability that matters to move to a travel team is the ability to write a check. In the mean time, valuable once thriving communities wilt and die with the "undesirables" left behind with it.

 

[The Man In Blue]

If the top coach(es) of the rec league stick around to coach the all star teams then families will stick around, and the level of play in rec will be alright. If the league fails to accomodate the better coaches then they will leave and take 11 other talented players with them. In 10u that usually means all the pitching.

Our league has fundraisers to partially sponsor a trip for 2 10u all star softball teams (one of them to OKC to watch the WCWS and play a tournament there). Not sure how much the sponsorship actually is but it kept most of the talent in 10u rec long enough until they aged out and moved to travel in 12u.

With the competitive allure of travel ball always present, leagues absolutely need find ways to accomodate the talent and their parent coaches. Good pitchers who are taking lessons and practicing are subsidizing the experience for the rest of the girls in the league. Scare them away and they'll take their talents elsewhere and now the league has no pitching and the rec experience is terrible for everyone.

Yes and no. Most of the coaches I lost from our community program to travel ball were NOT the good coaches. They were the dumb coaches who developed the "MY team" (emphasis on MY, not team) mentality in their players (who they had picked from their neighborhood when the kids were little) and took their rec team to be a wrecked team. They were coaches whose ego would not allow their one or two decent players to go try out for somebody else's team, would not allow them to grow and develop, and instead took the rest of the kids along with them to subsidize their ego trip. Most of those kids quit the sport within a few years. Very few came back to the community program. Only one coach continued to coach after the second year.

As much as we like to keep quality coaches there, community ball isn't about coming to play for a good coach. I will agree that having a good coach will help keep kids there.

I like your league's approach. It was something I was working towards building in our program (we paid for a pitching camp, put together a few all-star teams to play in nearby travel tournaments, etc.), but the egos won out and I couldn't stomach it any longer. I spent so many years trying to figure how to compete with travel ball (while my own daughter was playing travel ball), that I realized too late the answer was not to compete, but instead to show a valuable co-existence and provide the pathways.

 

[ninthgirl]

I'm thankful travel softball exists so it's possible to have competitive softball. Competitive, driven players deserve not having to play with kids that have never played and are only there because their parents made them sign up for an extracurricular activity.

And kids that have never played and are only there because their parents made them sign up for an extracurricular activity deserve to not get dunked on by competitive, driven players.

I'm not sure any recreational softball situation can provide that. We are in a large metropolis but still don't have enough girls in recreational softball (even in 8u before those girls start to do travel) to do anything close to majors/minors/whatever like baseball has.

One of our nearby Little League softball programs was just in Regionals. We're a non-Little League program, but the area Little Leagues absolutely do majors and minors and they are no bigger than our non-LL program. The not-so-secret about all those LLs is that they have travel girls (and boys on the baseball side) who make up the talent and are basically there for the LLWS. For softball in our area the LLs have attached travel programs with an LL participation requirement. I tend to think this is a good thing, as it keeps the games in rec interesting. The non-LLs typically have either a rec participation requirement for their younger travel teams or a rec+ program for the competitive girls to get extra softball or even both. The ones that don't lose players to the ones that do.

And every LL player eventually gets pushed into higher levels just by age cut-offs.

 

[Coach_Dad1]

I’ll advocate for rec ball a little bit. We just paid $80 for the fall season, which guarantees us probably 12 games, plus a bunch of field/practice time. I volunteer as a coach.. obviously I’m not Mike Candrea, but I do care about the development of the girls in the league, and there are other coaches in the league who are knowledgeable in the game as well. I think (hope) you’d find that pretty much anywhere, but ultimately it’s up to the player to get what they want out of it..at least once they reach a certain age. There is a struggle getting 10+ to show up consistently, but like previously mentioned, many are involved in other extracurricular activities.

Still, as of a couple days ago, we had 3 girls signed up for 14u. I know there will be enough to have a team or 2 by the time the season starts, but that’s still a little crazy to me. There are sooo many travel teams in the area that really aren’t that much better than us.. they just play year round.

Still, at the end of the day, it’s $80. Sign your kid up for rec ball. At worst, you pull your kid out and lose 80 bucks. At best, you have a decent coach, get more game experience, lots of reps, and maybe they develop into a better leader/teammate.

 

[4Martini]

Where we live you can’t play rec if you are on a comp roster. We moved from rec at 14s because most of the pitchers moved. My daughter’s team had great coaching, was amazingly fun - but she wasn’t learning much watching their pitcher strike out three kids then she would most likely walk around the bases to win games. We figured if she wanted to play in highschool she had to know how to field balls. (I would say the competition dropped off from 12s to 14s rather than increasing- she played rec 14s as a 12 yo).

Where we live 10u comp is just taking off and 8u doesn’t exist- and we have always had great rec programs. We had no idea travel coach pitch was a thing til we met teams in our OKC hotel this summer.

It’s funny how different regions handle this. On some threads I feel like it would be more informative if people posted where they live. Because the advice for TX would be very different than for CO on teams from what I’ve seen.

 

[CoachCeetar]

There are sooo many travel teams in the area that really aren’t that much better than us.. they just play year round.

So much of it is this. Especially at lower levels, I dunno as much about 14u yet. But it's glaringly obvious which teams have the most reps, have club players, are just treating it as a summer activity, etc. I've found every season it feels like we start behind and close the gap.

12 more rounds of in-game situations, tracking real pitches, reading real fly balls or ground balls, fielding bad hops, running bases, etc under pressure is invaluable. No better way to learn the value of backing up a play than a live play where the SS who wasn't paying attention panics, still fields it, and then flings it wildly to second base right?

There are SO MANY little things in this game that you see maybe once a season, or less. One day, down the line, a game or season may hinge on a player knowing what to do in some extremely rare situation they just happened to see in rec 5 years ago. One of the best things you can do as a coach imo is explaining those weird (or not so weird) plays/mistakes after the game.

It’s funny how different regions handle this. On some threads I feel like it would be more informative if people posted where they live. Because the advice for TX would be very different than for CO on teams from what I’ve seen.

Our town summer travel league (Northeast NJ) is pretty big, there's three divisions for 3rd/4th and 3 divisions for 10u which are essentially the same thing. We've got three divisions for 14u as well. (Looks like a HS division too.) 12 games. we generally play two tournaments (We host one). Summer season kicks off immediately following rec. There's an 8u division but not many towns do that. (8u overlaps with 3rd/4th). We have our first and second graders together for coach pitch, against each other, no real rules. I don't know what the other towns do. (I want, and think I might be successful, at changing that a little).

The economics of this area means there ARE a decent amount of kids taking lessons, but NJ also splits into a billion small towns, so teams struggle with numbers. So it becomes very much random if any given team has a pitcher or coach that knows what they're doing.

 

[LEsoftballdad]

, fielding bad hops,

I'm curious how you teach someone to field a bad hop? If a ball hits a rock, you're at the mercy of the softball gods. Teach them proper positioning on short hops, and bad hops rarely happen.

 

[FlSoftball]

I’ll advocate for rec ball a little bit. We just paid $80 for the fall season, which guarantees us probably 12 games, plus a bunch of field/practice time. I volunteer as a coach.. obviously I’m not Mike Candrea, but I do care about the development of the girls in the league, and there are other coaches in the league who are knowledgeable in the game as well. I think (hope) you’d find that pretty much anywhere, but ultimately it’s up to the player to get what they want out of it..at least once they reach a certain age. There is a struggle getting 10+ to show up consistently, but like previously mentioned, many are involved in other extracurricular activities.

Still, as of a couple days ago, we had 3 girls signed up for 14u. I know there will be enough to have a team or 2 by the time the season starts, but that’s still a little crazy to me. There are sooo many travel teams in the area that really aren’t that much better than us.. they just play year round.

Still, at the end of the day, it’s $80. Sign your kid up for rec ball. At worst, you pull your kid out and lose 80 bucks. At best, you have a decent coach, get more game experience, lots of reps, and maybe they develop into a better leader/teammate.

Sheesh our little league is over 200.00 per kid per season


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[RADcatchers]

The city leagues definitely can differ. imo believe it is because of the type of people who are involved with the leagues that makes the biggest difference.

Here it is $100 ea. Kid per season and it's pretty much babysitting (for the parents) and social group environment for the kids. Not developmental in any way. Actually bizarre to not have at least one enthusiastic coach parent/person who wanted to develop skills. But not even that in a minimal way.

However I have seen leagues that do a phenomenal job creating development opportunities for the coaches and the players. Which was a reflection of the effort that the adults were putting into the league. In those situations,
the children benefited from the structure.

 

[CoachCeetar]

I'm curious how you teach someone to field a bad hop? If a ball hits a rock, you're at the mercy of the softball gods. Teach them proper positioning on short hops, and bad hops rarely happen.

"bad" I guess, just talking in general, reps of fielding hops, and the various different types of hops balls take on grass/dirt/turf. Maybe it doesn't matter as much if you're in an elite program that only plays on good fields and turf, but even things like "I'm going to play two steps in because the infield is soaked and the ball is just NOT going to roll" is a learned behavior. We literally played on a field this year where I was telling the kids at second "take your lead just past the mud puddle, so you don't fall over when the ball is hit and you try to run"

You can teach 'em proper positioning all you want, throw them a billion balls in practice, but those reps in real games where an actual girl on another team is running are a different experience.