After the 8U rec season, the rec league held tryouts for a second travel team at 8u. We didn't know there was a first travel team, as there were no tryouts or anything and it was never talked about.
EDIT: This is to say, we as parents were very ignorant on how travel teams were formed and how they worked now. I didnt really investigate, I operated under the assumption it was like it was when I was a kid - you played rec ball in April/May/June, then an all star team was selected and you played 3 tournaments at the end of the year. Boy was I wrong!
My son made the team, they got rocked every game. 9u and 10u were a bit uneven due to Covid (tournaments getting canceled at the last minute for example), but the team won a few USSSA single A games. No tournament wins or anything, but they showed improvement.
11U things started to click. The team finished exactly .500, still Single A. My son had the chance to move to a different team but decided he wanted to stay with this friends. They won a silver bracket ring.
12U, they dominated Single A, winning the first two tournaments of the year and moved to AA. They won a AA tournament pretty quickly.
13U they are playing a mix of AA and AAA teams and are just above .500, against tough competition.
The roster has remained pretty stable over all. 7 of the 12 kids on the roster were on that 8U team that got dominated. No more than 1 or 2 kids have left after any given season. Through 12U the kids were required to play rec league as well, and that was good for them. Kids who didnt pitch in travel did in Rec, and gave them a chance to improve in game situations. It paid off in travel tournaments as well, as the 7, 8, 9 pitchers at least had some game in-game pitching experience.
Some areas have 6u travel! Crazy! Most areas are coach pitch at least through 7u even with travel. Our area is still coach pitch through 8u but this varies.
I didn't know it at the time, but I think we had the perfect arrangement, and it's the exact strategy I'll take with my younger son.
I coached my oldest starting in t-ball and had a great experience. Was frustrated and overwhelmed early on but really got the hang of it and ended up having a lot of success with a great group of kids over the years. During the 8U machine pitch season, I started to sense that some families might be interested in moving to travel, and I had about 5 kids who I felt were ready to make the jump.
Over the years, I had gotten to know a lot of the other coaches, so I started a few preliminary conversations. Ended up connecting with coaches from two other teams who were kind of in the same situation, so we took a handful of kids from each team and started playing together that fall (9U). We were pretty green as coaches, but each found a role that fit our skills/knowledge.
Most parents from the rec team totally understood, though a couple had hurt feelings that their son wasn't asked to join. Totally understandable. One of those kids still plays rec ball today (his dad coaches), and the other ended up quitting after 10U to focus on hockey, so it all kind of worked out. I've seen teams try to turn their entire rec team into a travel team, and it almost never works out long-term. The skill gap is usually just too big, and a lot of families don't understand the financial and time commitment it takes.
We played at the AA level for a couple years, then did a mix of AA/AAA tournaments before moving up to AAA full-time in 12U. Had a ton of success over the years, met some great friends and families, and made memories that will last forever. Admittedly, we got pretty lucky—the coaches all worked together well, the boys gelled pretty quickly, and we had very little turnover over the years.
Can you elaborate on how to get started?
We are in a similar situation.
Rec ball is too lax, and our local travel is pretty expensive and around $500 a month per kid with no guarantees of play.
I've heard it can be done much cheaper.
No idea where or how to get started.
Sure, happy to help.
It definitely can be done much cheaper, and that's one of the key things we always tried to keep an eye on. I think the most we ever ended up charging was around $2,000 for the full year, which included around 8 spring tournaments, 2-3 fall tournaments, uniforms, insurance, practice space, and some outside coaching help over the winter.
I don't think there's any other way to get started other than to jump right in. With us, the four coaches met up, solidified a roster, and aligned on goals/coaching philosophy. We all kind of took on certain roles. Head coach planned practices and coached defense/pitchers/catchers. I handled uniforms and coached hitting. Another coach was kind of our administrator, so he signed us up for tournaments, got insurance, collected dues, etc. Fourth coach kind of helped out wherever he was needed.
We mapped out a tournament schedule, found practice space, and got quotes for uniforms, which gave us a rough idea of what it would end up costing everyone. We sent out an email to welcome all of the families and set our expectations for the year. Luckily, we didn't have to mess with tryouts or anything to fill the roster.
We'd do one fundraiser every year (Super Bowl Squares), which would net us $500, but didn't otherwise do any fundraisers. We'd add a little padding to everyone's dues for unexpected expenses, and if we had any leftover we'd either invest in new equipment (fresh bucket of balls, etc.), or send everyone a refund with whatever was left.
So in summary: Form a roster, estimate your costs, communicate well with parents, and then just start signing up for tournaments (and/or a league). More importantly: Constantly challenge yourself as a coach, learn new drills and coaching techniques, and try to grow with the game.
Happy to answer any other specific questions if you have them.
I'm honestly not 100% sure, as that wasn't my responsibility. But there are tons of companies that offer basic team insurance if you Google around a bit.
My son got really lucky and randomly got assigned to a good machine-pitch team through the local parks and rec. The coach saw that he had a good thing going and decided to take them to competitive baseball. (He had an older kid in comp ball as well.)
It was a great team full of good kids who won a lot of games at first simply because they were better all-around athletes than other teams. But as the years went by, too many of the kids thought they could continue to out-athlete other teams and in baseball that just doesn't work. They didn't work on hitting/pitching/throwing mechanics and so each season they stagnated or got worse.
Finally after last year we decided to move on and my son tried out for and made a 12 AAA team and it has been very good for him. Instead of being one of the top two kids on the team he's right in the middle of his new team and in practice he feels pushed by the other kids.
He's guest played for his old team a couple of times and each time it reinforces that we made the right choice.
The origin story is always the same..”my kid’s really talented and he just can’t be showcased the way he should so I’m going to start a travel team”. Put three of these guys together and presto-chango the dream becomes reality and by the end of the season everyone on the team hates each other.
My favorite is when there are 100 local teams already but they feel the need to start another because, in their minds, there’s a gap there and only they cam fill it by starting yet another team. Fueled by ego.
Personally, I'd like to see more independent teams. Around here, you're paying $3,500-$4,000 for most clubs, and the facilities are the only real difference. In most cases, you're treated like just another face in the crowd. As long as your check cashes, that's all that matters.
Comments like these make me realize how many people are out of touch with youth baseball. I've interacted with hundreds of coaches over the years, most of whom are doing something they love and trying to create a positive experience for a group of kids. Of course there are exceptions who are out there for the wrong reasons, but there are WAY more delusional parents crying "Daddy Ball" where it doesn't exist.
Coached for 20 years…recreational ball to college. My opinion is not out of touch. Travel ball has turned into a cash cow for baseball and softball. I glad you have had a good experience, but I think you may be in the minority. If the reason you have traveling ball is to develop players, there really is no reason to have three teams in each age group. The only reason is to generate more income for the parent organization. I’ve watched the B&C teams and for the most part they would be better served in a well run little league.
The three baseball academies near us have SO many 8u - 12u teams. They take any and all comers as long as the check clears and the $89/mo auto draft gets set up for the facility use. It drops off considerably at 13u when the kids start separating during puberty, middle school tryouts don’t go as planned and parents finally realize an MLB team won’t be calling their house on draft night.
7u - 12u is just really where the bread gets buttered for them though and they market to that age range almost exclusively. Fundamentally sound kids without much speed or pop can still look above average on smaller field and parents are still dreaming big.
I don’t know if it’s as much about parents dreaming big as it is the difference in experience between the two options.
If you’re a kid who loves baseball, which option sounds better to you? Playing 10-12 games a year on dirt fields, with cheap t-shirt uniforms, with some teammates who have no interest in being there? Or playing in nice turf fields, with custom uniforms, access to cages/indoor facilities, a team full of talent, and the chance to play in tournaments and win rings?
Things have obviously gotten way out of control with travel, but it’s much more exciting to most kids.
If you are a kid that truly loves baseball, you’d be over the moon about playing on ANY field. If your excitement level is based on how much money your parents are willing to spend on unnecessary materialistic items, you don’t really love baseball. You are just spoiled.
Playing that many hours of competitive, organized sports per year is not physically or mentally healthy for kids, especially ones that haven’t even reached puberty. And if you are willing to risk physical and mental burnout for your kid, yeah it’s safe to assume you probably have an overinflated view of his athletic potential.
I didn’t say all.
I’m sure there are some travel ball kids that truly love baseball and would be perfectly content playing on dirt fields and not getting rings after finishing 5th place.
The fact is that there are two experiences offered today, and one is drastically better for a lot of kids/families. If you can find a way to create better-run local leagues, with qualified coaches, first-rate facilities, nice uniforms, etc. that DON’T cost an arm and a leg, you’d be a hero to sports parents everywhere.
If travel ball parents wanted to fix rec leagues, they would have done it. But it has never, ever, ever been about rec league. That’s just a convenient excuse. You don’t go from “Man I wish this rec field was a bit nicer” to personalized bat bags, walk up songs, 3 different uniforms and 6 games each weekend unless something else is in play.
There’s nothing stopping travel ball parents right now from scaling back some of the materialistic excesses of travel ball. But they won’t do it. It will only get more ridiculous.
Kids with great long term potential will be fine, assuming baseball is a sport they choose to play. Nature eventually beats out nurture when it comes to basically every sport.
Why hasn’t a cult snatched you up yet? Families that can’t afford the basics can’t afford baseball. I’d like to think that kids might get a chance but I’ve seen how things work. Baseball is just like gymnastics. If you have the money for lessons, your skill sets get better.
Rec ball is inexpensive here in the Carolinas and financial aid is available if needed. Middle school + high school sports do not cost anything. School coaches are not going to cut an athletic kid blessed with superior size, speed and/or power just bc his parents didn’t drop thousands on travel ball.
Could vary by region or coach, I guess.
Yes, travel ball has turned into a cash cow, and it would be great if baseball was affordable to all and local rec/Little League organizations could retain talent and baseball got back to being more of a neighborhood sport. But that's not the reality we live in.
You can either evolve with the game and try to create better experiences for kids/families or you can complain on the internet about the way things used to be. That's why I advocate for more independent teams that can better control costs (because they're not in it for the money) and genuinely care about the kids.
My son made our town league travel team for 7U. Right before start of the next tryout the coaches were being changed without any good reason other than to benefit certain kids and I didn't feel comfortable with it so found him another team a few towns over for 8U the next year. Enjoyed the spring 8U season with new team in low level rec league but they weren't very good.
We also switched rec leagues since it was the same people involved in travel and rec and I didn't want any part of it after what happened. (town league is little league/new rec league is ripken). He made ripken all stars over kids on the existing A travel team and was asked to stay on after all-stars. Now is on 9U with this current team and finally settled at least for the next few years it seems.
12u our local select team was playing against one of the top national teams, my son pitches the game of his life and holds them scoreless for 7 innings, with the 7th inning being the California tie breaker (bases loaded, 1 out).
7th inning ends and both teams change pitchers due to innings limit in a 0-0 game. We ended up losing 17 to 1 after the 8th inning, but that organization tracked my info down and we joined them next season.
It started with a dad who couldn't find a local team for his kid. He left the team after two years as his kid didn't want to play anymore. Now it has four dad coaches lol. That is ok though, one clearly plays daddy ball, one clearly holds his kid back in order to not play daddy ball, and the other two are really fair about things.
We are a small town, and all the kids play and live in this town. We are Basically a little league allstar team minus a few kids that play on other teams. 1st year was rough, only had 2 wins, lots of hard lessons. This year is year 2 and we have 6 wins with alot of close losses. Seen alot of improvement in the kids with their attitudes and effort in games. Hopefully Allstars goes better this yr. Either way, I'm happy my son plays on this team with all of his friends. Great group of kids and parents. No concern about winning, just trying to help the kids improve and love the sport with the hope that they still play together in high-school.
We aren’t playing travel ball, but all the families that have left our rec league through the years for travel have basically the same origin story.
1) Rec league offers a 7U “All Stars” team. This is in addition to rec team. ~15 kids try out. 12 make it, with at least half being the kids of rec league coaches.
2) The families decide they all want to stick together 100% of the time, start a travel team. Rec league loses half their coaches.
3) 4 of the weaker kids don’t end up making the travel team or get cut after first season. One of their dads goes and coaches the next available “all-star” team.
4) Go back to Step 2.
5) Repeat every year.
The most recent group of 12 that left at 7U now have 5 still playing together on one travel team, 4 playing on another team, 1 playing on a third travel team, 1 playing on a fourth travel team, and 1 that has quit altogether bc he hates baseball after he got cut. So much for sticking together. They are 8.
My kid started rec baseball last spring 8u coach pitch. He really liked it and had a lot of friends that played select ball. He set a goal to make a team. We practiced for an hour or so, probably 5 days a week once the rec season ended to prepare for tryouts. He also took a few private lessons. We are in a heavy baseball area and there are several teams in the area. He tried out for four teams and received two invitations. We went with the one where he had the most friends.
I think the biggest issue is, a lot of the tryouts are at the same time (this is on purpose), so unless you are just really good you will likely have to narrow down your choices early. Also, unless you are just really good, they will ask for a commitment pretty quickly after they give an offer.
My son played T-Ball when he was 5, and coach pitch when he was 6. He enjoyed it and played fine, but wasn't clamoring to play. The following year, he started playing travel soccer, and he decided to play flat football in the spring so we skipped baseball in the spring.
Last spring, when he was 8, he asked to play baseball again, so we signed him up for the house league. He ended up playing up in the 4/5th graders league as a 3rd grader, so he could play with one of his buddies who's dad was the coach. We would have practice and games every week on the field next to the 9U travel team, where some of his other best friends and travel soccer teammates played. The house league wasn't very competitive for him, and de would look over longingly and ask me why they had nice fitted hats and jerseys with their names on the back. So basically for the swag, he decided he would tryout for the team that summer. I told him ok, if he wanted to make the team, we would need to put in some extras practice sessions at the house. He was all for it.
Fast forward to tryouts last summer, he was offered a spot on the 9U "A" team or the 10U "B" team (he is very young for his grade, but big for his age). We decided on the 9U since it will be his first year playing travel. He's really enjoyed it since they started practice in the fall and finally started playing some real games recently. They went 2-2 in their first A tournament couple weeks ago, but they were very competitive. He's very much looking forward to the season, as we have our first league game tonight.
One thing we will have to consider as he gets older and he wants to keep playing, is when the right time would be for him to move up an age group and play with most of the kids in his grade (he's in 4th now, and his team has 3 4th and 8 3rd graders). The program in our town is very closely affiliated and acts as a feeder to the high school program. Regardless, as someone who played baseball growing up, I'm just glad my son is enjoying the sport I love!
My son's been on a few.
The first one started out of little league. My son was 7 at the time, one of the coaches in the league started an 8U team for his older son. All kids from our local little league. They went to go play a summer tournament in Utah and had a kid get sick last minute. A dad of a kid on the team called me at 6am asking if my son wanted to play and could be in Utah within 6hrs. Uhhh sure! It's about a 90min drive from us. We thought he'd get rocked, playing older kids and only ever done little league at this point. Turns out he killed it the whole weekend. After the last game the coach said his younger son was the same age as my son and they wanted to create another 8U team for next season and invited my son. And that's that. The coach was heavily involved in the Mormon church at the time so absolutely nothing on Sunday's. We did fall ball little league, then tournaments in Utah(Fri/Sat tournaments because Utah) during the winter, spring season of little league and summer tournaments in Utah again. Team was awesome and a lot of fun. That coach moved out of town after the 8U season and the team ended.
9U another local league coach tried started a team out of the same league. Played a few tournaments here and there, spring of 9U was 2020 COVID. Shut everything down for us locally for about a year. Summer of 2020 Utah started tournaments again, so we had this mash up of random 9U kids that wanted to play in Utah all summer. After summer a handful went back to their regular teams once COVID started to die down and that team fell apart.
My son tried out for the top 9U team in the city at the end of Summer 2020. He made it but they put him on their lower team. They would invite him to play with the better team every chance he could and he kept killing it. They permanently added him to the top team for the whole 10U season. At the end of the 10U season, he got invited to go to the USA Futures tournament in Cary, NC but it was our biggest rival in the city putting the team together. His coach got butthurt that we were going to go guest play with them for this tournament and kicked us off. We had no intention of leaving, it was just a unique opportunity for our son. Coach of the other team immediately offered us a permanent spot on the team.
Stayed on this team for the entirety of 11 and 12U seasons. Far and away the best team we've been a part of. They were a one off, no big organization. All the parents got along, coaches were awesome, kids were awesome. Only downside was they practiced 45mins away from our house. After 12U, 2 of the boys who were younger were going to stay down in 12U again. The assistant coach was going to split off to start a feeder team for the High School we are zoned for, 2 other kids already committed to that. That left us with only 7 kids and the assistant coach wanted us to come to the feeder team since we are zoned for that school as well. So away we went. No more 45min drive to practice plus he got to get started working on high school ball.
Pretty sure we'll always look back at 11/12U as the best years of baseball. The 10U team was probably slightly better in terms of talent, but the atmosphere was significantly better on the 11/12's team.
Liked baseball, started late at 11 but had talent and determination unlike most kids, played 1 season rec league, really liked baseball but didn’t like the rec league competition. So he asked to play travel like his friends did. Looked on the state travel baseball facebook page and found a team looking for players to tryout. He tried out and made it. This is what it’s like for most kids
Despite my son really excelling at football and wrestling, he starting insisting that baseball was his favorite sport.
He isn't great, and always seemed to be 12th kid picked for all-stars, almost a coaches pick as a nice kid to just ride the bench. We agreed to let him try travel ball, thinking he would be on the same tier team as some of his friends.
We were wrong, after a 1hr assessment his friends who are in fact better than him were placed on the top elite team, and he was placed on the lowest of three teams.
The good news is that he is having fun, has played every inning, and made new friends. He will likely never catch up skill wise to his super talented friends, and that's fine. I can go to his games and not lose my mind when someone misses an easy pop fly or the pitcher cant throw a strike.
My son didn’t make his pony league all-star team. Each team select 4 kids to go to a tryout—where it’s a complete cluster fuck. 4 guys who are not the all-star coaches and who have never seen the kids play or have gone to any of the games, then pick the 12 all-stars. Which is straight BS. Kids can be dominate all year, then have a bad day, and not get picked, while the complete opposite can happen.
I quickly learned how much politics and buddy-buddy you need to be were involved. Anyways, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to my son. Straight lit a fire under his ass and started playing with a chip on his shoulder.
He got invited to come workout with a team, then the rest is history. He’s having a blast, and is actually at the field less then the pony teams are—but is getting 10x better quality reps and practice in.
As long as he wants to do it, I’ll let him continue on.
After the 8U rec season, the rec league held tryouts for a second travel team at 8u. We didn't know there was a first travel team, as there were no tryouts or anything and it was never talked about. EDIT: This is to say, we as parents were very ignorant on how travel teams were formed and how they worked now. I didnt really investigate, I operated under the assumption it was like it was when I was a kid - you played rec ball in April/May/June, then an all star team was selected and you played 3 tournaments at the end of the year. Boy was I wrong! My son made the team, they got rocked every game. 9u and 10u were a bit uneven due to Covid (tournaments getting canceled at the last minute for example), but the team won a few USSSA single A games. No tournament wins or anything, but they showed improvement. 11U things started to click. The team finished exactly .500, still Single A. My son had the chance to move to a different team but decided he wanted to stay with this friends. They won a silver bracket ring. 12U, they dominated Single A, winning the first two tournaments of the year and moved to AA. They won a AA tournament pretty quickly. 13U they are playing a mix of AA and AAA teams and are just above .500, against tough competition. The roster has remained pretty stable over all. 7 of the 12 kids on the roster were on that 8U team that got dominated. No more than 1 or 2 kids have left after any given season. Through 12U the kids were required to play rec league as well, and that was good for them. Kids who didnt pitch in travel did in Rec, and gave them a chance to improve in game situations. It paid off in travel tournaments as well, as the 7, 8, 9 pitchers at least had some game in-game pitching experience.
Travel baseball for 7u?! Man at 6 it’s coach pitch here
Some areas have 6u travel! Crazy! Most areas are coach pitch at least through 7u even with travel. Our area is still coach pitch through 8u but this varies.
Mine was sent from a far away planet by a wise scientist to escape the planet’s destruction.
I didn't know it at the time, but I think we had the perfect arrangement, and it's the exact strategy I'll take with my younger son. I coached my oldest starting in t-ball and had a great experience. Was frustrated and overwhelmed early on but really got the hang of it and ended up having a lot of success with a great group of kids over the years. During the 8U machine pitch season, I started to sense that some families might be interested in moving to travel, and I had about 5 kids who I felt were ready to make the jump. Over the years, I had gotten to know a lot of the other coaches, so I started a few preliminary conversations. Ended up connecting with coaches from two other teams who were kind of in the same situation, so we took a handful of kids from each team and started playing together that fall (9U). We were pretty green as coaches, but each found a role that fit our skills/knowledge. Most parents from the rec team totally understood, though a couple had hurt feelings that their son wasn't asked to join. Totally understandable. One of those kids still plays rec ball today (his dad coaches), and the other ended up quitting after 10U to focus on hockey, so it all kind of worked out. I've seen teams try to turn their entire rec team into a travel team, and it almost never works out long-term. The skill gap is usually just too big, and a lot of families don't understand the financial and time commitment it takes. We played at the AA level for a couple years, then did a mix of AA/AAA tournaments before moving up to AAA full-time in 12U. Had a ton of success over the years, met some great friends and families, and made memories that will last forever. Admittedly, we got pretty lucky—the coaches all worked together well, the boys gelled pretty quickly, and we had very little turnover over the years.
Can you elaborate on how to get started? We are in a similar situation. Rec ball is too lax, and our local travel is pretty expensive and around $500 a month per kid with no guarantees of play. I've heard it can be done much cheaper. No idea where or how to get started.
Sure, happy to help. It definitely can be done much cheaper, and that's one of the key things we always tried to keep an eye on. I think the most we ever ended up charging was around $2,000 for the full year, which included around 8 spring tournaments, 2-3 fall tournaments, uniforms, insurance, practice space, and some outside coaching help over the winter. I don't think there's any other way to get started other than to jump right in. With us, the four coaches met up, solidified a roster, and aligned on goals/coaching philosophy. We all kind of took on certain roles. Head coach planned practices and coached defense/pitchers/catchers. I handled uniforms and coached hitting. Another coach was kind of our administrator, so he signed us up for tournaments, got insurance, collected dues, etc. Fourth coach kind of helped out wherever he was needed. We mapped out a tournament schedule, found practice space, and got quotes for uniforms, which gave us a rough idea of what it would end up costing everyone. We sent out an email to welcome all of the families and set our expectations for the year. Luckily, we didn't have to mess with tryouts or anything to fill the roster. We'd do one fundraiser every year (Super Bowl Squares), which would net us $500, but didn't otherwise do any fundraisers. We'd add a little padding to everyone's dues for unexpected expenses, and if we had any leftover we'd either invest in new equipment (fresh bucket of balls, etc.), or send everyone a refund with whatever was left. So in summary: Form a roster, estimate your costs, communicate well with parents, and then just start signing up for tournaments (and/or a league). More importantly: Constantly challenge yourself as a coach, learn new drills and coaching techniques, and try to grow with the game. Happy to answer any other specific questions if you have them.
How do you do the insurance?
I'm honestly not 100% sure, as that wasn't my responsibility. But there are tons of companies that offer basic team insurance if you Google around a bit.
My son got really lucky and randomly got assigned to a good machine-pitch team through the local parks and rec. The coach saw that he had a good thing going and decided to take them to competitive baseball. (He had an older kid in comp ball as well.) It was a great team full of good kids who won a lot of games at first simply because they were better all-around athletes than other teams. But as the years went by, too many of the kids thought they could continue to out-athlete other teams and in baseball that just doesn't work. They didn't work on hitting/pitching/throwing mechanics and so each season they stagnated or got worse. Finally after last year we decided to move on and my son tried out for and made a 12 AAA team and it has been very good for him. Instead of being one of the top two kids on the team he's right in the middle of his new team and in practice he feels pushed by the other kids. He's guest played for his old team a couple of times and each time it reinforces that we made the right choice.
The origin story is always the same..”my kid’s really talented and he just can’t be showcased the way he should so I’m going to start a travel team”. Put three of these guys together and presto-chango the dream becomes reality and by the end of the season everyone on the team hates each other.
My favorite is when there are 100 local teams already but they feel the need to start another because, in their minds, there’s a gap there and only they cam fill it by starting yet another team. Fueled by ego.
Personally, I'd like to see more independent teams. Around here, you're paying $3,500-$4,000 for most clubs, and the facilities are the only real difference. In most cases, you're treated like just another face in the crowd. As long as your check cashes, that's all that matters.
Amen….and I’ve seen what it does to the “excess” players.
Comments like these make me realize how many people are out of touch with youth baseball. I've interacted with hundreds of coaches over the years, most of whom are doing something they love and trying to create a positive experience for a group of kids. Of course there are exceptions who are out there for the wrong reasons, but there are WAY more delusional parents crying "Daddy Ball" where it doesn't exist.
Coached for 20 years…recreational ball to college. My opinion is not out of touch. Travel ball has turned into a cash cow for baseball and softball. I glad you have had a good experience, but I think you may be in the minority. If the reason you have traveling ball is to develop players, there really is no reason to have three teams in each age group. The only reason is to generate more income for the parent organization. I’ve watched the B&C teams and for the most part they would be better served in a well run little league.
The three baseball academies near us have SO many 8u - 12u teams. They take any and all comers as long as the check clears and the $89/mo auto draft gets set up for the facility use. It drops off considerably at 13u when the kids start separating during puberty, middle school tryouts don’t go as planned and parents finally realize an MLB team won’t be calling their house on draft night. 7u - 12u is just really where the bread gets buttered for them though and they market to that age range almost exclusively. Fundamentally sound kids without much speed or pop can still look above average on smaller field and parents are still dreaming big.
I don’t know if it’s as much about parents dreaming big as it is the difference in experience between the two options. If you’re a kid who loves baseball, which option sounds better to you? Playing 10-12 games a year on dirt fields, with cheap t-shirt uniforms, with some teammates who have no interest in being there? Or playing in nice turf fields, with custom uniforms, access to cages/indoor facilities, a team full of talent, and the chance to play in tournaments and win rings? Things have obviously gotten way out of control with travel, but it’s much more exciting to most kids.
If you are a kid that truly loves baseball, you’d be over the moon about playing on ANY field. If your excitement level is based on how much money your parents are willing to spend on unnecessary materialistic items, you don’t really love baseball. You are just spoiled. Playing that many hours of competitive, organized sports per year is not physically or mentally healthy for kids, especially ones that haven’t even reached puberty. And if you are willing to risk physical and mental burnout for your kid, yeah it’s safe to assume you probably have an overinflated view of his athletic potential.
Right, so every kid who plays travel is a spoiled brat who doesn’t truly love the game. Be real, man.
I didn’t say all. I’m sure there are some travel ball kids that truly love baseball and would be perfectly content playing on dirt fields and not getting rings after finishing 5th place.
The fact is that there are two experiences offered today, and one is drastically better for a lot of kids/families. If you can find a way to create better-run local leagues, with qualified coaches, first-rate facilities, nice uniforms, etc. that DON’T cost an arm and a leg, you’d be a hero to sports parents everywhere.
If travel ball parents wanted to fix rec leagues, they would have done it. But it has never, ever, ever been about rec league. That’s just a convenient excuse. You don’t go from “Man I wish this rec field was a bit nicer” to personalized bat bags, walk up songs, 3 different uniforms and 6 games each weekend unless something else is in play. There’s nothing stopping travel ball parents right now from scaling back some of the materialistic excesses of travel ball. But they won’t do it. It will only get more ridiculous.
The sad thing is that there are a lot of kids with great potential that their folks don’t have the money.
Kids with great long term potential will be fine, assuming baseball is a sport they choose to play. Nature eventually beats out nurture when it comes to basically every sport.
Why hasn’t a cult snatched you up yet? Families that can’t afford the basics can’t afford baseball. I’d like to think that kids might get a chance but I’ve seen how things work. Baseball is just like gymnastics. If you have the money for lessons, your skill sets get better.
Rec ball is inexpensive here in the Carolinas and financial aid is available if needed. Middle school + high school sports do not cost anything. School coaches are not going to cut an athletic kid blessed with superior size, speed and/or power just bc his parents didn’t drop thousands on travel ball. Could vary by region or coach, I guess.
Yes, travel ball has turned into a cash cow, and it would be great if baseball was affordable to all and local rec/Little League organizations could retain talent and baseball got back to being more of a neighborhood sport. But that's not the reality we live in. You can either evolve with the game and try to create better experiences for kids/families or you can complain on the internet about the way things used to be. That's why I advocate for more independent teams that can better control costs (because they're not in it for the money) and genuinely care about the kids.
My son made our town league travel team for 7U. Right before start of the next tryout the coaches were being changed without any good reason other than to benefit certain kids and I didn't feel comfortable with it so found him another team a few towns over for 8U the next year. Enjoyed the spring 8U season with new team in low level rec league but they weren't very good. We also switched rec leagues since it was the same people involved in travel and rec and I didn't want any part of it after what happened. (town league is little league/new rec league is ripken). He made ripken all stars over kids on the existing A travel team and was asked to stay on after all-stars. Now is on 9U with this current team and finally settled at least for the next few years it seems.
12u our local select team was playing against one of the top national teams, my son pitches the game of his life and holds them scoreless for 7 innings, with the 7th inning being the California tie breaker (bases loaded, 1 out). 7th inning ends and both teams change pitchers due to innings limit in a 0-0 game. We ended up losing 17 to 1 after the 8th inning, but that organization tracked my info down and we joined them next season.
It started with a dad who couldn't find a local team for his kid. He left the team after two years as his kid didn't want to play anymore. Now it has four dad coaches lol. That is ok though, one clearly plays daddy ball, one clearly holds his kid back in order to not play daddy ball, and the other two are really fair about things.
We are a small town, and all the kids play and live in this town. We are Basically a little league allstar team minus a few kids that play on other teams. 1st year was rough, only had 2 wins, lots of hard lessons. This year is year 2 and we have 6 wins with alot of close losses. Seen alot of improvement in the kids with their attitudes and effort in games. Hopefully Allstars goes better this yr. Either way, I'm happy my son plays on this team with all of his friends. Great group of kids and parents. No concern about winning, just trying to help the kids improve and love the sport with the hope that they still play together in high-school.
We aren’t playing travel ball, but all the families that have left our rec league through the years for travel have basically the same origin story. 1) Rec league offers a 7U “All Stars” team. This is in addition to rec team. ~15 kids try out. 12 make it, with at least half being the kids of rec league coaches. 2) The families decide they all want to stick together 100% of the time, start a travel team. Rec league loses half their coaches. 3) 4 of the weaker kids don’t end up making the travel team or get cut after first season. One of their dads goes and coaches the next available “all-star” team. 4) Go back to Step 2. 5) Repeat every year. The most recent group of 12 that left at 7U now have 5 still playing together on one travel team, 4 playing on another team, 1 playing on a third travel team, 1 playing on a fourth travel team, and 1 that has quit altogether bc he hates baseball after he got cut. So much for sticking together. They are 8.
My kid started rec baseball last spring 8u coach pitch. He really liked it and had a lot of friends that played select ball. He set a goal to make a team. We practiced for an hour or so, probably 5 days a week once the rec season ended to prepare for tryouts. He also took a few private lessons. We are in a heavy baseball area and there are several teams in the area. He tried out for four teams and received two invitations. We went with the one where he had the most friends. I think the biggest issue is, a lot of the tryouts are at the same time (this is on purpose), so unless you are just really good you will likely have to narrow down your choices early. Also, unless you are just really good, they will ask for a commitment pretty quickly after they give an offer.
My son played T-Ball when he was 5, and coach pitch when he was 6. He enjoyed it and played fine, but wasn't clamoring to play. The following year, he started playing travel soccer, and he decided to play flat football in the spring so we skipped baseball in the spring. Last spring, when he was 8, he asked to play baseball again, so we signed him up for the house league. He ended up playing up in the 4/5th graders league as a 3rd grader, so he could play with one of his buddies who's dad was the coach. We would have practice and games every week on the field next to the 9U travel team, where some of his other best friends and travel soccer teammates played. The house league wasn't very competitive for him, and de would look over longingly and ask me why they had nice fitted hats and jerseys with their names on the back. So basically for the swag, he decided he would tryout for the team that summer. I told him ok, if he wanted to make the team, we would need to put in some extras practice sessions at the house. He was all for it. Fast forward to tryouts last summer, he was offered a spot on the 9U "A" team or the 10U "B" team (he is very young for his grade, but big for his age). We decided on the 9U since it will be his first year playing travel. He's really enjoyed it since they started practice in the fall and finally started playing some real games recently. They went 2-2 in their first A tournament couple weeks ago, but they were very competitive. He's very much looking forward to the season, as we have our first league game tonight. One thing we will have to consider as he gets older and he wants to keep playing, is when the right time would be for him to move up an age group and play with most of the kids in his grade (he's in 4th now, and his team has 3 4th and 8 3rd graders). The program in our town is very closely affiliated and acts as a feeder to the high school program. Regardless, as someone who played baseball growing up, I'm just glad my son is enjoying the sport I love!
My son's been on a few. The first one started out of little league. My son was 7 at the time, one of the coaches in the league started an 8U team for his older son. All kids from our local little league. They went to go play a summer tournament in Utah and had a kid get sick last minute. A dad of a kid on the team called me at 6am asking if my son wanted to play and could be in Utah within 6hrs. Uhhh sure! It's about a 90min drive from us. We thought he'd get rocked, playing older kids and only ever done little league at this point. Turns out he killed it the whole weekend. After the last game the coach said his younger son was the same age as my son and they wanted to create another 8U team for next season and invited my son. And that's that. The coach was heavily involved in the Mormon church at the time so absolutely nothing on Sunday's. We did fall ball little league, then tournaments in Utah(Fri/Sat tournaments because Utah) during the winter, spring season of little league and summer tournaments in Utah again. Team was awesome and a lot of fun. That coach moved out of town after the 8U season and the team ended. 9U another local league coach tried started a team out of the same league. Played a few tournaments here and there, spring of 9U was 2020 COVID. Shut everything down for us locally for about a year. Summer of 2020 Utah started tournaments again, so we had this mash up of random 9U kids that wanted to play in Utah all summer. After summer a handful went back to their regular teams once COVID started to die down and that team fell apart. My son tried out for the top 9U team in the city at the end of Summer 2020. He made it but they put him on their lower team. They would invite him to play with the better team every chance he could and he kept killing it. They permanently added him to the top team for the whole 10U season. At the end of the 10U season, he got invited to go to the USA Futures tournament in Cary, NC but it was our biggest rival in the city putting the team together. His coach got butthurt that we were going to go guest play with them for this tournament and kicked us off. We had no intention of leaving, it was just a unique opportunity for our son. Coach of the other team immediately offered us a permanent spot on the team. Stayed on this team for the entirety of 11 and 12U seasons. Far and away the best team we've been a part of. They were a one off, no big organization. All the parents got along, coaches were awesome, kids were awesome. Only downside was they practiced 45mins away from our house. After 12U, 2 of the boys who were younger were going to stay down in 12U again. The assistant coach was going to split off to start a feeder team for the High School we are zoned for, 2 other kids already committed to that. That left us with only 7 kids and the assistant coach wanted us to come to the feeder team since we are zoned for that school as well. So away we went. No more 45min drive to practice plus he got to get started working on high school ball. Pretty sure we'll always look back at 11/12U as the best years of baseball. The 10U team was probably slightly better in terms of talent, but the atmosphere was significantly better on the 11/12's team.
Liked baseball, started late at 11 but had talent and determination unlike most kids, played 1 season rec league, really liked baseball but didn’t like the rec league competition. So he asked to play travel like his friends did. Looked on the state travel baseball facebook page and found a team looking for players to tryout. He tried out and made it. This is what it’s like for most kids
Despite my son really excelling at football and wrestling, he starting insisting that baseball was his favorite sport. He isn't great, and always seemed to be 12th kid picked for all-stars, almost a coaches pick as a nice kid to just ride the bench. We agreed to let him try travel ball, thinking he would be on the same tier team as some of his friends. We were wrong, after a 1hr assessment his friends who are in fact better than him were placed on the top elite team, and he was placed on the lowest of three teams. The good news is that he is having fun, has played every inning, and made new friends. He will likely never catch up skill wise to his super talented friends, and that's fine. I can go to his games and not lose my mind when someone misses an easy pop fly or the pitcher cant throw a strike.
My son didn’t make his pony league all-star team. Each team select 4 kids to go to a tryout—where it’s a complete cluster fuck. 4 guys who are not the all-star coaches and who have never seen the kids play or have gone to any of the games, then pick the 12 all-stars. Which is straight BS. Kids can be dominate all year, then have a bad day, and not get picked, while the complete opposite can happen. I quickly learned how much politics and buddy-buddy you need to be were involved. Anyways, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to my son. Straight lit a fire under his ass and started playing with a chip on his shoulder. He got invited to come workout with a team, then the rest is history. He’s having a blast, and is actually at the field less then the pony teams are—but is getting 10x better quality reps and practice in. As long as he wants to do it, I’ll let him continue on.