First time post - have been monitoring the message boards for several months, but this is the first time I've had anything to post.

I hoping someone can provide some advice. We live in the Omaha, NE area and are trying to decide what to do for my son as far as baseball for the summer. It seems that most of the H.S. players wind up playing for a Legion team that is primarily made up of the same players from the H.S. From what I've been told this is pretty much the way it always has been.

This year a travel team called the Nebraska Sluggers, which is an off shoot of the KC Sluggers out of Missouri, is going to be based out of the Omaha area. They promise to play in several showcase tournaments around the midwest and Texas part of the Premier Baseball Assoc.

It seems that a great deal of the local H.S. coaches aren't very happy about the possiblity of losing there best players to this new team. My son is nervous about not playing for the Legion team because he's afraid that his coaches might not give him a fair shot next spring.

Does anyone have any experiece/knowledge with the Premier Baseball Assoc or the KC Sluggers?

Any advice on what we should do, play with the Legion team or go with the Sluggers would be appreciated.


Thanks.

Question---what year in HS is your son?

How long has he been playing varsity ball for this coach?

The answers are key in terms of me giving you any advice. Please reply

My son is a Freshman playing on JV. The Sluggers team he is considering is a 15/16 year old team.

Go where the playing time and competition are the best.

I am not familiar with teams in your region but I would think the travel teams are stronger and play at a better competition level

TR,

Just curious. Under what circumstances would you have answered differently than you did? Not that I disagree. I would have expected that answer for a Jr. or Sr. I thought perhaps for a Freshman or Sophmore the response would be different.

The KC Sluggers are a good organization and deliver on their promises. Premier Baseball is in its first year, but is comprised of many of the southwest's best summer programs.

montanadad

I only asked to get a feel of the boys talent, that is all

As a JV player he wants to develop his talents thus the reason for noting playing time--- at his age he might not get ample playing team on a so called select team.

I hope this helps you

I have a slightly different view on this. If you want to play the best baseball you can, travel ball is almost certainly going to offer better and more challenging baseball. If you want to become a centerpiece of your HS team, legion ball (since that is what your HS coach does in summer) sounds pretty important. Why not play both?

Here in CA, I run two summer traveling teams. One is an 18u and the other 16u. Almost without exception, the young men who play baseball with us also play for their HS summer team, or play legion baseball. This allows the boys to stay at the center of their high school's program, and also get higher quality baseball when they are playing with our teams. To make this work, it is essential to have your traveling team coach be willing to work around the requirements of each HS coach.

Frequently, our players don't get to practice together nearly as much as we'd like, but they are all practicing with their HS summer teams, so they are getting their work in. We do practice as often as we can. Sometimes I have 15 players at practice, and sometimes 5 players. The same goes with games, sometimes 9 can make it and other times we have 15 or more. It all depends on who has HS games or practices that conflict. Once HS summer ball is done, we really pick up our pace and play through August. Most of the HS summer teams are done by mid-July and legion is done by the beginning of August.

We try to stay out of conflict with HS coaches schedules as much as possible, except for special opportunities such as playing in the Jr. Olympics. With much of our 18u team being 3-5 year players with us, it has proven to work as long as everyone (most HS coaches excepted) stays flexible. We try to play around 40 games per team, and when you add on the summer HS games, that is plenty of baseball in my opinion.

I do like the players to reduce their activity quite a bit after mid-Sept. and take a few months off once they are done with fall ball with their HS team.

TR
06catcherdad
Bama Bomber
montanadad

Thank you all for your comments and interest.

Its good to hear that the KC Sluggers have a good rep.

TR - I think you hit the nail on the head. If we chose the travel team, he'll be 1 of 18 players and not sure how much playing time everyone will get. If we go by what the recruiter indicated, everyone will play every game(most likely half a game). The standard of ball will be better. However, if he plays on the Legion H.S. team, he'll most likely play all (or at least most) of each game, but the standard might not be as good.

It would be great if we could work out something for my son to play both. But based on the scheduling, I don't think that's feasible since the team has to travel starting Wed/Thurs for weekend tournaments, arriving back on Sundays. And with Tues practices and a local DH in the evening that doesn't leave much time for Legion.

I talked to the H.S. coach who indicated he'd support whatever decision was made, but he'd really like him to play with the Legion team.

So it really boils down to playing time vs quality of competition. So it looks like we have a big decsion to make over the next few days.


Thanks again for your comments.