Hey everybody. I'm a 17 year old INF/P looking at my options for next summer. Does anybody know of some competitive select teams in the Iowa/Minnesota area? Thanks much...

I don't believe you will find any in Iowa. Iowa is stuck in the dark ages and plays summer high school baseball. The season barely lasts 6 weeks and prevents players from playing on a competitive summer league team.

The Gopher State League is good in MN, but I don't know much about it.

SBK, is right on the fact that alot people in iowa don't play AAU ball. But he's wrong that we're stuck in the dark ages. Most of us are multi-sport athletes, and don't have time with basketball/wrestling and football camps thrown in with baseball games, baseball practices, and baseball camps.

We (Iowa) are indeed stuck in the dark ages in respect to competitive youth baseball and you reinforce my point very well.

I agree that there are a lot of multi-sport athletes including my own sons. While they enjoy playing football and basketball, they’d like to play more baseball and I’d like them to have the opportunity to compete with others nationally on events like Jr. Olympics, Area Code and show cases without it affecting their high school team like 99% of the other kids can.

The baseball season in Iowa starts next Monday, May 2nd with first games about 3 weeks later. Less than 2 months after that, most high school teams are done and would have played around 35 games.

Another downfall of only being able to participate on the high school team is that players will experience only one coach. Many top level players in the rest of the country may have a mediocre to fair high school coach but be able to choose to play for a better coach on their summer team. Iowa players will spend their time playing for the coach their school deals them.

Across the river in Nebraska for example, some high schools play a spring high school season of around 30 games and then play a competitive American legion season with another 40 to 60 games. The more serious, non-football players can play an additional fall schedule.

The reason I see Iowa along with perhaps a little bit of Southern Wisconsin being the only place in the country still playing a “dark age” summer schedule is because they don’t want to conflict with other spring sports. Again, it is not to do a favor to serious baseball players who would prefer to play a limited high school schedule and then participate in AAU, Select, Travel, Legion, Showcase or whatever else you want to call it ball.

In Iowa, a coach is not legally permitted to work with hitters except for during the season; that my friend is more, “dark ages” baseball thinking. From my observation, there are two letters that played an important role in Iowa producing some quality players the last several years despite the handcuffs placed on the sport by the Iowa High School Athletic Association. The same association that was the last in the country to do away with 6 player basketball for girls.

By the way, the two letters are PG.

Good luck through out your short 7 week season!

Well actually I've started my I actually have a 5 month scheduale, i currently play babe ruth baseball along with high school and in the fall i participate in a wood bat league. I know its not nearly as much as kids in other states as you said, but i'm getting the most out of my opportunitys. Another thing that makes it so much harder for us to do aau is our high school coaches would chew our behinds if we missed any practice because of an aau event. It is very very hard like you said for us to find time for aau. Also down here in Southern Iowa the closest AAU team i've heard of is based in des moines a 1hour and a half drive from my hometown. Yes we're a bit behind but we have to get out there and find opportunities, and work on our own in the offseasons to get the most we can out of what we have.

Another thing they don't teach us proper grammer in iowa lol sorry about that

airwatz,

You have a great attitude about trying to do the best you can with the situation you are dealt.

What I would like to see is for the Iowa High School Athletic Association to make baseball more of a priority. First thing they can do is relax the rule prohibiting coaches from working with hitters outside of the season. They are hypocritical since basketball coaches can participate in summer tourneys with players.

Re: Your grammar.

You might want to write your post in MS Word and use the spell check. If you later find an error in your post, you can edit it by clicking on the little eraser icon in the bottom right of the post. Not trying to preach, someone gave me this advice a while back and just trying to do someone else a favor.

We can't blame the Iowa education system since the test results annually show Iowa among the highest in the country.

Best of luck in your season.