Does anyone else think travel teams are becoming watered down with lesser talent? Up untill a few years ago only the most elite of players made it onto the travel teams thus giving the players who made the cut the higher level of play they sought. Now it seems to me we sometimes play "travel" teams made up of players you know weren't even all star material, much less travel. I know some associations have begun to split their leagues up into divisions AA & AAA, but I wunder if that is a good idea. I would think the AA teams would be better off leaving their kids in rec ball and possibly building a better all star team for their association, possibly even finding them selves in the World Series.

I agree, it is WAY watered down. We live in North Metro (Roswell). NWBA is a big travel league up here and there are 32 14U teams registered just in that league. Then you add all the others who play in metro Atlanta and there must be 125 teams. That is rediculous. Tough for there to be a team of studs (other than the Astros - although they recruit all over the state and even outside the state). Point is, I agree that there are way too many travel teams in Georgia. Alot of kids are going to be disappointed when they try out for High School. There is no way the high schools can support the number of kids playing travel.

The watering down effect is not limited to Georgia, or just travel teams. Yes, many of the travel teams are becoming nothing more than high prices recreational teams that break away from their community based organizations and travel. You also see this watering down in the explosion of showcases and camps. Parents seem to think the doors to colleges are opened with dollar bills instead of talent ----- and they tend to spend freely. One has to look hard for the better teams --- I would call these better teams "select" teams but even that name has even been diluted.
Fungo

The reality is there are two options for player development before high school:

1. Rec-ball at your local park. This may be good or bad, depending on many factors such as the competition in your park, the types of coaches there, and the rules that govern the game as specified by the league affiliation. My particular local parks offer very little in the way of player development past the age of 10, all-star teams are very often selected on daddy-ball politics (ugh.) The only recourse if you want your kid to truly improve is to leave and look for something better.

2. That leads to #2, finding an independent travel team. Again, this is hit or miss and parents need to do some due-diligence when deciding who to join. It may be that a kid finds a very competitive team right away, tries out and makes it. Hurray! Or it might be that they must take a chance on a newly forming team with many unknowns. The team could turn out to be terrific, or not. One hopes there is at least better coaching than in the park (not always so) and better competition during the season (usually so.) One hopes that playing more games, having more practices, and seeing better competiton will have a positive effect on his performance.

We've been a part of great teams that won state and national titles, and so-so teams that won maybe half their games. All were valuable to my son's development, whether in skills or emotional maturity.

I will declare that the players who stayed with the in-park team and were considered the studs with tons of talent have not developed to the level my son has, even though my guy might not have been considered the most talented while he was there. (Basically he was being ignored in favor of the kids who'd be going to the local high school. My son wasn't going to end up at that school.) He has far surpassed them now, and I attribute it to the fact that we spent some dollars and gave him more opportunities. Talent without proper development is like a race car without tires. It could get you really far, but never has the chance.

If you are lucky enough to have a school program or rec program that offers excellent competition and development for your kid, that's great! For most that isn't the case and it isn't enough, and it will probably take a few dollars and a few travel teams along the way to find out if your kid can hack it in the wider world outside the park.

My dollars on teams and instruction were worth it. Talents were discovered that never would have been had we relied on the status-quo and accepted what the park had to offer us.

I use to think the associations that only allowed 1 team per age group were missing out on a lot while the other parks that allowed any number of teams that wanted to play from their association were reaping the rewards. Now I am beginning to feel that all parks should begin putting a cap on how many teams per age group can use their association as home base. I believe 1 per age group is too few, but the parks that have 10+ per age group are too over loaded to accomodate all the teams that need practice and field time which is hendering every one's developement.

Some parks raise funds that way, with travel subsidizing the rec teams and creating revenue for the facilities maintenance. I think those with too many teams for adequate practices end up balancing out in the end because teams get frustrated and find other facilities or dissolve if they aren't strong.

Another way for parks to limit teams and keep better teams is to have a rule: win fewer than 50% of your games in a season and you are on probation. If it happens twice in a row, your team is out. Depending on how many fields and park teams you have, leave open 1-2 slots per age group for independent teams (other than all-stars.) No more unless your facility is travel-only.

I like that idea. With the stipulation that when you are out after 2 years of losing more than 50% of your games you can't just simply move your team to a new park.

quote:

Originally posted by quillgirl:
Some parks raise funds that way, with travel subsidizing the rec teams and creating revenue for the facilities maintenance. I think those with too many teams for adequate practices end up balancing out in the end because teams get frustrated and find other facilities or dissolve if they aren't strong.

Another way for parks to limit teams and keep better teams is to have a rule: win fewer than 50% of your games in a season and you are on probation. If it happens twice in a row, your team is out. Depending on how many fields and park teams you have, leave open 1-2 slots per age group for independent teams (other than all-stars.) No more unless your facility is travel-only.

You know it's funny, looking back I actually can see when it all started happening in our area. When my older son was playing baseball in the rec leaques and all-star summers, travel ball (at the earliest)started around age 13 or 14. Even then, many parents opted to stay in the local community rec program that had a great reputation, good coaching and competitive summer teams (1 per age group, players voted on by the league, not political)These kids still played competitively and had a great chance of making their high school teams.

When my younger son started playing; we had one 6 year old summer all star team, one at 7...then, bang, at 8 everybody left for travel...not kidding; we didn't have even 1 returning coach or all star returning to the rec league....my family ended up going to travel too, against our better judgement.......and it's been great for my son in terms of skill development and experience...but I miss the sense of community we had at the park.

Every year there are more and more teams in every age group and the talent is spread thinner...I guess it does give some more kids a chance to play at a higher level, but it kind of defeats the purpose.

The biggest challenge to forming a team is finding field time. Without a field, teams have a really hard time staying together. It would be hard to keep a team from reforming/moving to another field, but they'd eventually run out of grass within a reasonable distance from home.

It all works out in the end: The strongest teams go on, the weaker ones die. And that leaves the strong players from the weak teams (always 1 or 2) free to move up to better teams. That's why you see more travel teams in the younger age groups, and fewer in the older groups.

I'm with you baseballmomO3. When my oldest son played baseball, we didn't even have a travel team at our association. Coming up with my younger son, the one currently a freshman, our association's youngest travel team was 11 years old which formed the year he turned 11. Untill that year the youngest travel team was 13. He was asked to play for them, but at that time I declined. That was back when travel was really competitive and though I knew he was good enough, I wanted to allow him the pleasure of playing for fun at least one more year. I was burned out by my parents at a young age and lost the joy of the game. I didn't want to take that away from him. Now, as you said, they are beginning travel at the age of 6 and 7. That completely defeats the purpose of community sports and I think is going to rob a lot of kids of a lot of fun and eventually decrease the amount of kids wanting to play as they get older. In the long run I think this is going to go so far as to affect the competition we see in the Major Leagues unless something is done to regulate things soon.

For example; we just played a practice game (we're 14 & under) against a team of 16 & unders. We killed them. They couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and couldn't catch a cold!

I don't know what can be done to be honest. My son is currently playing 14u and as I look at the different parks around, there are at most two teams per park. ECB is the exception, I think they have 7 or 8 teams in 14u. That is crazy. I think each team only gets the field 1x per week and if it falls on a tournament, they are out. Anyway, in Roswell, there are only 2 teams allowed for the age group and really that may be too many. The one team had 16 players on the roster to start (15 now - one quit) and our team struggled to fill the roster with quality players. There were kids we could have taken, but we want to play at a high level against quality competition. We actually only have about half the team from Roswell. The problem is that every park (and there are tons of them) has at least one travel team per age group.

Another thing that is making an impact is the "feeder teams". There are a ton of them out there as well. And they are not in a specific feeder league. They are just travel teams with the name of their corresponding High School. Most of them don't even have participation from the HS coaches. They are usually not that good, but they do take 1 or 2 good players each that would be playing on a regular travel team.

Like I said, not sure what to do, but it sure seems like things are spiraling out of control. It used to be if you played travel, you were one of the better players. Now it seems if you want to play travel, you just try out for 10 or 12 teams until someone takes you. I'm not very impressed anymore just because someone says they are playing travel.

Feeder teams:
Not usually affiliated with the HS Coach, but often formed by a group of middle school parents with the hopes of having potential players of a certain HS get a leg up on preparing for HS tryouts. Kids from that HS given preference, with any extra openings sometimes filled by outsiders. Some HS coaches actually require up and coming players to be on a feeder team, keeping tabs... (I don't agree with this.) Because the pool is limited to kids from that middle school, or area, they aren't always much better than rec teams. HS coaches don't have enough time to run feeder teams in addition to HS team.

ECB: They take lots of players and teams because their travel-only facility requires lots of money to run. Some teams are very good, others are just ok. You also pay for the cache of the affiliation. There are far fewer teams in the older age groups than in the 14U and younger. And the lack of field time causes plenty of folks/teams to seek other venues that allow more practice. Big attrition in the 15U group at the end of last year. I think 4 or 5 teams dissolved.

I think travel is fine at 11 or 12, but it's a little bit silly before that. As for the loss of community, we found parents we truly enjoyed on each team we've played for. I still keep up with their sons on their HS teams! And I also keep up with the kids my son played with locally, too. Our community is the baseball community, which is really pretty small and tight, but not necessarily local.

quillgirl
You're correct about the feeder teams. Proceed with caution! We played for one last season because we were told that the high school program would be involved. It wasn't, other than wearing the colors and name. Most players were going to our high school, a couple were not and we didn't pick up a couple that were...

We left a more competitive team and better coaching to find this out....it's our own fault (not enough due diligence) and there is no feeder team for our high school this season...so there was never a real "program" just some dads getting some kids together.

While our head coach was a good guy, one of the assistants who spent all last year making sure his son got special treatment is now talking to the high school coaches as "the feeder team" coach and sharing his insite....

I'm sure they've heard it all before

I also agree that there is some sense of community in travel ball. We did exactly the same thing...hoping our friends from past teams made their high school teams. Keeping up with how its going...but there is something to be said for the "good old days" of seeing the little guys on one field and the "bigger guys" across the way...who knows, maybe I'm just being sentimental....

Yeah, I agree. My younger son returned to the community park because he wasn't interested in highly competitive ball, just fun ball. That's ok with me, too. Older son left at 11 and hasn't looked back, but it's fun to run into neighbors at the park and chat.

I retract my comment about ECB being heavy in the younger groups and less so in the olders. Just checked the site and several new teams seemed to have popped up to fill in for the ones that left, plus a couple of new ones. Good luck getting any practice at all, guys! LOL!

ECB is an example of my point. How can the kids be expected to progress to the level they need to if you can't get field time for a practice?

quote:

Originally posted by quillgirl:
Yeah, I agree. My younger son returned to the community park because he wasn't interested in highly competitive ball, just fun ball. That's ok with me, too. Older son left at 11 and hasn't looked back, but it's fun to run into neighbors at the park and chat.

I retract my comment about ECB being heavy in the younger groups and less so in the olders. Just checked the site and several new teams seemed to have popped up to fill in for the ones that left, plus a couple of new ones. Good luck getting any practice at all, guys! LOL!

Sometimes it works out and you get practice at ECB. Teams have use of/ are assigned a practice field, and those fields include surrounding high schools like Lassiter, Kell, Pope, Sprayberry, etc. Not just ECB. But if your assigned school makes it deep into play offs, you don't get the field until June and that kills all early practices--our team's situation last year. You have to go to a batting cage and throw in a big parking lot somewhere, or find alternate grass. It's pretty frustrating and there is not much development. I know a number of teams last year practiced in parking lots.

A number of ECB teams are basically tournament teams. Good talent, not much practice, just show up for games. The point is having a summer full of extra games beyond HS season, and competing against talent from other states and regions. That's the up-side of travel ball.