quote:

Originally posted by play baseball:

quote:

Originally posted by TG:
I believe there will be a day where the medical studies will show the physical damage from kids playing five, six games a weekend, nine months a year for ten years.

I believe that day has come already. Talk to any orthopedic surgeon and he/she will tell you that their patients are younger than ever before and they have more serious injuries requiring surgeries. Not just baseball, but all the other sports, too. Year round sports and specialization is very detrimental to a young athlete's body. No, make that an athlete's body.

quote:

I'm watching kids who started intense travel several years before my son having arm problems at fourteen and fifteen years old. Some started having problems at eleven and twelve. These kids aren't any better than my son (some not as good) for playing USSSA starting at 10U rather than 13U.

Pros don't play more than two a day. Colleges don't play more than two a day. Legion doesn't play more than two a day. These are physically developed athletes. More isn't always better. There's a point where more is just more.

There are times I think it's the parents that get hooked on the travel lifetyle, not the kids. It gives them a life and some sort of perverted bragging rights to how they spend all their time and money on travel. My daughter has aged out of 18U softball. Some of the parents don't have any idea what to do with themselves without tournaments to hang out at every weekend. They joke single games (college) seem over before they start.

While I enjoy the game and the travel team, I can't wait until Legion ball when a majority of my son's schedule will be playing single games three or four times a week.

Great post.

The situation that my family is in is that we have experienced travel ball with my two boys--both whom have had surgeries--one Tommy John and one labrum. We learned quite a lot from our orthopedic surgeons. But now that we know what we know, we sure do not want to allow the same things to happen to our softball-playing daughters. Only thing, the other families on the team and the coaches don't seem to realize what we have learned the hard way and do not cut back at all on the softball schedules.... training, practice, fall ball, etc. There is no shut down at all for them. Of course, it will NEVER happen to their daughters. So we are the ones who have a "bad attitude"--when in fact, we don't--we just don't want any of the girls to have happen to them in 4 to 5 years or sooner what happened to our boys--at age 17 and 19. It's a real dilemma.