Are you encouraged or discouraged?

TrampLineman

Hall of Fame
Jul 21, 2010
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Like has been mentioned, burnout and the travel are your two biggest issues with travel ball. If you live near a big city it's better as you wouldn't have to travel far for practice and all of that but expect to travel for the tournaments. If you don't live near a big city (like Birmingham) then you're going to spend most of your free time traveling to practice and spending EVERY weekend at tournaments. If you can't handle that or your kid can't then there is no reason even doing travel ball. It's called travel ball for a reason. But if your kid is dominating Little League, Cal Ripken, etc. and just can't get any competition then he/she needs to be playing travel ball as the competition level is out the roof compared to the city leagues.

My youngest nephew plays travel ball and this is the first year he's had a local travel team to play for. They are a top 5 team in the state in his age group and play all over Alabama and some even in Florida over all the warm months of the year. Before that they were traveling to Clanton from Sylaucaga for practice and then God knows where from there for tournaments. They practiced all the time then and still do so now too. He doesn't even bother with city leagues anymore and only does travel ball and school ball now.
 

Bamabuzzard

FB Moderator
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Aug 15, 2004
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In our area we are seeing a "pull back" from travel ball. As the cost of playing and traveling keeps rising. A lot of middle class families are having to make a decision. Go broke over 9-10/11-12 year old baseball for the sake of better competition or pay $125 registration fee and $90 uniform cost to play in your local REC league and play in the occasional local weekend tournament to get some extra reps and experience. The rising costs has yet to deter the upper middle class and the rich. But our Dixie Youth league saw a 40% increase in participation this season and most of them came from travel ball.
 

Ebay

BamaNation Citizen
Jan 18, 2017
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In our area we are seeing a "pull back" from travel ball. As the cost of playing and traveling keeps rising. A lot of middle class families are having to make a decision. Go broke over 9-10/11-12 year old baseball for the sake of better competition or pay $125 registration fee and $90 uniform cost to play in your local REC league and play in the occasional local weekend tournament to get some extra reps and experience. The rising costs has yet to deter the upper middle class and the rich. But our Dixie Youth league saw a 40% increase in participation this season and most of them came from travel ball.
I agree that the cost is getting crazy. I spoke last summer to a Big 12 Head Coach who said for the cost of a summer of travel ball and showcases where your son may get seen by a coach or scout, you could go to 10-20 college showcase camps where you will be guaranteed to be seen by the entire staff at each one. He left unsaid that his staff would make more money if everyone did that but he does have a point. My son who now plays D1 ball played the standard travel schedule and had his best outing, striking out 11 batters in 7 innings at the Perfect Game complex north of Atlanta...and no one was there. You just never know.
 
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Bamabuzzard

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I agree that the cost is getting crazy. I spoke last summer to a Big 12 Head Coach who said for the cost of a summer of travel ball and showcases where your son may get seen by a coach or scout, you could go to 10-20 college showcase camps where you will be guaranteed to be seen by the entire staff at each one. He left unsaid that his staff would make more money if everyone did that but he does have a point. My son who now plays D1 ball played the standard travel schedule and had his best outing, striking out 11 batters in 7 innings at the Perfect Game complex north of Atlanta...and no one was there. You just never know.
And I bet that would still be cheaper than traveling the insane number of weekends travel ball parents travel, having to not only pay the "fee" for their child to play on the team. But also paying for lodging and meals for not only mom and dad. But for the younger siblings who have to come as well. That isn't even counting paying for gas.
 

bamajake

1st Team
Sep 27, 2001
691
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Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA
A long way to go. Like Bo. We missed a golden opportunity to take a huge leap in baseball had we made the decision to build a new stadium overlooking the river. Yet we put more lipstick on a pig at the Joe and clarified the fact that we don't mind mediocrity in baseball. Spent a ton of money and we're still middle to lower tier in baseball, at best.
Where exactly along the river could we have built a stadium? I travel up and down Jack Warner Parkway f/k/a River Road on a regular basis. There is not enough room between the river and Jack Warner Parkway to build a stadium. Don't suggest closing the road because it is one of the busiest in Tuscaloosa. Building on the south side of the road would have been meaningless because it then wouldn't have been on the river and the advantages of a "riverfront" park wouldn't exist. Believe me, I love waterfront ballparks, but when the river is 100 feet from a heavily traveled road, it just won't work.
 

Ebay

BamaNation Citizen
Jan 18, 2017
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And I bet that would still be cheaper than traveling the insane number of weekends travel ball parents travel, having to not only pay the "fee" for their child to play on the team. But also paying for lodging and meals for not only mom and dad. But for the younger siblings who have to come as well. That isn't even counting paying for gas.
Good point...the costs just add up. The benefit is better competition to prep the boys for what the will face in HS. I have seen rec players go to HS tryouts and be stunned that they can't keep up. Then listen to the parents complain about politics being a part of a coaches decision.
 

Tug Tide

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Aug 27, 2006
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Regarding the travel ball world, I believe most of the above statements are true to varying degrees.
A little background, my son is an upcoming freshman and has been playing with a local travel (all from our county and most within 10 miles). I’ve been an assistant coach every step of the way. Starting this fall he will play with a more “regional” travel team

The cost discussion: Absolutely, no doubt it's expensive. We wouldn’t trade it though. When we finished 2nd in Disney’s International Salute to Baseball a few years ago, we made so many memories away from the field. When that tournament comes up in conversation it’s usually parents or players talking about something goofy from Magic Kingdom or Blizzard Beach. We have two younger sons whose absolute best friends are their “Baseball brothers”. I can’t begin to estimate what I’ve spent on baseball, but you can’t really put a price on those good times we’ve had. The friendships we’ve built with a few families will be life long multigenerational good times.
Heck, we spent a weekend north of Orlando a couple months and played 3 innings due to weather. After sitting around the complex and hotel ....ing and moaning about the rain, my wife says to me “I just bought tickets for us, _______, and _______ (son's best friends) to go to Braves spring training game tomorrow at Disney!” I smiled, kissed her and said “I love you baby!” . We shifted batbags and some luggage to the friends parent’s cars, loaded our SUV to max passenger capacity and off we went. On the way home, during a rest stop whiffleball game one of those kids stopped cold and came over to my wife and I. He said “Coach, Mrs Jenn I’ve never been to MLB game before and I love y’all so much, I’ll never forget today”.
The burnout discussion: This is a very real situation. Coaches and parents really must plan practices, tournaments very wisely or no doubt a certain % of kids on any team will get hurt eventually. I’m not talking about sore, I mean injured. We’re fortunate where we live to be able ease into practice in Jan, play a tournament in Feb, then usually twice a month through June. We have typically shut it down at that point, it’s just so dang hot in July/August. Now, we have entered the summer prior to his freshman year and he is playing for his HS summer team also. The HS summer schedule goes until first week of July, at that point he will have a 10 week throwing shutdown. His fall HS schedule will be Oct-Mid Nov with 3-4 tournaments mixed in. Then it’s another 8 weeks of no throwing before HS spring season (no tournaments) starts ramping up. HS coach communicates very well when he wants to pitch him, wants to know when/ how much he did or will be pitching in a tournament. He then plans my son’s workout/conditioning accordingly. We’re very fortunate in that regard. Most of the large baseball organizations had adopted some form of the MLB PitchSmart guidelines, that detail daily pitch counts and required days rest.
I would encourage any parent/coach of a 12 yr old or higher to invest in throwing programs by either Paul Reddick or Alan Jaeger, both can easily be found online. Paul can at times, mostly rightfully so, be critical of some of the negative things (like overuse) surrounding the travel ball world.
Also, if you’re a baseball parent a HIGHLY recommend reading Mike Matheny’s (St Louis Cardinals Manager) book “The Matheny Manifesto”. You can google it and read the original letter he wrote to parents wanting him to coach a team, but it’s well worth reading the entire book.
The competition discussion: This is the real payoff, for the countless hours at practice, extra oil changes, and roll-away bed requests. As I said at the beginning of this post, my son is an upcoming freshman. He’s a big strong kid, 6’2”/175. The pitching he has faced at the last four tournaments is consistently better than everyone in our county he will face on JV, with the exception of 2 kids. He played in his first HS summer game this week and hit his first HS HR. He was asked to play in the varsity game today and burned the left fielder for a triple. 2 of 3 pitchers he faced today, upcoming HS juniors wouldn’t pitch for roughly 1/3 of the teams he will face in a 14U tournament this weekend ( yes most of the car is loaded, and we leave in about 6 hrs for a 6 hr drive).

This was no doubt my longest post ever and TF and I you made it to the end thanks. While I am Bama football fan, I’m a baseball guy first.
Overall the travel baseball experience has been a hugely rewarding choice for our entire family.
 
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