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.