Daughter is only 6 so she's just in novice so I don't know much about the national stuff. I believe there's 3 or 4 main organizations that gyms can compete in. This weekend was the national competition for one of them, All Star Summit, I believe. I could be way off on that hut I thought Thursday-Friday was "nationals" for one of the organizations. My wife does most of it, I'm still at the office when they practice. I just go to the competitions like a good dad should.
Ours does not. We had to be there was 1:30 for them to meet and warm up, they went on stage at like 2:40, awards for their age group and another age group was at 4, and we were able to leave. There wouldn't have been room for everyone if all teams/parents stayed the entire time. This was only 2 age groups and the area we were in was probably 3/4 full. They had 2 stages running on opposite ends of the convention center.
Baseball more than any sport really needs to dial back the travel ball nonsense. It is just terrible for your arm and only getting worse. I probably wouldn’t let my son pitch regularly until he is 16+
Coworker whose daughter is in dance recently talked about how how her and her daughter were at the arena literally all day till 10 pm when they finalized judging and whatnot. My parents spent plenty of days at our little league especially when we hosted tournaments but the general time committment seemed way less than now. And to your earlier post yeah spent plenty of time helping out when we hosted the "regional" stuff, lived on burgers, fries, and candy bars.
You have families spending thousands of dollars on travel baseball so their kid can be the next great player while some kid in a Latin American country is playing on a field that's 75% rocks and is a million times better because he actually likes the sport.
A class travel softball here, it’s super expensive! We typically play in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Indiana. Next summer that will include Colorado, and Californi.
1 of like 35 players at a good baseball program living it up with 11.7 total baseball scholarships for the team!!!!!!!!
When we were growing up, we played during the week, and maybe Saturdays. My kids tournaments start on Friday mornings and run through Sunday, so if it’s during the school year, they have to miss Friday and sometimes Monday depending on how far away. Colorado and California are both a week long.
I remember growing up, it was no throwing curve balls until you could shave lol. No clue if that's still the general rule. We had fall ball but not a lot of kids played it. With all the pitching injuries, I do wonder if playing year round is part of it. Seems like MLB pitchers have more injuries than in the past, but throw less innings than guys did 20+ years ago. And baseball either the travel teams is expensive. I know Cutch said he got lucky because he was really good friends with a kid whose parents had money and they would take him with to the tournaments. Said if it wasn't for them, he'd have gone football
The time commitment is unreal. My 2 sons both play rugby and kickboxing. One also plays soccer, and the other boxes. Every day of the week, there is at least one training session or game/competition. My eldest is a black belt, and will be competing in the World Championships for the second time in October. He's 15 and started at 4yo. He's talking about quitting after the Worlds to focus more on boxing. Kickboxing is more like a business, whereas the boxing coaches do it for the love of the sport, so I'm not upset about the change.
This is a weird take. Other countries’ academy systems aren’t any better. If anything, our Uber-specialization and year-round devotion is just now catching up in a lot of sports. Luka Doncic has been with professional teams since he was 8.
Their academy systems are substantially better than our shit system because they aren't gatekept behind exorbitant costs of participation.
They’re better for a lot of reasons at producing professional athletes, but they’re still exploitative and generally bad for kids.
The MLS has a free academy system in the US. There are just thousands of parents whose kids aren’t good enough to play for them (myself included) who pay through the nose for the step below that with hopes of getting “called up” one day. The US soccer system: In town rec - free Small town travel team coached by a parent - low hundreds EDP travel team - high hundreds ECNL Regional team - thousands ENCL (non-regional) Team - tens of thousands MLS Academy team - free again So many for profit clubs enticing parents to pay so much money for the hope of not having to pay it later.
You aren’t kidding about time commitment. My three boys are spread out between soccer, lacrosse, baseball, flag football and track. I coach three of the teams which takes up -at minimum- about 14 hours a week. That’s not counting going to watch the other 5 teams I don’t coach. We’re about two weeks into no days without sports until June 7th.
Travel ball is 100% for the adults and I will never be convinced otherwise Just the most insane people I've ever come across and I've lived decades upon decades in the fucking panhandle of the swamp prison state
I know a handful of parents that got suckered into the year round thousands category only to realize that a) it was an obvious money grab to keep the system full and b) their kids didn’t care for soccer enough (or weren’t good enough) to devote that much time to it. We turned down the ‘opportunity’ to join that club.
At this point, it’s just an arms race to see who can outspend each other. Robbing a travel team of their bats alone would net you five figures at Nole0515 pawn shop.
I'm all but certain he sees it on a weekly, if not daily, basis Tallahassee Heat has tball teams and shit
Wrestling parents are worse due to 90% of them having little man syndrome to complement their sports psychosis.
Every sport claims it’s the worst as a point of pride because it really is about the egos of the adults. Tennis Golf Hockey Baseball Soccer Swimming Lacrosse Football Basketball Every one of those sports has a terrible youth culture that is hellbent on burning out 1000 kids in the hopes of adding another “D1 player” tick mark to the resume (so they can charge more for the next cycle).
Gymnastics is pretty bad, and there’s the added threat of being sexually assaulted once the child “makes it.”
I only have boys and am thankful for that because girls youth sports are fucking savage. The 12 yo travel softball team is likely the most dangerous gang in your community. And that’s not counting the real nasty stuff that you mentioned.
My 7 year old loves all sports with a passion. We will play him in as many different local rec leagues as we can and put off any travel/club affiliation for as long as possible. Hopefully we don’t specialize too much til high school. Hes a little kid and inherited his father’s speed so he’s not exactly dominating any of them. But as long as he keeps having fun we will continue to sign him up for as much as he wants.
My 5 year old daughter has zero interest in traditional sports. She does dance and gymnastics and enjoys it. Also doesn’t mind coloring at her brothers games. At some point we will force her to do soccer and or softball just for the exposure but it would be pretty shocking if she took to it at this point. Maybe tennis when she’s older. She likes wearing tennis dresses.
I was reading about an academy soccer club called Surf from San Diego which won multiple national championships at multiple age groups last year alone. They sound like a D1 baseball team that signs 60 kids for 30 spots expecting to cut half of them a month later, except they’re doing it for every age group from U9 to U19. The Google reviews are amazing how pissed parents are. “The recruiter said that my kid was amazing and the missing piece to winning another natty so we gave up our current club but as soon as my $5k check cleared he was demoted to the practice squad.”
If your kid is a pitcher, and you don’t make him take 4-6 months off a year from pitching you are either 1. an uninformed person 2. A huge asshole Everything today is velocity and your UCL only has so many max effort throws in it
No clue. Just remember having friends whose sister cheered and they would complain that they had to stay in the convention hall the entire day because they had to “support the other teams”
I used to watch Saints games at a sports bar next to UT-Arlington’s arena and every other weekend was some cheer competition. The bar would be full of dad’s who snuck away to watch football and get a brief reprieve from the noise
I go to Fayetteville a lot bc I like to get drunk and be miserable watching my football team embarrass themselves. There is a hotel 15 minutes north that is way cheaper and nicer than the hotels in Fayetteville. My wife will not stay there bc the first time she did there was a little league tournament, parents were all wasted drunk while hundreds of kids were unsupervised and being little dickheads all over pool, elevators, hallways fuck baseball parents
IMO travel ball is about development, and seeing the best competition. If your kid is good enough, they need to be seeing the best competition regularly, cause most school sports until the varsity level are a joke, my kid plays school sports too. Our ace is 64mph at 12 years old, and most of the other top travel teams have girls throwing just as fast, the fastest we saw in school ball this year was 50 max.
They just need to increase spin while maintaining arm slot angle on every pitch to confuse batters. Sounds easy.
I hear what you are saying, but I doubt there’s a pitcher in America taking 4-6 months off, I doubt most of them even take a month off.
Professional pitchers that are paid tens of millions takes several months off over the winter. They start at 25 pitches in March bc of that. If a 28 year old ace is taking months off, probably a good thing for a 12 yr old too.
But then how could he justify the 4 day weekends and his kid not going to school to play baseball games that don’t matter?
This is from a former MLB pitching coach... http://www.worldwidebaseballprospects.com/pages-added/off-season-pitching-program.php The season starts in April and runs through September unless you are lucky enough to get to the playoffs and World Series. That is about 7-8 months of pitching. So you can understand why it is so important to have a good rest, recovery and a strength building program in the off-season. When the season is over most guys just rest for awhile, still knowing, that it will take 2 months of throwing to be ready for spring training starting in March. One more thing. This program is designed for young men, who, for the most part, only prepare themselves to pitch. If your pitchers are younger than 18 I would consider a more cautious approach to their workload, rest and time to recover
That seems like an issue to me. If a team paying someone $40m a year thinks it's best their investment rests their arm for several months after the season, I tend to trust their opinion more than a dad pushing their kid too hard.
I assumed we were talking boys baseball. I don't have any reference on what girl pitchers need for rest. I've seen some in college start back to back days so it's obvious different bc of the motion.