I have a buddy at work who has 3 kids and 2 of them are in some sport almost year-round. Seems almost every weekend they're always out of town for some tournament. Wife and I enjoy hanging out with them but the last few times we've tried they're out of town. One weekend the wife took one kid to Florida for a volleyball thing and he took his other 2 to Atlanta for a soccer tournament.
Here is the good news. Say little caydyn is good enough to play d1. By the time that happens they will absolutely hate baseball. one of my friends played baseball at rice when rice was actually good so I got to know a bunch of them and I think all but 1 legitimately hated playing baseball. Two of them got drafted and just said nah I’m good and didn’t play pro ball.
Last little bit on this: Travel leagues have nothing to do with getting kids out and playing against the best of the best. It merely serves as a barrier for kids of lesser means. First year of premier soccer, my town throttled the rest of the state. Within a couple of years we were in the lower divisions because a lot of the kids had to start dropping out and finding jobs or take care of siblings. The shit is literally just a way for middle and upper middle class people to pretend their kids are good because they can afford for them to LARP around the state and sometimes country.
This is a classic over-the-top page 4 TMB thread post. There are many problematic elements of the youth sports industry that have been well documented in the thread, but we don’t have to pretend that they have nothing to do with facing better competition or that it’s all a grand conspiracy so that middle class parents can force out the poor families.
A lot of cities have multiple travel teams that will travel to the same tournament. Those teams could just play each other. We're talking 8 and 12 yr olds here.
Yeah that’s not what I consider real travel. State wide there’s probably 5 or 6 travel tournaments every weekend, and it’s usually the same teams that play each other every weekend, with the occasional outlier. It’s basically still rec, with rec ball dads that just want to say their kid plays travel.
Yea but that's still travel ball. You could maybe sell me on kids that are 16-18 benefitting from playing great competition regularly, but foh with kids that are 8-12 yrs old. If you want your 8 yr old to face great competition, sign him up to play 10 yr olds. You don't need to travel all over the country to find other good 8 yr olds.
Commuting from Decatur to hsv isn’t really travel imo but to each their own, I think that’s what has really hurt rec
Oh na, that's not travel ball. Hell you can drive an hour on the interstate and still be in the same city here lol. To me, an hour drive is whatever. Driving 3-4 hours and staying in hotels, that's travel ball imo.
That’s what I’m saying, there’s probably 5-6 tournaments in state here every weekend, that I don’t consider travel. It’s just ball dads starting their own teams to say their kid plays travel.
My dad used to drive us from Decatur to Huntsville every Tuesday night for batting practice when we were like 12.
Both my kids do the “within an hour of home” ‘travel’/summer baseball. It costs $350 per kid for 6-8 tournaments over two months. It used to just be called the all star team back in my day. This is the first year we’ve had kids leave the league for the year round travel programs though. Parents wanted their 9 year olds playing 20+ weekends a year.
It’s pretty wild. It’s expensive to play youth sports these days and if your kid is an average to above average athlete then they won’t even play on HS teams these days unless they do all the extra stuff the other 90% of kids are doing with extra coaching, one on one lessons, etc etc. and starting it at young ages.
I have a bunch of middle school “travel ball” players who have some of the worst throwing and hitting fundamentals I’ve ever seen. Worse, the number of games they play has embedded those so deeply it takes an entire school season to get them corrected, at which point the dads get them back for their summer and fall seasons and they get fucked up again. Travel dads anointing their kids (really themselves) over a purchased status are truly the worst.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/sto...tchers-workloads-has-not-kept-them-healthier/ Saw this article and made me think of this thread
Our pitcher will regularly throw 100+ pitches on Saturday and then 150+ pitches again on Sunday. He also throws 200+ pitches in practice each week. No issues whatsoever. Spoiler It's coach pitch