How on earth did I miss all the travel ball discussion.....
My thoughts.
It really depends on where you live and frankly if your kid loves the sport or not. We live in Versailles and our league is fine for tball and coach pitch but at that point when it gets to kid pitch, there's only enough kids left to have two non competitive teams. Other counties' around us like Anderson are in the same boat, so both leagues have to host each other to play other competition. We tried it with my older son one season and 75% of the kids in that league couldn't throw with accuracy, barely could catch, were fairly horrible at the plate, and frankly had little baseball knowledge because they not played much ball. (Not their fault)
Our boys have played travel ball in some form since their tball days and frankly them playing down to our local leagues talent would do nothing but hurt them. So we are kind of either forced to play travel ball, or drive to Lexington for them to play in a league that's packed with politics, daddy ball, and in many cases league all star teams can be preselected before the season even begins.
So in some cases, travel ball can be kind of a necessity like in our case, and in other cases, its parents simply wanting to get away from league BS politics and they move to travel. Others are insane and think at 6 their kids should be playing Triple A level ball and be out of state every weekend with a 100+ game schedule.
With that said, I do think there are many organisations that even at young ages go way overboard with the amount of games they expect these young kids to play. Some even want your kid to basically only play baseball year round, never letting your child have the opportunity to play football, basketball, etc because of fall ball, winter sessions, and basically never slowing down. And that's fine for the parents that want that, but after my youngest son had some growth plate issues last year and speaking with a several sports doctors at UK, the number of youth arm and shoulder issues are on a tremendous rise because too many kids are only playing baseball year round, and too many coaches are not using pitch counts correctly. Our local travel team played one of the main Lexington leagues top All Star teams in a summer travel tournament game a couple years ago and their 10 year old pitched over 100 pitches in one game. AS A 10 YEAR OLD. Does winning a stupid tournament game at 10 years old warrant a coach or parent risking their kids arm? To some, I guess so.
We've had our boys on both local travel teams that play around Central Kentucky and they've played on Double A level Travel teams in Lexington that focus on USSSA only tournaments, some hours away, and sometimes travel states away for baseball. Currently we decided as a family that local travel baseball is what fits our family the best. The boys aren't forced to be year round baseball players but get excellent instruction and improve yearly, we travel at max an hour away, not states away, and they have the ability to play other sports which is good for their bodies and as athletes. Neither of my sons at 10 & 12 are ready to commit to baseball as their future sport and Im not pushing them too. Them playing other sports like Football, Soccer, and Basketball has been great in their overall athletic abilities and taught them different things they have applied to baseball too.
So to the people completely shitting on youth travel teams, E.A.D. Being around this stuff as long as I have, I know far too well that league ball, especially several in Lexington, have its own set of issues. There are some insano league coaches and league all-star team coaches, just as there are with some travel ball teams and coaches. To the leagues and travel teams really pushing young kids to play year round, I caution them because I can give you dozens of names of amazing kid athletes that simply got burned out with baseball by the time they got to high school and simply had enough with the sport.
Do I wish every community could just have a great, local league like I grew up with in Shelbyville, and that kids didn't have to travel at all for youth baseball? Sure. But that's not always the case anymore. Travel Teams, Little Leagues, Tournaments, and dumbass parents are all to blame for where the game is now and unfortunately with the demise of leagues nationally and growth in travel ball, it's not going to end anytime soon. With those here with young kids playing baseball, just be smart, join a team or league you feel your son will most importantly have fun in, have good instruction and training, and will put your kids health first and growth first.
When they get older, and they've decided baseball is their sport, sometime in Middle School, they probably should be looking at joining a higher level travel team that does travel further to play high level competition so they are ready for the challenges of high school ball. When High School comes and they want to purse baseball into college, they need to be on a showcase team that is playing nationally in front of college coaches, is working on promoting the team's kids to college coaches and making sure they are at college workouts and skill showcases to maximize his chances of making a college team. It's all a process these days and much different then when many of us played many years ago.
For more questions, just reach out to
@B Rax because that dude just makes Baseball Killers, one after another.
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