Why be a Firecracker? Seriously

[tbjd33]

Agreed... SCA's have 13 teams and CA have 10 teams if I'm correct. Crackers have 102 teams.
.

That's in CA right?

Uhhh yup...

[ah43]

I do not mean this to be a bag session on the Tony Rico or the Firecracker org.
As an outsider with no skin in the game, my question is more to the point of,,,
there are so many and it is so large that hasn't it lost it's appeal?
Two years ago while dd was still playing TB we would identify these teams as Firecrackers and Buttcrackers.
The few real class 'A 'Firecracker teams are way out numbered by the watered down version.
Do parents ride the coat tails and pretend that no one knows the difference.
Do colleges see this as spam when they receive so many Firecracker letters.
Do they know the difference? Does Tony put his name on anything that brings in money?
There is nothing wrong with it if that is what it is. I do suppose there is strength in numbers and it does create better odds of winning something or having one of fifty teams come near a title.
Educate me.

Join a FC team and find out why....

[extiger]

Teams with the Firecracker logo do in fact have the option to go to Tony for hitting, fielding, mental training and seminars. The catch is you have to go to him he will not come out to a team practice. Oh yea and its not included in the dues. So most coaches don't lie when they say they have ties to Tony.

My DD plays for one of the more successful FC teams. I will say that many college coaches are attracted to the Firecracker name.

[Mark H]

College coaches pretty quick figure out who's who. If a brand has good teams and bad teams the coaches know. After the first tournament anyway.

If the team is in the right places and the player does her job of communicating they will be fine. If the brand name gets you on the right fields rather than the fields 45 minutes away with mostly lower level teams then maybe it's money well spent. If your team has a brand name and still plays the remote fields with no college coaches then you might want to reconsider your strategy.

[BigPeaches]

My DD was on an independent team for 4 seasons. I guess you'd say we were high B. This past season as a second year 14U, they decided to step up to ASA A ball. They did reasonably well, Georgia is tough competition. We didn't qualify for Nationals so we went to Southern Nationals, which was fine by me since it was in my backyard and not across the country. We ended up in 12th place.

Not terrible, but definitely not what I thought of when I thought of the Firecrackers name. So, when the coach said the team was joining the Firecrackers I was pretty much like Then they threw the $1500.00 on me and I was really like (probably doesn't seem like much to ya'll but we paid half that as an independent team)

Coach told us that having that name on the jersey will get us into better showcases, Atlanta Legacy and Colorado, and more college coaches will take a look at us with that name over the independant team name we had. We decided if we were going to pay that kind of money, we wanted to be on a true A team so we didn't go with them. You can have whatever you want on your jersey but it won't take long for the college coaches to figure out you're just part of the organization and not a "real" Firecracker. Now I see they are popping up in North Carolina, Nevada, Massachusetts, and Utah, so is it really prestigious anymore at all??

Side note: I'd be really surprised if said team is actually still together by the time Legacy and Sparkler come along.

[B34R DOWN]

Tony has made the Firecrackers name into a franchise brand... Good for him... I think that as long as a few Firecracker teams do well it still brings recognition to the brand... That will translate into other Firecracker teams getting a second glance as opposed to just being another independent team... It's up the individual teams to produce...

[Black&Red00]

Right here, Tony Rico himself tells you why to be a Firecracker.

https://www.fullcountsoftball.com/2014/ ... nwide-922/