by Nicelag » Thu Jan 08, 2015 4:23 am
SydsDad,
Not to be rude but if you are from a "C" league considering a move travel I might reconsider. Depending on your league this could be equivalent to jumping up 2 levels of play. May I suggest you start by finding a good "B" league in your area. In most cases there is a difference in the level of play, and sometimes it is significant. Then maybe consider travel next year if that's not enough. Either way I am in your shoes and here is my journey:
I know this is long, but I really don’t think that telling you “don’t play travel at 10U” will help you much. I have fought and fretted over this same decision myself. My daughter is a first year 10, an all-star, and very good player in a very good "B" rec league. She pitches, plays first and outfield and hits well. My first step in this process was to educate myself regarding the travel ball scene so as to properly weigh all of my options. What I found is that if you don't or haven't done this you are making a big mistake and more importantly doing your daughter a huge disservice!
I have been researching travel ball, and weighing the thought of going to travel or staying in rec for about a year and a half. First I wanted to find out if my daughter could not only play and compete in travel, but compete with the top half of the players on the better teams. Sure there are plenty of teams out there that she could be a star on, but that's not good enough at this age, in my opinion. I didn't want my ego to make a move that my daughter was going to ultimately suffer for in the long run. I have talked to many coaches, scouted many teams, been a practice player and actually played on a higher level travel ball team this past fall. I can honestly say that I’ve put myself through a crash course and have gotten a pretty good education.
First of all at the 10U level it is very important that you shop coaches and not teams at this point. Your daughter is not being recruited at this age so the big name i.e. So Cal Athletics, BatBusters, Firecrackers etc are just not as critical. What is critical is that your daughter gets the training she needs and learns the game. All of the big organizations have expanded to the point that they don't have the mystique they used to have, nor do they have enough quality coaches to run all of these teams. Bottom line is big organization does not mean good coaching anymore!
Next, my wife and I began to scout teams in our area. I went on Heybucket, and found out where teams were playing in my area. This gave me the opportunity to watch several teams in one location. This is a great way to scout coaching staffs as well. During tournaments coaches tend to show their true colors, meaning you will find out if it's about the girls or about them. When I found a team or teams that played well I would wait for the coach to have some down time and talk to him regarding his philosophy, schedule etc. Some teams run off of the coach’s philosophies, goals and schedules, while the bigger organizations run off of an organizational philosophy and goals.
Once I found teams that played well and were well coached I would find out where they practiced so as to watch a couple of practices. Here you find out if they are good coaches, or are just able to coach good players. Lots of people can coach good players, but not near as many can actually coach or teach a player how to play the game. If you find something you like, talk to the coach, explain your situation and what you are trying to accomplish. Then ask if maybe you can be a practice player. Some coaches like this and some don't, but it is beneficial for a coach to do this at this age because if a player is good they can get a direct line to her. Be careful if playing rec while doing this as there are rules that can prohibit you from playing all-stars if you violate them.
This past fall we tried the travel ball circuit. The season went very well and answered several questions for me. We went in with a couple of goals. We hoped that she would have fun, and that she was as good as I thought she was. Good news was that she was as good as we thought she was, the bad news was she was as good as we thought she was. Surprisingly finding out that she was pretty darn good only made our decision harder. Sounds odd I know. The reason it made things more difficult is that it kicked that ego thing into high gear again, and when that happens your thoughts are cloudy with a chance of showers at best lol.
Now came the hard part, do we stay in travel or go back to rec ball for the spring season? This was very difficult and took a lot of thought. Even people from our rec league told us they would love to see my DD stay, but if we went to travel nobody would question our decision. There were several questions we had to answer for our DD and ourselves:
1. What did she want to do? – She loved the competitiveness of travel, but wanted to stay in rec at least one more year.
2. Why did she want to stay? – She wanted to play all-stars. She even asked if we could play travel ball, and then go back to rec for all-stars.
3. Why did we want to go to travel ball? – We welcomed the increase in skill level, and her level of play increased accordingly. We also basically got tired of people telling my DD not to throw the ball so hard. Though we told her it was her job to throw and the other players job to catch, she kept hearing the others and would only throw at 60%. We also got frustrated with her complacency knowing she could show up at 60% and still be better than everyone else.
4. Why should we stay in rec ball? – The excitement of all stars, and the comradery that is obtained through traveling with friends and the higher level of play.
After much thought and discussions with respected members of the softball community we made our decision to return to rec ball. The main underlying factors to our decision were:
1. We all enjoy the all-star season. My DD loves the almost 3 months of traveling with friends, the higher level of play and the fact that she is playing for something i.e. medals and trophies. We finished 2nd in 8U B state last year and she feels like she has some unfinished business.
2. Though travel ball is very competitive there is no brass ring at the 10U level (unless of course you want to travel to the mid-west or south often). Other than the occasional tournaments you are mostly playing “friendlies” in which there are no trophies or medals, and over time she got frustrated not playing for anything. Question is did we want to do two years of practices and friendlies where there is nothing at stake? My DD’s answer was “no, that wouldn’t be very fun”.
The bottom line is this, travel ball is not going anywhere, and there is plenty of time. In closing I would say that if the decision to move to travel ball at 10 years old is easy for you then you probably aren't looking at the whole picture objectively.
Oh, and be very careful playing for friends. It can be very difficult and often leads to the destruction of the relationship. Did I say not to play for friends? Good Luck