This is going to be a strange post given that my son plays on a travel team, where I also assist the coach. (I'm the team's commissioner, which means I take care of stuff like stats, bench-coaching, arranging hotels, etc.)
There was no such thing as travel teams for kids when I was a kid. Okay, I'm sure in some parts of the world, they existed, but in an industrial midwestern town like Akron, deep in recurring recessions, you just didn't hear of it.
Everybody played Little League. If you were really good, you made the city's All-Star team. When you got to Junior High and High School, you played for the school. Yes, there were some other oddities like Senior League, but for the most part, that was the trajectory.
In the last 30 years, something has changed a bit. More talented kids no longer played in recreational leagues or Little League. They were selected to play for travel teams.
The reasons they played is the same reason my son plays for a travel team. The coaching is typically (though not always) a notch above. The schedule is a bit more intense. Our travel team is scheduled to play over 50 games this season if you include all our likely tournament games. Everything is a notch above what you might expect in the rec league.
In the case of my son's team, the equipment is better, the fields are better, the competition is better, the coaching is better, the parents are more involved, the team-mates are better. An extra note on the coaching: our coach is astounding. I wish Logan could play for him all through High School.
So, if you have a son like mine who has been obsessed with baseball, football and basketball since he was young, you want him to have this opportunity if he wants it.
The tryout and selection process was pretty rigorous, too. 2 days of tryouts on 4 fields where the kids moved from one assessment to another. They were measured on everything from fielding ability to hitting to their running speed.
I honestly couldn't tell if Logan made the team or not based on what I saw. I found out later, that they were also holding tryouts for the 10 year olds, too.
So, I was ready to give a pep talk if he wasn't selected. The only thing I thought might be hard for him is if some of his closer friends were selected and he wasn't. In the end, the worry was unfounded. He was chosen for the Heavy travel team, which is basically the best kids at the tryout, who will play a heavier schedule.
Our city sponsors this program and it is run by the coaches for the two local High Schools. We are fortunate enough to live in a city that has the resources to sponsor a second travel team, the Light team, which plays in the same league, but has a lighter travel schedule and plays fewer games, overall.
This is awesome for the kids who make the two teams. They get better everything. They will clearly develop their skills faster, and probably better overall.
So, what's not to like? Our rec leagues just lost 22 of their better players. I won't say they lost their 22 best players. The reality is that some kids who could have made the travel teams just didn't try out for whatever reason.
Reasons you might not have your kid try out are many, but one of the main ones I can think of is finances. The cost is $500 out of pocket. This, by the way, is a pittance compared to the money our rec district puts out in terms of paying for equipment, tournament fees, two indoor practice facilities for the off-season, uniforms, etc. However, it's a heck of an expense for most folks, and when combined with the cost of hotels, equipment, additional uniform items, etc., it's a lot of money for anybody.
Another reason? Travel. It's great and easy if you have the time. If you work shifts and you're a single parent, you might simply not be able to take off to Columbus for 3 days for a tournament.
Still, clearly, the 22 players on the travel teams represent most of the better players in the league.
So, travel ball just decimated the rec leagues. Just as the travel kids will develop faster and more completely, the rec league kids are probably going to develop a bit slower and less completely. They won't be playing against the best.
There are some great coaches in the rec league, but the better players tend to have dads who were better players, or at least some of the more involved fathers. (In my case, athleticism was certainly not a factor. But involvement was.)
Which means that some of the rec league players are not going to have exposure to a handful of role models who might have made an impact in their playing days, but more importantly in their lives.
What to do? Personally, if Logan decides he'd rather play rec, I don't have a problem with that. I'll make it clear to him that the decision has consequences, but that it's all the same to me. I'm not quite so worried about his development. I'm just thinking that this has been a lot of fun for him, and if he doesn't travel, he won't have as much fun.
There may even come a time when I am deployed overseas and Logan won't be able to travel if his mom is working shifts at the hospital.
The other side? If he plays rec, frankly, he'll be the big bad stud of his team, which is fun, too. On the travel team, he's pretty normal for a player. In rec, he'd be back to the situation he was in last year where he was basically the best infielder on the team and the best hitter. I will probably never forget the day he went 4 for 4 with two home runs, including a walk-off grand-slam. I know he hasn't. That's not going to happen in travel ball. The level of competition is simply too good.
So, again, back to travel teams in general. In our city, there are two travel teams sponsored by the rec. There's also a third team that was simply organized by some Dads. That's the thing with travel teams. You can organize one yourself if you want.
I don't know why the kids on that 3rd team didn't want to play for the rec's travel teams, and I can't really theorize. Having seen them play, at least a few could have made the Mavericks program. Bottom line: for whatever reason, they don't want to play for the Mavericks.
(By the way, Logan tried out for that team and was not selected... no big deal, we beat them in the season opener. Haha!)
In this part of the country, we're a little behind other parts of the country in travel mania, though the presence of that 3rd team shows that it's coming.
So, what's the mania? I am certain that sometime in the future, there will be kids who didn't make the Mavericks and didn't make the other travel team, and who then start up a 4th travel team in our city. Then a 5th, then a 6th.
Once there's enough travel teams, the petty sports Dads make the situation worse. I wish I could say I was above all that stuff, but we get emotionally involved in our kids.
Dads will leave a travel team mid-season because another travel team told the kid he could play first-base. Or they'll leave a travel team because of a disagreement with a coach.
So, some of the benefit of playing travel ball is mitigated by the fact that kids are now hopping around, teams are getting jumbled around, there's lack of continuity, kids are learning a little pettiness in there with all the baseball and teamwork.
Then, what just happened to the rec league? Eventually, it gets to the point where instead of paying $50 to play rec league for an entire season, if you want your kid to play baseball, your only choice is to budget $3,000 for a travel season.
Basically, the travel leagues replace the rec leagues. Instead of travel ball being something only for a few select players, it becomes something that everybody does.
This is already happening in a lot of parts of the country, by the way.
Worse yet, travel sports are starting to replace High School sports in a lot of parts of the country, too! It's only just starting and is more common in some sports than others, but let me give an example.
Let's say your son is the best hockey player in town and you want him to get a scholarship. He plays with a lot of other talented kids who get a lot of assists. Your son gets a lot of goals.
Now, let's say that instead of playing for the High School team, some of those team-mates are tired of not-being the leading scorer on the team. They leave the High School team and go play for a travel team where they are the leading scorer.
Now, as far as I'm concerned, everybody loses. The talent pool is diluted and the leading scorer has a weaker supporting cast. Those guys who left the High School team to play for a travel team are not facing the same level of competition. So, even if they do get that college scholarship, they won't be as competitive as they would have been.
Right now, in schools that have competitive teams, the kids still play for the High School. But what if your star player attends a high school with few or no other good players? Fewer assists, fewer scores. Now, the best player on the team leaves the team to play travel and work with a better supporting cast.
Eventually, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kids leave school teams to play travel because they think travel is their best chance. Travel becomes their best chance because kids have left the school teams to staff the travel teams.
I think our town got the formula just about right. They sponsor one Heavy travel team for the best kids at the tryout. Then, they sponsor a light travel team to develop the next best kids. The presence of a 3rd team in our city is not positive, in my opinion. Nothing against that team or their kids. The team is very good and has a lot of talented players on it.
The negative aspect is that some of the kids from these 3 travel teams could be enriching the rec league. Kids develop at different ages and some of the kids who weren't ready for travel this year will be superstars in years to come. Unfortunately, the quality of rec league play will probably diminish considerably this year because of the absence of some of the better players.
Which may lead their parents to try and establish even MORE travel teams. What if your kid BARELY didn't make the cutoff for the light team? Heck, that's a good ballplayer. Why not get together with some Dads of kids who also didn't make the cutoff and start yet another travel team?
What if you can afford a little money, but not the thousands involved in a heavy travel team? Why not start yet another travel team that doesn't travel to tournaments? Maybe instead of doing five tournaments, like my son's team, schedule one tournament at the end of the season. So, you could start yet another travel team.
Then, there's conflicts of personality. What if your kid is on a team with other parents you can't stand? What if you don't like the coach? You think he's a good coach, but you think he's shorting your son because your son always played shortstop but this coach has him at 3rd base? You could start yet another travel team.
What if you just want your kid to be a star? To play on a team that's good, but not too good, so they can lead the team in batting average and start at shortstop and pitcher every game? You could start yet another travel team. (In this case, what usually happens is that the player bounces around from travel team to travel team, and virtually never finds what they're looking for.)
The other category? I don't mean to be crass, but some kids just aren't that good. I worried all through the off-season that maybe some kids who weren't selected for the heavy team got gypped. What if the kids on the heavy team weren't that much better? What if they were just lucky on the day of the tryouts.
Now that the season has started, it's obvious that the kids on the more select teams really were better than the ones who were on the slightly less selective teams. A lot of the cities around here are set up like ours, with two travel teams. It's blatantly obvious which ones were the more selective and which ones weren't.
The difference between the best and worst players on the really selective teams is huge. The talent starts dropping off dramatically after that. So, yeah, there's a lot of kids out there who are really good ballplayers, but who simply are not as good as their parents think they are. I say this with much self-consciousness because I'm a parent like all the others and the one thing I absolutely cannot be objective about is my feelings for my son.
However, a lot of those parents will seek out or try to form travel teams for their kids. They will try to lure a handful of stars from other teams.
Things turn into a big mess in a hurry.
The net result? The rec leagues become even less fun, with fewer and fewer kids in them. The sport of baseball continues to transform from America's pastime, played in sandlots by anybody with a beat-up glove and his grandpa's old baseball bat to one played by kids with $200 gloves, $400 bats, with indoor practice facilities and road and home uniforms.
Some good players will simply be priced out of the game. The best players will come less and less from the United States, where sports is increasingly reserved for the wealthy, and will increasingly come from places like Central America where talent and a love for the game are the primary factors in who plays.
Like I said, I think our city has it just about right, with travel opportunties for a handful of kids, but keeping the rec league vibrant and available for the rest of the kids. Once the kids reach High School or Middle School, where they can play for their school, the city doesn't sponsor travel teams anymore.
The other viable alternative is to have an all-star team that plays an extended season at the end of the rec season.
Some of these additional travel teams have none of the things that Logan gets with his travel team. A lot of them have poor coaching, poor facilities, and the parents are, frankly, a big bunch of idiotic jerks.
A proliferation of travel teams is just bad all the way around, in my opinion.
If it came down to that, or nothing, I'd pick nothing. I'd hit Logan line drives in the back yard until he could get with a team with a decent coach.
In the mean time, although my son plays travel, I hope travel teams don't continue to displace rec league ball. Travel is a whole other universe, and I constantly try to evaluate if the committment in terms of time and energy are appropriate for my son. Because of his desire, love for the game, and natural abilities, I believe in his case that they are.
Travel isn't for everybody, though. We shouldn't have a system where we act like it is.
(On a personal note, I have never and will never push my son to play baseball. Of all the major sports, baseball and soccer were the two that I was least interested in, and showed the least talent in as a child. I displayed precious little talent at football and basketball, anyway. If I had my druthers and were of an inclination to force my son to do something, I'd be sitting him at a piano and smacking his hand with a ruler periodically. Trouble is, from the moment this kid could hold a ball, he would throw it agains things and catch it. From the moment he knew what baseball was, he played it nearly every day. Usually by swinging a toy bat and running around "bases" he set up in the living room. Nobody showed him how to do any of this. It was a love he was simply born with. I don't believe in forcing kids to do things they don't like. With sports, they're supposed to be fun, and if kids aren't enjoying them, I would never force them to play. If Logan ever got to where he wanted to quit a sport, he would be allowed. He'd be expected to finish out the season. Like anything a little kid says, I'd want to know why and make sure it's what they really want, but nobody in our house is forced towards any extracurricular activity.)
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