OT: Not About Travel Ball

[PooPopsBaldHead]

Not a bìtch session about it. The horse is dead. This is about "Parks and Rec." And how it's organized in your communities. And what it's capable of in terms of development and competition.

Does your locality actually have city/county employees running the program? Or is it a board of volunteers running a the baseball league (Little League, Cal Ripken, or some other organization)? And parks and rec just focuses on maintaining facilities.

I'm seeing a multitude of Little League and Cal Ripken leagues in the region doing it right. It's going to elevate the entire baseball culture in the area over time.

In the Boise area for instance there are about 800,000 people +/-. There are 8 little leagues and 4 Cal Ripken leagues in the area. Pretty much all of them are adopting a select and all star program in addition to the league. They're very competitive in summer tournaments against pure travel teams and they are traditional leagues that let the better kids elevate the less developed players in their part of town. It also creates access for competive baseball to kids who are competitive in other sports like basketball and wrestling that might spill into baseball season.

In the more rural parts of Idaho, several towns create a league together and play each other. In Central Idaho, where my kids played and I coached last year, we traveled up to 3 hours to play in our league. We had a 12 game season and end of year tournament. Then all Star teams are formed from all the towns and practiced at a central location or were given leeway to practice locally.

Anyway, that's what I see out here. I'm just curious what "rec" ball looks like in places where it's so terrible.

 

[The Cooterpoot]

Typical MS rec softball coach:

 

[biodawg]

Not a bìtch session about it. The horse is dead. This is about "Parks and Rec." And how it's organized in your communities. And what it's capable of in terms of development and competition.

Does your locality actually have city/county employees running the program? Or is it a board of volunteers running a the baseball league (Little League, Cal Ripken, or some other organization)? And parks and rec just focuses on maintaining facilities.

I'm seeing a multitude of Little League and Cal Ripken leagues in the region doing it right. It's going to elevate the entire baseball culture in the area over time.

In the Boise area for instance there are about 800,000 people +/-. There are 8 little leagues and 4 Cal Ripken leagues in the area. Pretty much all of them are adopting a select and all star program in addition to the league. They're very competitive in summer tournaments against pure travel teams and they are traditional leagues that let the better kids elevate the less developed players in their part of town. It also creates access for competive baseball to kids who are competitive in other sports like basketball and wrestling that might spill into baseball season.

In the more rural parts of Idaho, several towns create a league together and play each other. In Central Idaho, where my kids played and I coached last year, we traveled up to 3 hours to play in our league. We had a 12 game season and end of year tournament. Then all Star teams are formed from all the towns and practiced at a central location or were given leeway to practice locally.

Anyway, that's what I see out here. I'm just curious what "rec" ball looks like in places where it's so terrible.

My nine year old girl is playing in the North Jackson league for the first time this spring. Her first year of playing organized softball. So far, we’ve had two games and one practice lol. It’s not a huge deal to us because we work some at home, but, of course, there are tons of things you can’t really work on without some teammates. So to answer your question, there is zero development going on, at least on our team, unless the parents are doing it at home. Looks like we are going to have about a 8 game season and an end of season tournament. As far as facilities, I’m not really sure. But that has been our experience so far this year. It seems to be more of just, “go out there and have fun”, and we are fine with that this year, being that I can teach her some things at home, but we aren’t getting any development on the field.

 

[The Peeper]

Timely topic relating to the headline in Starkville Dispatch today, somewhat related anyway. He wasn't actually employed by Starkville but the company they payed to manage their facilities and tournaments.

 

[615dawg]

There are some huge issues with travel volleyball in the Jackson area. There are five clubs that split talent. Some of the clubs are "unofficially" connected to certain schools, which creates drama. There aren't enough teams in the state to play in the state so you have to go out of state and the Mississippi teams can't compete. Some of the team fees are over $4000 with multiple trips to Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Kansas City, Atlanta and Orlando on the schedule. All to go 0-8 or 2-6 at best every single weekend.

 

[Bulldog45]

I think it’s volunteers maybe one or 2 paid employees under a non-profit, but not exactly sure how it is organized. City Parks and rec maintains the facilities but is hands off in running the program as far as I know. It’s fine for what it is but limited space and time for practices, and a lot of kids with few coaches with enough experience, time, and interest to teach and do it for free is a big problem.

 

[Puppers]

The soccer/softball leagues my kids are in are run pretty well. The biggest variance in their experience is the coaches. One of my girls had a soccer coach who didn't GAF. Practice was disorganized and useless and they got killed every game so nobody had any fun. Then we had another coach who cared too much. Wanted us to be there for extra practices each week and was pretty tough on young kids. They won a few games but by the end of the season they were getting killed and just wanted the season to end

The good coaches my kids have had have made practice fun, have encouraged and taught kids, and don't yell but they will correct poor behavior and calmly address kid's mistakes without embarrassing anyone.

The key to good youth sports is good volunteer coaches.

 

[PooPopsBaldHead]

I think it’s volunteers maybe one or 2 paid employees under a non-profit, but not exactly sure how it is organized. City Parks and rec maintains the facilities but is hands off in running the program as far as I know. It’s fine for what it is but limited space and time for practices, and a lot of kids with few coaches with enough experience, time, and interest to teach and do it for free is a big problem.

Thanks. It's definitely a lot of work. I think the success I'm seeing is with the quality of people running the leagues and coaches.

 

[PooPopsBaldHead]

My nine year old girl is playing in the North Jackson league for the first time this spring. Her first year of playing organized softball. So far, we’ve had two games and one practice lol. It’s not a huge deal to us because we work some at home, but, of course, there are tons of things you can’t really work on without some teammates. So to answer your question, there is zero development going on, at least on our team, unless the parents are doing it at home. Looks like we are going to have about a 8 game season and an end of season tournament. As far as facilities, I’m not really sure. But that has been our experience so far this year. It seems to be more of just, “go out there and have fun”, and we are fine with that this year, being that I can teach her some things at home, but we aren’t getting any development on the field.

Just looked up NJYBB and it looks like a board run organization, but no real affiliation with Little League or Cal Ripken. The leagues do provide tools and structure that would probably help on the development side of things.

 

[kired]

Our park & rec is a city department. They manage everything that goes on at the facilities (all coaches are volunteers). The rec sports naturally take a backseat to travel sports that bring in the money. For baseball they normally give us a two week period for practice then it’s 6 weeks or so of games. After the season starts, don’t expect to ever have a field available for practice - there will either be tournaments going on or travel teams have them booked for practice. There’s no post season, all stars, etc. Basically done by June when vacation season starts because you’ll never get enough players to field a team after that.

My only complaint as a coach is lack of fields available for practice. Most of the kids would love to practice every week during the season but the p&r doesn’t make the fields available for us to reserve. You tell everyone to show up at 6pm and pray there’s a field open. Even during the two week period where they do let us reserve fields, I’ve almost come to blows with a-hole travel coaches who think they have first dibs.

 

[johnson86-1]

Not a bìtch session about it. The horse is dead. This is about "Parks and Rec." And how it's organized in your communities. And what it's capable of in terms of development and competition.

Does your locality actually have city/county employees running the program? Or is it a board of volunteers running a the baseball league (Little League, Cal Ripken, or some other organization)? And parks and rec just focuses on maintaining facilities.

I'm seeing a multitude of Little League and Cal Ripken leagues in the region doing it right. It's going to elevate the entire baseball culture in the area over time.

In the Boise area for instance there are about 800,000 people +/-. There are 8 little leagues and 4 Cal Ripken leagues in the area. Pretty much all of them are adopting a select and all star program in addition to the league. They're very competitive in summer tournaments against pure travel teams and they are traditional leagues that let the better kids elevate the less developed players in their part of town. It also creates access for competive baseball to kids who are competitive in other sports like basketball and wrestling that might spill into baseball season.

In the more rural parts of Idaho, several towns create a league together and play each other. In Central Idaho, where my kids played and I coached last year, we traveled up to 3 hours to play in our league. We had a 12 game season and end of year tournament. Then all Star teams are formed from all the towns and practiced at a central location or were given leeway to practice locally.

Anyway, that's what I see out here. I'm just curious what "rec" ball looks like in places where it's so terrible.

For baseball, in the two towns I'm familiar with near me, one has a city parks and rec that actually runs the programs. Still heavily dependent on volunteers, but they put money into the fields and are involved with the league organization and prioritize rec and it's a relatively healthy rec league although it's certainly been hurt by travel ball. That town's rec league actually gets to play on nice fields and there have been older fields that have been "saved" by travel ball parents because the city league gets priority for the nice fields so some of the travel ball parents put some money into some older fields so they would have decent practice options.

The other town just provides some fields and was of course happy to turn the baseball league over to an all volunteer organization. It actually worked well for a long time despite typical awful behavior from parents that were involved. Eventually they got a group of board members that were bad enough that they killed the rec league to promote travel. Some of the most self interested board members got what they wanted out of the league while killing it so they left, and it's making somewhat of a comeback with better leadership, and has started playing other rec teams from smaller nearby towns and I think that's actually helping. Have two teams in each of the kid pitch age groups instead of one like the last couple of years. Not sure if that will continue to improve and that's from having probably 6 or 7 teams per age group in kid pitch just 5 or 6 years ago, so still pretty pitiful.

Soccer was handed off at the county level to a private organization and it's more or less the same story, except it has a staff that is basically using county facilities to generate their own personal income. More focused on travel than rec and wanting to push everybody to travel from rec in order to generate more income. Will cancel rec games to charge travel teams for the field, which of course the county that actually owns the fields sees none of that revenue. But the county is just happy to not have to pay people to do it I think, and don't really realize or don't care that they are making money off county assets that the county could be making money off of. The only non-paid board members involved are just weird. Not bad people and don't even have kids playing, but just weirdly obsessed with people from the league playing in college (but it's always like JUCO or NAIA or some small school that's not very prestigious, and the kids are from affluent families usually, so they're not even creating opportunities). So they are of course all in on prioritizing travel and think rec's sole purpose is to generate money (their fees are double or almost triple the rec baseball league fees) and generate kids to recruit to the travel side. But even with all that, the bigger issue is that despite having paid staff, they are disorganized and incompetent. Forget to schedule refs, forget to let teams know they are supposed to be playing so people show up from out of town with no competition. Refuse to put any money into the fields despite making money off of them so they're rarely striped properly. But there's nobody to really take it over now.

 

[johnson86-1]

Our park & rec is a city department. They manage everything that goes on at the facilities (all coaches are volunteers). The rec sports naturally take a backseat to travel sports that bring in the money. For baseball they normally give us a two week period for practice then it’s 6 weeks or so of games. After the season starts, don’t expect to ever have a field available for practice - there will either be tournaments going on or travel teams have them booked for practice. There’s no post season, all stars, etc. Basically done by June when vacation season starts because you’ll never get enough players to field a team after that.

My only complaint as a coach is lack of fields available for practice. Most of the kids would love to practice every week during the season but the p&r doesn’t make the fields available for us to reserve. You tell everyone to show up at 6pm and pray there’s a field open. Even during the two week period where they do let us reserve fields, I’ve almost come to blows with a-hole travel coaches who think they have first dibs.

I really don't get the city leagues making city fields available to travel teams. Ours does at the expense of the rec league. The fields that they built to compete for hosting tournaments I think they have done poorly enough on that they don't let anybody practice without paying. But I think they kick rec to the side on the older fields just because they like doing a favor for somebody that asks if they think the person asking is affluent.

 

[CochiseCowbell]

Many of y'all are breaking the new character limit rules!!!*

 

[Herbert Nenninger]

Our park & rec is a city department. They manage everything that goes on at the facilities (all coaches are volunteers). The rec sports naturally take a backseat to travel sports that bring in the money. For baseball they normally give us a two week period for practice then it’s 6 weeks or so of games. After the season starts, don’t expect to ever have a field available for practice - there will either be tournaments going on or travel teams have them booked for practice. There’s no post season, all stars, etc. Basically done by June when vacation season starts because you’ll never get enough players to field a team after that.

My only complaint as a coach is lack of fields available for practice. Most of the kids would love to practice every week during the season but the p&r doesn’t make the fields available for us to reserve. You tell everyone to show up at 6pm and pray there’s a field open. Even during the two week period where they do let us reserve fields, I’ve almost come to blows with a-hole travel coaches who think they have first dibs.

I don’t know which age your coaching, but yeah, getting a field at Ballard can be kind of cut throat. I have been guilty of booking an extra night during a week, just in case one gets rained out. And then several kids are always missing practice because the soccer season runs so long. The Joyner fields are an option, but u cant reserve them. The baseball head is very supportive of the coaches that volunteer, but the league in general is not really prioritized. They did say the rec baseball numbers are up a lot this year. I think we have 12 teams at the 7/8 year old level; 148 players total. Honestly, though I think it will be a little better now that a few of the less kid-centric coaches have moved on to travel ball.

 

[Tractorman]

Some of y'all s experience with travel ball is different than us other folk. My town population is 5k and my county is 20k and the counties that border on all 4 sides is similar in size. When I was a kid park and rec was the only option and my town's park and rec handled the whole county. We had 8 to 10 baseball teams every year up to about 14 years old.

I started my son in park ball at 4 years old and we had about 6 teams. I walked over to the 11/12 year old's games and watched. They had 3 teams in the league and only played about 2 to 3 innings due to time limit (alot of walks and hbp). Another town in our county has started a park and rec and basically just split the pool of players. So at 7/8 we just started a "travel ball team" and played within an hour or 2 of home. We entered mostly free tournaments and pretty much stuck to the same players for 6 years. 5 from one school, 2 from another, and 4 from another - all in the same county. So we started out terrible against some of the organizations. But, by the time we were 10/11 we started winning some tournaments against the same teams. The boys got way more development this way vs the park ball we had the option for. We had a great experience, but, we weren't in an organization and I know that is what most peoples bad experiences are with. The grade above mine did this and the grade 2 behind mine did as well. Our high school ball team is gonna be solid for the next 4 to 5 years. I assume some other rural areas may have similar experiences like this. I wanted to do park ball only, until I saw what that was going to be for our town.

To answer OP question, the town employees handle the entire park and rec with volunteer coaches.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

MS rec is shlt. Mostly all city employees, and they bow to travel ball now because of the money. Not only that, summer ball is nonexistent because you can’t play all day Saturday and Sunday from June to August.

Baseball is a different animal, in that you need competent pitching and catching to really have a league. Without the travel ballers, what can they really do?