Rec ball and Travel team too??

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How many coaches allow their players to play for their favorite local rec/church team and travel team?

We don't allow our players to do both. Many reasons to "make them choose" us or them...
1) pitching they face will be significantly better
2) player burnout-too many games at such a young age for most
3) 10 beer league dads teaching them "everything they know" and then our travel team has to work it out of them
4) Many scheduling conflicts
5) plenty of other reasons....to not allow this and many reasons to make sure the parents know the reason they should choose one or the other.

My position is to not allow this, regardless of situation. I'd rather see the players play for another travel team in off weeks before getting involved with community ball. This of course has issues as well.

 

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Well, I'm not a coach, but as a parent I'd be uncomfortable with a travel coach telling me what my daughter can and cannot do in her free time. How do you enforce something you "don't allow" when your players are on their own? Would you drop a girl if you found out she was playing for her church team?

 

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I have mixed feeling, but it all depends on what type of team. My dd has played for years on both.
1. Most of the pitching is high school pitching and many also play travel ball.
2. This is a player by player situation. Some kids want to play 7 days a week, if you let them.
3. Most of the coaches also are invovled in high school or travel ball. I will agree this can be the weak area that you have to be careful as a parent.
4. All games are Mon and Wed night double hitters. Summer high school teams. No weekends
5. As a coach my rule was travel ball comes first , but this gives many kids the chance to play softball with their friends and have fun doing it. One side note. I have found some very good softball players , when coaching or watching teams play in the rec. system.

 

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If your kid is any good why would you want to?

 

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In Western PA it is pretty much "standard" that you play both. Rec league through the week and travel on the weekends. Most travel girls "play up" in rec league.

 

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If your kid is any good why would you want to?

Sometimes the DiceMan dropeth words of wisdom and truthiness that surprise even me.

 

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I have mixed feeling, but it all depends on what type of team. My dd has played for years on both.
1. Most of the pitching is high school pitching and many also play travel ball.
2. This is a player by player situation. Some kids want to play 7 days a week, if you let them.
3. Most of the coaches also are invovled in high school or travel ball. I will agree this can be the weak area that you have to be careful as a parent.
4. All games are Mon and Wed night double hitters. Summer high school teams. No weekends
5. As a coach my rule was travel ball comes first , but this gives many kids the chance to play softball with their friends and have fun doing it. One side note. I have found some very good softball players , when coaching or watching teams play in the rec. system.

Totally agree with this post....

BTW: Not every dad who played the game themselves was a "beer league player"

 

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Our rec league does not allow it. But most of the travel girls started in the rec leagues instructed by Lester's so called 10 beer coaches and some of those rec coaches have gone on and coached some mighty fine travel teams......

 

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Lester,

What is the difference in girls playing in a Rec. league during off time and having a whole team play in a Rec. league for practice. Let's say maybe at Pastime. Wouldn't a person want the best possible competition or you would be going backwards?

Just curious.

 

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As a Rec league coach I see problems when parents watch their kid practice all week only to see a travel kid come in for games If you explain to parents up front that travel kids are practicing when they are not at rec practice and you tell the travel kid they may not start the position they want all the time, it can run smoothly! From a travel point of view, if the coach tells the DD she is to commit to the travel team first, I don't think it should be a problem. This will be the first year of my DD travel experience and I asked her if she still wanted to play for me and she said "of course, I still have friends on your team"! She knows that travel comes first!! I thinks she will be more of an asset to our rec team because the other girls can see if you work hard, you can go places! As a Rec coach, I would never try to change a travel girls fundamentals! That goes for a rec girl who is going to some sort of pitching or hitting coach as well. If a coach(rec or travel) has problems with the way a girl is doing something they would need to talk to the parent and if you can't agree then a parting of the ways is needed. So to answer you question, if everyone knows what is going on, then playing both shouldn't be a problem!

 

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I think this should be the player's choice, not the coaches or parents (unless there is a financial or family reason she should not play). Leave it up to them and they will make the choice best for them and what they want out of the game. My daughter (currently a 2nd year 14U) began travel as a 9 year old. After 2 years of only travel she said she missed playing with her friends. We said OK play rec ball also, but only if you(we also spoke to her rec coach) understand that travel comes first, even if it is a rec championship game. The scheduling was never a problem.
After 2 summers of this she decided on her own that rec ball was not the level of play she wanted, so last year she went back to only travel with workouts during the week.
The players know what they want out of the game, leave it to them.

 

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IMO-As a coach, I believe it is up to the players. The only thing I would ask is to play up in the rec league and if there is a scheduling conflict travel comes first.

 

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As a Travel/Club/Rec coach kids should play as much as they can or want to. If my instructions are any good then another coach shouldn't have much to do but fill out the lineup. As long as my kids understand to be respectful to the other coaches and not question any of their descisions then all should be fine. We may be travel ball coaches, but we dont know everything! My girls have set positions on my travel team, but get to play others positions during rec and club ball, which is nothing but a benefit for the kids in the future. Keep in mind, they are kids and kids still need to be kids and socialize with the ones they go to school with.

 

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My DD played both last year. She missed a lot of rec games because of the travel ball commitment but the coach was understanding. She enjoyed the time with her school friends but at times was frustrated because the team was not as skilled as her travel ball team and would try to "coach" the rec players. She described it best by saying playing for the rec team was a social event and playing on the weekends was a competitive event.

 

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This will be my daughters 1st year of travel. I didn't want to make the choice of rec or travel for her. She said that she still wants to play with her friends. I was upfront with the travel team and also will be upfront with the rec team. Even though it would be easier on my wife and I for her to choose travel only, we have a son that will be playing in the youth league also. So she will be at the ball fields through the week anyway. I suppose she will feel guilty leaving her friends, and there will be those few that would make her feel guilty. She hasn't expierenced a full year of travel yet. My feeling is by the end of the year she will love the competiton of travel and will come to a conclusion on her own. But that will be her choice to make. Not a coach's.

 

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I have a question....By "Rec League" do you mean the City travel team? I assume you do not mean a "house league" team, which is very different from Rec Travel. I have coached a "Rec Travel Team" for a number years, and my DD has played on both for a number of years. The Travel team gives her experience with kids from neighboring towns, and the Rec Team gives her experience with the kids from our home town, who will likely be her teammates in high school. Our "Rec Team" has 11 kids, and 10 of them play on various travel teams. I would not say that this team is any weaker than most travel teams in the area. I guess what I am saying is that both teams have value, and provide good experience.

 

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As a "Rec" coach, I have to laugh at some of the statements and stereotypes that many of the travel coaches make about how we can ruin YOUR players. Memo to you, they "ain't" yours.

Anyway, it looks like the consensus here is that the kids and parents want that outlet to continue to participate in rec, so be it. I personally enjoy the challenge of working with the less skilled and helping them make that next level of travel ball.

If they come back, and want to play with me too, I absolutely defer to any methods or training they are working with their travel teams.

It's about the girls, not us coaching egomaniacs!!

 

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My DD played both last year. She missed a lot of rec games because of the travel ball commitment but the coach was understanding. She enjoyed the time with her school friends but at times was frustrated because the team was not as skilled as her travel ball team and would try to "coach" the rec players. She described it best by saying playing for the rec team was a social event and playing on the weekends was a competitive event.

Last year was my DD's first year of not playing "rec" ball (i.e. summer league with whatever members of her school team they could get to show up and play in the weekday league). She was busy with camps & other activities geared toward her development going into her junior year. Prior to last summer she played the previous 2 summer in the summer weekday league with our HS team and on weekends with her travel team. Her travel team didn't practice during the week so there wasn't ever a conflict.

For her it was primarily social and she played with the understanding that the coach mostly likely would use her at key positions (she can play all 9 and will go where she's needed) when players didn't show up. She got moved around a lot but it was good for her development and she didn't care. She just wanted to be on the field. One drawback is that almost all of the time she didn't see the level of pitching she was accustomed to seeing on the weekends.

She really didn't miss it this year as her attention is more inwardly focused on honing her skills and looking at colleges. Maybe that's a natural progression?

 

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At 10U you don't allow this? Pretty harsh. Nothing wrong with kids having fun, representing communities, churches and having ice cream cones afterwards. Come on. Wait till your 10U kid is in high school. LOL

 

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"Select", needs to be qualified. After my first year of Select with my daughter, I would venture to say, many of the rec league coaches were doing a good a job as many of the Select Coaches I've seen.

Classifications of INstruction and Competition levels are greatly NEEDED here. As I've seen SELECT teams that COULD NOT beat our local "HOUSE" rec team, and have also seen HOUSE teams that could win any weekend at NSA Tourneys.

Fast Pitch NEEDS classification, so an Organization/Team can STATE THEIR INTENTIONS as to what level they are committed to training/instructing and competing at. It appears there to many SELECT teams, that create to many NON-VALUE select tourney's, pool play, in which if CLASSIFICATIONS & SANCTIONING were in place, you could have Tournaments Start On Friday and End on Saturday Night, and have Sunday available for rain-outs.

Sorry , not much value in having Stingrays, Doom, Static, Lasers,,, and other top tier teams competing in same tournament against the latest Johny Come Lately REC Team, which there are dozens now... I would love to see a tournament where at any given age group there are 10 evenly matched teams, that on any given day they all could win.

Too much wasted time, money, and lack of competition in current tournament formats. The game is for the girls, not TDs and FP ORGS making money.