Agreed Jennatyui, I know we head into Ohio to Stingrays and Gapss for our tournaments there because they are in my opinion two of the better ones in Ohio from emailing and talking to college coaches. We do two top tournaments in Eastern PA in early June, then come to Ohio for July. We also really liked Best of the Best in the past, but it falls right in the middle of our schedule and we are now using that for a off weekend to let the girls recharge the batters. We would love to do Lady Lasers, but its the same weekend as Pennsbury and you won't find a tournament with better exposure in my opinion than at this tournament. Last year over 200 college coaches there. This year we are thrilled that we got into the fall Team New Jersey Showcase and we went 4-1 with our only loss being 1-0 to a very strong PA Chaos Gold team which featured several DI recruits. Thankfully the success we had at Team New Jersey in the fall opened it for us to get into their very tough summer tournament which is by invitation only and it will feature a who's who of national travel teams from California, Texas, Washington, etc... Its just my opnion but there really isn't a tournament in Western PA to do for exposure so we are out of town for 12 out of the 15 tournaments we do between fall/winter and summer.
Hammers we where were you where a few years ago, it took us a while to get into the tougher tournaments but you have to keep proving yourself year after year until you get established. Locally I feel we are more established but nationally we have a very long way to go. We chose to not go to Colorado, Rising Stars, etc.. mainly because of the $$$$ factor. We definitely have proven we can compete with just about anybody, but most of our schedule features areas where our girls are most interested in going to school at.
We also in terms of exposure tried to do more this fall than in the past, and it has helped every year for us to try and get better, try to challenge yourself more and more each year. We started out basically as a local travel team, and now we feature girls from probably 10 different school districts for our 14 girls.
Also, if you are sure you definitely have girls who can play in college and are top notch college players. Get the college coaches to help back your team, have them make some phone calls for you. If college coaches at the higher levels are interested in your kids, they have a lot of pull with the local tournament directors.
We have 6 2012 grads on our roster who all had the opportunity to play Division I softball, 3 chose to do this, one chose DII, and we had another turn down several offers to play closer to home at a DIII school, and the other is still undecided and being sought out, but wants to stay close to home. Even though most of them landed in colleges close to home, they didn't get seen by these college coaches here in Western PA tournaments. Now these coaches, where our girls are going, we will pick their brains and build a relationship with them. I will talk to them at length about tournaments and ask them suggestions on where we should go etc... But its a two way street, we do our best to put them in tournaments where they want to see girls play high levels of competition game in and game out, and are putting kids in college. These same colleges if we ever ask, for the most part have been more than willing to call tournaments directors etc... to help these same tournament directors know more about our kids.
Also, just a bit of advice, not sure if anyone mentioned it, I started out with a group at 12U and moved them up to 18's through the years and loved it. But I decided to stay at 18's as I have no kids involved, and our team is slowly becoming a team that kids want to play for, because we work hard to get into the higher end tournaments, something it takes years to do. That is why now after several years doors are starting to open for us. It doesn't happen over night. Look at your teams that have been around for years, typically its the same individual coaching that team, as its taken years for the to build reputation, and contacts to help build their program. Just my two cents, good luck to you.
