being involved in summer ball for a long time, my thinking is ever evolving on this topic [though most in our program question if I can really "think" at all!] First Playing is good, no doubt. A and B brackets like Uber says should be really implemented with TD's placing teams in question. My real concern with summer ball is burnout, overkill and continuity of skill instruction. As former director of Magic last year, I saw all the way down to now even the 12u leve, players not taking instruction from coaches because as one parent put it "that's not the type of hitting we do at our high school" which is valid somewhat I guess. At my former coaching position I had 8 kids one year playing high level travel ball with 3 different organizations, all teaching something contrary to what we were teaching. One kid told me "coach I play 56 games for them, and they are going to get me a scholarship" which she never did get BTW, and my reply was you played 56 games hitting the wrong way, and further developed a bad habit. I know there are some excellent summer coaches, very dedicated and love the game, and I give them credit, I couldn't do it. We are trying to implement a summer program that teaches the same system to kids from 9 to 17, who primarily will hopefully end up in our high school program [we also take a select amount of players from other areas] we are limiting our tournaments to about 4 or 5 to givekids the ability to do other things and play other sports. We are looking to place a select no. of our kids in additional tournaments with other programs that may need fill-in's. We know our system isn't perfect, but we think it's a GREAT value [less than 200.00 per kid with full uniforms, bags etc.] and hopefully with expose them to travel competition with a lesser commitment.
