soccer soccer soccer

[Derwood]

My kid did travel softball in high school and the team and coach were atrocious

[WrigleyField 22]

2 hours ago, bukie said:

Yes, as a parent of a college kid who did 10 years of travel ball and an 8u kid now, you just can't develop effectively in a rec league anymore. Rec leagues are effectively sports tourism. Give something a try in your free time to get out and see if you like the sport, then if you want to get good at it you have to jump to a travel organization, at least at some level.

Unfortunately, even with that truth, some travel programs are effectively money printing factories, where they have 5+ teams per age level, focusing on the development of the top team at the cost of everyone else, where if you're the parent of the kid on the bottom tier, you pay the same (or more, those top team kids get benefits sometimes too!) but just don't get the same level of attention and spotlight as the top tier kids.

Then you get into the organizations that run the tournaments and leagues, and those get ridiculous as well. Leagues effectively run for the lower-end travel programs so you can get mid week games in between weekly tournaments. Tournaments run usually 4 days a week, where Saturday and Sunday you can play 2+ games per day, up to as many as 4 that I've been a part of. Just to get in the door at these tournaments a team is paying upwards of $700 a team, with some of the more prestigious tournaments going for over $1k a pop. That just gets the team in, though, as then to see your kid play that's another $10 a day, and maybe even an extra $10-$15 to park in the parking lot.

That's just the games, though. Training is another beast all together. If you are fortunate to latch onto a travel program with their own facility for training, that's great, but that all costs extra on top of the tournament and team fees usually (or it's rolled in with the team fees, and team fees are $1k more for those programs). Depending on the team, then you get 1-2 days a week of training in the off season. Then you can augment that with private lessons for hitting, pitching, catching, or fielding for an extra $50 a session.

All told, at a high end program with their own training facility, playing 10 tournaments a year, you're easily out at least $2k per year plus about $500 for private training if you're extra serious about it. The younger the player, the more they benefit from training compared to game environments, so it's a better focus (like at a 3:1 level for 8u up to about even for 17-18u). That's before equipment, too, where bats run up to $500 for even little kids at the high end, and gloves can run $100+ easy (and if you're a catcher, that's a good $500 purchase new as well, hoping it lasts a few seasons)

And we were up in the northern US for all of this, so you could really only play games April-July, trying to fit 50+ games into the spring. Down in places like Texas, Arizona, Florida, or California, you could easily play year-round, 100+ games a year.

Is it all worth it? It shouldn't have nearly that large of a barrier for entry for anyone, but so many people see dollar signs in it, everybody gets their cut, and parents are left footing the bill. You can't go into it thinking you'll get it back in scholarships, though, for college, that's maybe 1% of everyone that plays. Everyone else ends up spending a cool $25k over 10 years just to help your kid succeed and enjoy sports.

What's the fix for it? I don't know, really, it'd have to be scorched earth and rebuilt from the ground up. Public programs for training and team building, community organization for games and tournaments, shared incentives for equipment and gear, objective evaluation and team placement, separate education from sports, more similar to a European sports academy than an American pay-to-play club (though the Euro academies have their own wild problems with how much they take advantage of players' effort and labor time).

I still don't have kids old enough to see the lasting efforts of rec league, but it's got to be quite a bit longer than U8 that kids can develop in rec leagues, even once their carved out from travel. Even with pretty clueless volunteer coaches like me in soccer I saw U7 kids make big progress from fall to spring.  They technically did supplement my coaching with a hour of a paid trainer for about 16 sessions accross fall and spring, but it was a single coach running a session for 20-30 kids at once and half the time was like "were playing sharks and minnows". Now I actually think that's great because it was a fun play based way of learning. But it's not rocket science at young ages. For really young kids, they just need to get out and play. My goal for my son is to just try and push him getting out with friends and messing around more in the neighborhood with pickup stuff. They'll develop skills just fine. The potential payoff of more formal developmemt just isn't worth it so I'll be in no rush to do travel team sports.

 

The only semi travel thing we may end up doing any time soon is a swim team. He's been in swim lessons since a baby, initially for safety/water acclimation reasons, but he's taken to it and likes it, recently graduating out of all the swim school levels. So we'll try out for the swim team in a few weeks, but the competetions are optional so it's basically just weekly-ish swim training where he can continue to develop his stroke, skip when he needs to, and if he still likes it by age 11 or so can decide to specialize more and compete and stuff. Leaves plenty of time to try lots of rec league sports and develop at them at that age cohort.

Edited 1 hour ago by WrigleyField 22

[WrigleyField 22]

1 hour ago, entbird79 said:

Now a lot of the travel teams are just average or even sub-average level players, so they make tiers in the tournaments, so they can make sure they make money off everyone. The level of play often isn't any better than rec league. Rec league gets further watered down, and parents with the means move their kids to travel because they "have to."

Coaching 8-year-olds in baseball isn't rocket science. Could parents take the time that they spend running to private lessons and use it to take their kids and some of their friends to the diamond? A bucket of baseballs and some other baseball gear can be bought from savings from lessons. I'm not saying private lessons are bad, but could a parent go on YouTube and basically parrot the same thing? I've taught many parents things to work on with their kids, and for those who take the time to spend with them, the results often come quickly.

I don't know what the solution is, and I feel fortunate that in my area we still have somewhat of a rec league to go along with travel. I've coached all of my kids (rec and travel) with my last one being 8 as well, and I run into parents all the time who hate the idea, and the practice, of travel ball, but feel pressured from coaches to participate. I know many either don't have the means or shouldn't be spending it on travel, but they do it anyway.

Agreed it's not rocket science for young kids.  Honestly the biggest thing I've found is just learning when not to coach anything. Especially during games. Parents and coaches need to all just shut up and let them play. Literally it's play.

 

I don't know when that cutoff happens that more serious coaching is actually beneficial, but I'm certain we've started it way too soon.

Edited 1 hour ago by WrigleyField 22