You may be right on this. Our town is somewhat small so travel teams don't really play into it. For the most part, our tournament teams really had no cuts since so few would commit to the summer schedule.
No, I feel that it creates meaningful division within communities, and that is literally ripping apart America.
As an Offensive Line coach, and an offensive person in general, I would have to say that this is the most idiotic horseshit I have ever read. Wait. your email on Deflategate was dumber. Still though.
Ok. That makes sense. We could have had this problem with our tournament teams as it generally required us to travel to Central MA for a weekend. We got around that by subsidizing those that couldn't afford it. This is where the league as a whole came in as dues were required (unless you were a family in need and the fee was waived). We would also host tournaments as well as other things throughout the year and had league-merchandise that we would sell along with concessions. Made a lot of cash with those that we would use to get equipment and use for subsidizing the families in need. Baseball was by far the town's most popular (and expensive) sport so we did what we could to help.
See, I think that the way you are approaching it is bang on. Unfortunately, in much of NJ at least, we don't see that type of approach. Kids in dire need will get help, but for a lot of kids even though it won't prevent their parents from putting food on the table per se, they don't have the ability to pay that money comfortably and then sacrifice the time to go out of town 3-4 times a year and spend the night. Youth rec baseball (and softball) is dying in multiple towns in NJ but travel ball is exploding. Many of the rec diamonds that used to look immaculate look decrepit, and the high dollar pay-to-play places look so good Mo Vaughn would consider taking a date there. It stinks.
It’s one of the advantages of living in a small town. All the players are needed or there is no tournament team. No town team for the tournament means that the players have to catch onto another towns team, which then means that the parents that would have been coaches are just parents again…. Which simply can’t happen.
Yeah, this. I was an absolutely terrible baseball player but I loved my trophies. They made me feel that despite my obvious athletic inadequacy I was still a valuable part of the team.
You're essentially describing the pay to play issues that US soccer deals with. The kids on the top teams are the kids that are good, and can afford it, or, aren't that good, but can still afford it.
Couldn’t the same be said for almost every sport. Baseball, soccer, hockey, tennis, golf, gymnastics, etc… are all sports that are headed more and more to the wealthy. I don’t know about youth football but I would guess it is still an issue, although smaller, with all the private coaching.
Right now youth football hasn't been hit too hard with the private coaching bug. At the HS level though, you are starting to see more and more of this. One of the things that mitigates this issue is the open door policy that many college coaches have for coaches at any level in their state to come to their practices, and also the relatively low cost camps around the state these coaches and their staffs run in order to get good connections within the state for recruiting.
Private coaching is a strange phenomena. A friend of mine's son loved baseball and couldn't wait to be on a team. The first season (I think he was eight) went fine, but as the second season went along he found that he wasn't playing as much. Turns out just about every kid on his team had private coaches (at age nine) and they were getting better and my friend's son (who didn't have a coach) was left sitting on his hands. He decided that he hated baseball after that and never returned.
Yeah. I’m not anti-sports. Or pro-milquetoast. Just feels like we used to get to be so-so and still have fun till about age 14-15 in olden times. Now your kid is 8 and getting yapped at by some teammate in a headband who went to Landon Donovan Summer Camp.
This could be its own thread, or more likely I should probably just have a direct talk with my wife about this, but I'm right on the edge of a reckoning about how far we should take things with MiniMoret, who'll be 13 soon. He is a very good basketball player. He is not great. He struggles with players of greater speed/size/strength at both ends. In our small Catholic school league, he can take games over, but is a 5th/6th man on his AAU team. I'd project him to be able to play varsity at the HS level in public school, but he's probably too limited right now to plan on playing at one of the RI recruitment-level private schools (Hendricken, LaSalle, etc.)
I wonder if we had the same coach. Our “steal” sign was him placing his hand over his heart. We said, “What if you’re having a heart attack?” Wiseass kids.
When my son was in 6th grade, the newly hired HS basketball coach in our district announced the creation of a new youth program for basketball. I went to the parent meeting about it, and the plan was to have two 10-player travel teams per grade, coached by varsity and JV assistants. They were going to hold a 3 day tryout, and they wanted every player to show up, even if they didn't think they'd make the team.
What does your son think? Kids often have a pretty good radar about this stuff. Maybe you do it for one summer and see where it goes (both for his skills and to help inform his opinion)? One of my daughters was a pretty good HS field hockey player. (3.5 yrs of varsity; a few D3 inquiries). At some point after her sophomore HS season she just no longer wanted to play in all of the "sessions" that the coaches at the local sports-improvement factory kept "inviting" her to. She saw up close that the dozen or so girls with potential D1 potential got training and opportunities that she didn't, and even though she was pretty sure she'd nevertheless improve as a player, it just wasn't worth her time to essentially play year-round.
This could be its own thread. Our bunt sigh in little league was our coach yelling to us, "come on, get a little hit!" when we were up at the plate.
Thanks. The one thing I want to make sure of before taking this step is that his motivation is to improve. I'm concerned that we he will agree to this solely due to pressure from my wife. He's pretty level-headed and just likes to play as much as possible. It could actually work as a guide to see where he goes with this. The coach is tough and it will definitely be more work than play.
It's for sure getting that way. And it hurts not just the mediocre kids, but the stars, too. Now that one of my kids is in college and another in high school, it's amazing how many "star" athletes are super mediocre and having serious mental health issues because of it as they get to be juniors and seniors in high school. So many of them grew and matured quickly, were the best players in classic 10-12 Little League, then made it to the big diamond, stopped growing at 5'7", maxed out their fastball at 55, and are now suffering serious identity crises in high school because, whoops, you're not actually that good anymore.
This is a failure and I am sorry. IMO, non-travel/club youth sports should be about learning the sport, developing skills and having fun.
I assume the fact that I didn't make it led me to take it out on Cesar Crespo all those years later.
I think I have said this elsewhere in this forum, but my grandfather's line was "I stayed coaching O-line for 50 years because 15 year old kids' faces still light up when you tell them that they did a great job in a drill. That may be the only encouraging thing they hear all week, there are a lot of assholes out there who take too much joy in telling them all the ways they fall short."
That’s a great story.
O-line is basically fat-kid camp with the occasional fumble drill. Been there, done that, dreamed of getting to play tight end.
I tell people - somewhat truthfully - that between my O-and-D line coaching and heavyweight wrestling coaching- it's pretty good odds that any fat kid that lives within 10 miles of me has gotten at least some coaching from me. They are the butt of all the jokes until puberty hits and suddenly every smartass needs a big friend to protect them or get them the three yards over the goal line.
Yes you can. You can't combo block with a cut block, but you sure as shit can cut block.
Our pickoff play (as in catcher trying to catch runner off second) was our all-state catcher yelling "Derek, wake the fuck up will you?"
