Skip to main content

Reply to "Academies"

PABaseball posted:

To lure the top players in, academies went cheap for the older kids and started charging the younger players a small fortune and justified the cost by their facilities and ex pro staff. The 17 year olds paying half the cost start committing and they go up on the wall at the facility. Parents see this and want the same for their kid. They start getting in sooner and the kids start leaving rec to play 10u Elite ball and soon enough academies were pushing out multiple teams per age group and making a ton of money doing it. The goal of the facility is college commitments and getting people to spend money. So if your kid is good but not great the solution isn't to work on xyz, the solution is 2 60 minute private lessons a week. 

Find a team where your kid can develop, when he is ready to get put in front of schools that is when you feed the machine. At that point the major development is over and it is just fine tuning. Something the facility will gladly do if it gets his name on the commitment wall. 

But not every player/family has the ability or resources to get to the level of being seen.  I have been around a lot of rec ball and it is not good, but I also say travel ball is watered down now also.  I get the parents that come to me all the time and want me to take their kid and make him like mine.  But mine started travel ball at 6 playing 8Ukid pitch (go ahead and bash me but it is the truth and almost every kid off that team is playing college ball of some form and 1 was drafted second round last year by Yankees.  I learned with my older two that rec ball was not the answer and was not going through the frustration with my third kid).  I do not charge much in perspective of academies but I am the only hope for many of them in my area to get their kids better.  I give lessons to every softball and baseball rec coach in our town including our HS HC.  I never paid for a lesson for my youngest son as by then I had learned a lot and he had good travel coaches and two older brothers.  But I do know the parents that academies and lesson givers are their only answer. 

I don't understand the lingo difference between some who use the phrase academies and those who give private lessons.  Academies are just larger forms of what I do and have multiple people who give lessons and coach teams.  As in everything in life, some are good and some are not.  Some are in it for the money and some are in it to teach kids.

×
×
×
×