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Reply to "College Seniors Returning for Extra Year"

@adbono posted:

The truth is that the travel ball industry has to be viewed as an activity and not an investment. Any money spent has to be discretionary. It isn’t an investment in any sense of the word as you should expect no ROI. The problem is that it isn’t sold that way by travel ball clubs. It’s sold as we can get your kid a scholarship if you pay our fee to play for us - and btw private lessons are on your own dime too. But at this point that is no secret. As a parent (consumer) you should do your diligence and learn that. But year after year parents fall for the sales pitch as they want to help their kids dreams come true. But here is the hard truth - the dream of playing pro baseball is unrealistic for all but the truly exceptional player. The dream of playing high level D1 college baseball is equally unrealistic. The dream of playing college baseball at a good D1 or a great D2 is pretty unrealistic too for most HS players. The most realistic goal for most very good HS players is D3. Partly because there are more teams in D3 than any other classification and partly because the level of play is more attainable for more players. Based on the current value of a college degree you should be making a choice based on education anyway. But here is the kicker - you don’t need to be on the most expensive travel teams to get to D3 baseball. You don’t need to travel to Atlanta & Jupiter. You don’t need to go to expensive PG showcases to get a PG national ranking, you don’t need a big EV, you don’t need a lot of what people do. You can play on an affordable travel team that plays local tournaments, you can get training from affordable instructors, and you can go to affordable showcases that feature D3 coaches. If all that is out of reach you might be able to find a HS coach that develops his players and move into that attendance area. There are ways to avoid getting caught up in the financial tidal wave. But hardly anybody does it. Instead they chase an unrealistic goal and keep throwing money at it thinking it will increase their odds - and it won’t. Talent can’t be bought. Playing time can be bought up to a point. Travel ball is pay for play. In some high schools money can have influence on playing time too. But not in college. In college the best player plays. Coaches don’t always get it right with who they recruit but it’s rare that they don’t get their best options on the field. Once you get to college baseball pay for play is over.  If you spent money that you can’t afford trying to reach an unrealistic goal that wasn’t attainable in the first place it’s a hard day when you come to that realization. Unfortunately the travel ball industry is fueled by thousands of people that do just that. I don’t like it that there is a multi-billion dollar industry based on monetizing a boy’s dream. But you have to be smart enough not to fall prey to it. There are other ways. I had a lot of people help me along the way and none of them ever asked for money. When I coached travel ball we only asked parents for enough money to cover expenses and coaches paid their share too if they had a kid on the team. I don’t charge the HS & college pitchers that I train. I view it as my form of community service and I’m not that unique in that regard. There are plenty of others like me that love baseball and will help a kid just because they can. Baseball is the greatest game in the world - but it’s a hard game that includes a lot of failure.  You can choose to be cynical about your failures or you can learn from them. That’s just as true in baseball as it is in life in general. 

It's not just baseball...

When my son was @12, my niece accepted a full ride to play volleyball at Texas A&M. I called my brother-in-law to tell him congratulations  on his daughter's scholarship and also mentioned the money he saved. 

He said "I doubt I broke even."

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