Bogeyorpar posted:SluggerDad posted:bobbyaguho posted:
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California is a tough place to find a great fit for the majority of student athletes aspiring to play college baseball. There are more talented and qualified players than there are roster spots. That's why I encourage players and their parents to look outside California.Lots of opportunities exist on the east coast and midwest .
Just to echo and expand on this point, consider some numbers. There is not a single D3 school in all of Northern California. in all of California, there is only one D3 conference. Basically a 9 team conference, with all 9 teams being clustered in So Cal. As, bobbyaguho says, three of the schools in that conference are extremely selective and admit students from all over the country, indeed all over the world. But even some of the less selective schools that draw a larger % of their students from their local areas, still are very serious about their athletics and, at a minimum, heavily recruit student athletes from up and down the West Coast and Hawaii -- sometimes farther afield.
In all of Washington State, Oregon, and California combined there are 19 baseball playing D3 schools. These three states have a combined population of nearly 50 million. Plus in each of these states, baseball is intense and intensely competitive -- most intense in California, but Washington and Oregon are very, very serious about their baseball too. So there are a LOT of very talented baseball players in these states -- a lot -- and at all levels they are chasing a very scarce resource -- college roster spots.
Compare that to Ohio or Wisconsin. Wisconsin has 21 D3 programs -- more than California, Washington and Oregon combined, but it has a population of less than 6 million. Ohio has, I think, 23 D3 programs with a population of 11 million.
So yeah in California finding a roster spot, even at a D3 program, is tough indeed.
I'd like to hear opinions and experiences from parents about these "East coast and Midwest" D3 schools. Is it true that it's easier to get on the team (and stay on the team) and balance academics with baseball? I hope it's true and not "the grass is greener on the other side of the hill".
It's not that there isn't talent in the East and Midwest. It's the number of colleges. The further east you go the older the education trail. I didn't research how many baseball programs there are in Massachusetts. But there are 68 colleges with athletic departments registered with the NCAA, NAIA and NJCAA.