My first post on this forum, which I discovered recently.
Looking for advice for a not to classic situation: My son currently 15 yrs old, class of '16. Is a Swedish national living in Belgium, his ambition is to play college baseball.
He plays for his high school varsity team which is an international school and the team is made up of mainly kids from US expatriate families. They compete against other International/American schools from major cities around Europe and Middle East such as London, Paris, Frankfurt, Cairo, etc...
He also plays for a club team which is part of the Belgian baseball federation, a senior level team made up of players from all over including the US , South America, etc... A team which every year also welcomes two US college players who after graduating wants to continue playing plus get some European exposure and travel before moving on.
The level of play in his varsity team is of course not as good as in the US, but as a comparison if you take the "All tournament team" (best two players from each team around Europe) they could probably give a decent US high school team a run for their money.
My son is a RHP, 6.1 ft , 145 lbs and currently throws an average of around 76 -78. Difficult for me as his dad to objectively say how good he is but he currently trains on a 1:1 basis on strength conditioning and pitching with an ex minor league Venezuelan pitcher who says he definitely has the potential. The US college players he played with on the club team described him as above average compared to a US player at the same age. He did by the way; make the All Tournament European team as a Freshman. He has the necessary gpa to support him academically.
As you can imagine the biggest challenge we face being in Europe is getting him noticed,, not many college coaches travel around here looking for recruits. I can of course send films, e-mails, make phone calls to colleges but even if they are interested they will want to see him which I fully understand. I cannot send him to several college showcases in different states since I will end up spending the equivalent of his college tuition on flights, hotels, rental cars etc...
Is the best solution to try and get him to one big showcase where several coaches are at the same time ? Like PG or equivalent and if so which one would be the best? I thought to get access to PG showcase you need an invite, but I'm sure there are other good ones ... and if he goes when should he attend? Summer between Sophmore and Junior year or between Junior and Senior year?
At this stage I honestly do not know what level he can reach, he plays ball from March to late September and in winter he works on strength and mechanics with this personal coach and is extremely committed, so he's getting bigger, stronger, and thereby increasing his velocity(expected to reach aprox. 85 mph by next summer). Don't think he'll play big D1 but that is not important.
Appreciate any advice anyone could give.
Thx