joes87 posted:Gavin crowley posted:RJM posted:Your velocity is great for your age. How tall are your mother and father? Given where you are now if it's affordable your parents and you should look into the New England Ruffnecks.
s. And I am very familiar with the Ruffnecks, they have an amazing program, but my age group's team is better. For some reason 14u Ruffnecks aren't as great as the others, although they are still a great team.
Gavin, I highly suggest you open up another thread asking about what things are important in a travel team. I just looked at the Ruffnecks website and they have an extensive list of Alumni as well as a pretty impressive program setup. Im not sure if all these folks were brought up through the program or just played there for one year and left.
There is a world of difference between a good travel team and a program that is built to get kids in front of college recruiters. Over the years my son played for a good travel team. One that won many tournaments and was the team many teams did not want to face. We left the program for one that folks did not consider as good but really knew how to get the kids recruited. Thing is the second program had many players superior to other programs. They approached how the played the game differently. In addition they spent a good portion of their season playing in games as opposed to tourneys. Those games were setup in such a way that they drew many college recruiters. The other teams did not see this and only saw the team in tourneys at the end of the season, games in which we did not necessarily play to win but played to improve and get our kids recognized.
I was looking into the RuffNecks this past summer. Believe me, I read everything about their alumni, and teams this year. I wanted to play for them badly, unfortunately, their facilities are much too far, I did not want to ask for too much. I 100% know how much of an advantage it would be, but my travel team is also very good, and has a good recruitment reputation.