We encourage our players to play. If they can play with a good TB org, great. Babe Ruth, great. Our summer program, great. Just play. Generally, the better the competition, the better for the player and the HS team. I think that is the general logic we all agree on here. There is a balance, though. We are able to field a summer team pretty much every year but there are several schools in our area trying to provide (and pressured to provide) this option and trying to set up schedules with other schools in advance only to find out later that too many players will not be available. Then the program for that summer has to be dropped. This leaves other players and other schools who are scheduled to play them SOL. And, it is a very short window.
So, what I'm saying is that the reason some of these coaches are requiring participation may be because they need reasonable commitment to provide a summer program and to fulfill schedule obligations so that they can perpetuate that program for many of their players who don't have TB options for a variety of reasons.