I generally agree with you, 2020dad, about individual players who are dominant don't all of a sudden become lousy, but I have noticed an "evening out" of teams. By that I mean teams that were dominant at 12U -- and by "dominant" I mean best-in-the-country-winning-the-NYBC-type teams -- are still good, but not nearly as dominant, for two reasons. First, a lot of the top players on those teams tend to have May-August birthdays, which means at 12U they were playing a lot of kids a grade younger. As they move into older travel ball it is done more by grade rather than "league age." Second, a big 12-year-old (i.e., "league age" 12 --maybe turns 13 on May 1st) can weigh twice as much as a small one (say, 160 lbs. vs. 80 lbs.), and that type of percentage discrepancy is unlikely to occur at 18.