We don't have middle school baseball either; we did have middle school basketball. I really liked school ball because it was the first time the coaches were not dads (no offense to the dads, they were mostly very good and motivated men, but their sons were not usually the better players). We thought, and mostly found, that it was better with non-dad coaches. However, there were definitely things in HS ball that our son didn't understand; most of them he didn't ask, and we couldn't ask. Some things I figured out by the time he was a senior, some we may never know. I'd say the same was probably happening on Francis7's son's team.