When we were in Tn, they had MS baseball. Youngest son's team made a pact not to play because the level of competition was too bad. They also only played about 12 games and we could play 30 games in travel ball during the same period. It was tough because my older son was the MS coach where most of the guys would have gone. We had to make best choice for the boys even though it hurt my older son. If they had all played no one would have touched them and it would have been blowouts every game. But it was bad to coach, I helped, because most of the guys came from Little League and didn't understand how to play real baseball. They had never led off or picked off. Had to teach them everything including basic mechanics of catching and throwing. We only had a few guys who had played travel because most of the travel kids chose not to play MS. Here is SC middle schools are eligible to play high school so your studs make the jv or varsity. There are very few real MS teams.