tequila posted:RJM posted:This surprises me. Quality travel coaches of quality travel teams have reputations of feeding players to college ball and being objective assessors of talent. These coaches contact college coaches and promote their talent.
I know if my son had said he wanted to play for Vanderbilt his travel coach wouldn’t have blown smoke up Corbin’s rear. He would have blown off my son. He would have told him Vanderbilt wouldn’t be interested.
Don't want to go on a tangent too much here, and I get where you're coming from RJM, but this isn't the case for everyone, especially in many smaller cities (like where I live). There are about two "quality" travel organizations in our area, and they each largely promote players from about two of their teams (out of several at each age group). If your kid is on one of those other teams, the coaches essentially are young/local guys who may or may not have any contacts and seem to be in it primarily for the summer money. If they do have contacts, they are often local/regional which isn't helpful if your son is interested in areas outside of that. Just my two cents
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I think your assessment of travel teams is about right. I’d imagine only in states like Florida and California do you have a huge amount of good teams with national reach. If youre in a smaller state and your coach has a relationship with a region I think that’s fine. But yes just know the owner is pushing certain players first.
My son used to pitch also and was getting tons of looks as a sophomore. Threw 86/87 at PG in Lake Point that year. Has a nasty curve ball and a good change up. The guns were everywhere. Big names were calling the coach. My son didn’t want to pitch though and didn’t want to be a pitcher in college. He said he would rather play RF in college than be a PO. I said fine. I think his coach was pissed though as he would have gone to a big school. As a hitter/fielder he is great but doesn’t hit bombs left and right so he’s not so sexy. Still D1 potential but the coaches aren’t salivating like when he pitched. I would think the coach is still pushing him but before it was such an easy sell before as a pitcher
Fall is coming and they’ll be going to Florida and doing some showcases as a team. So we’ll see what happens.