@DanJ posted:@LVeinbergs While I applaud your efforts, this all feels half-baked (at best) to me. I get where it's coming from. The recruiting process is a massive machine, has many flaws and almost everyone (players and parents) is anxious to tell you how it can be improved. So you get this feeling that you want to start a revolution of sorts. Bring something different to the table that you feel could be profound. My guess is that just about every parent has felt this way at times. But what you may not realize is that your proposed solution is not truly different. Not different enough that it won't be swallowed up as white noise among a sea of competitors.
I equate it to "select ball." Select ball is what everyone in our area calls travel ball because a kid gets "selected" to play - supposedly. When my son first got into it, he was 7 years old and played on an 8U team. Back then - 2010 - 8U select ball was still fairly rare. Up to that point, travel ball largely started at 9U. Now 8U is common. While I can only speak to our area, select ball is unbelievably bloated. In desperate need of contraction. Except, of course, it keeps growing. One coach of parent doesn't like the way the others run their clubs, so what do they do? Start up another one! The original idea behind select ball was to prepare a kid to make his high school team. That's it. So there should have been plenty of solid talent left to fill rec ball teams and leagues. But rec ball is all but extinct here and we have tons of teams of "select" players that will never make a high school team. Their parents are paying $2K, $3+ per season under the outdated concept that playing select ball = making the high school team. And then they're dumbfounded when their kid doesn't make the HS team.
The point is, for new things to start up and have a chance of being meaningful, contraction is first needed. PG, PBR, etc are only getting bigger. They won't be contracting for a very long time, if ever. So your venture, while noble in intent, is simply going to dilute an already highly diluted pool. It's not "sexy" and there is no money to be made, but the very best thing your players and parents can do is sign on to HSBBW for free and read. Then read some more. Absorb. Ask questions. Lots of them. And focus harder on the stuff that doesn't give you warm fuzzies because it's often the most valuable and you'll find almost none of it from PG, PBR, etc.
Re paying for “select ball” with the expectations of making the high school team.
Between 14u games I watched part of a 9u game and chatted with a few dads. They expected their kids to go D1 because the 17u team in the organization placed all their players on the A team in D1.
Re Contraction if major tournaments.
Not going to happen. If you build it up they will come. By the time my son went to PG East Cobb National Championship there were teams with no business being there.