It’s not unusual for 14u players and their parents to get to high school ball and wonder “what happened.” Every year since whatever year they’ve been playing travel they’ve been a star. All of a sudden they’re playing 18/19u (high school) ball.The freshman who play varsity are usually physically ahead of the curve.
My experience going through the high school journey twice with baseball and softball was there were a lot of recent 14u studs and studdettes whose parents were frustrated and couldn’t grasp its now 18/19u ball and there are some very good upperclassmen ahead of their kids on the depth chart.
A great question a coach could ask to gain perspective on the parent’s thought process is asking who they believe their kid should be starting over. Chances are the correct answer is, no one.
But despite this there were players receiving college offers before they had a chance to start on varsity. It was a matter of depth on the high school teams. They escaped the depth issue playing on different travel teams.