I gunned our LL all-star pitching staff just to see what they were throwing. We had one kid top out at 67, one at 66 the rest at about 64 and one who topped out at about 59 with tons of cut on the ball.
We were facing one of the nation's best teams in the first round and I thought my son matched up best against them but didn't have the guts to start him figuring I might be a bit too biased so I went with one of the 64 mph guys I figured would throw a lot of strikes. He got hammered. I brought in the hardest thrower. He got hammered. I brought in the little soft tosser. He did OK but they found all the holes. I don't think it really mattered who I used in that game. After that we got good performances from all the pitchers picking up 3 or 4 wins before finally losing 2-1 to a kid who was a 5th round draft choice this year on a couple unearned runs.
The gun readings were useful only in that one of the kid's perceived velocity was much higher than the actual velocity. He was the 67 mph guy who now gets up to about 93 and is headed to BYU. That bore out his regular season performance where he absolutely dominated the bottoms of lineups but was hit some by the kids who weren't intimidated. The kid who topped at 66 actually worked 2 or 3 mph slower than the one who topped at 67 and looked even slower but tended to be more effective against the better hitters as he had more movement. He tops out at 87 to 88 these days.
Not surprisingly the little soft tosser was out of the game by HS and the ones who threw the hardest are playing college ball. The 64 mph strike thrower developed a good slider and change in HS and was a fairly effective pitcher topping out at about 82 until he hurt his arm throwing too many sliders. He didn't end up playing in college. Seems interesting that it was the kid who focused on being an effective HS pitcher by developing his slider and not his fastball was the one who ended up out of the game due to injury.