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Reply to "Who Is The Best Travel Program In NJ?"

Francis, I can share my son's experience who played on one of the less prominent NJ travel teams on your list from 13U-17U.  I hope this provides some perspective on your question.  My son was looking for a higher level of competition than could be found by staying with the town travel team.  We didn't do a whole lot of research and chose the organization he played for based on the fact that the coaches had played professionally and that the facility is located 20 minute from my house.  Neither of these factors meant that it was a "good" program and the right program for my son, and at the time we didn't know what we doing.  We were fortunate my son received decent instruction and played against good competition so we felt that we had made a good choice.  My son's goal was to play in college. One thing that we realized early on from reading all the great info in this sight is that we couldn't depend on the travel coaches to open college recruiting doors, and this particular program really wasn't on the college recruiting map.  We were very deliberate and proactive about creating visibility for my son, and because he is a good student targeted Headfirst in his junior year and camps of certain high academic schools he wanted to attend.  As part of the travel organization he only played in one national PG event which was early in his junior year.  Several schools recruited my son, with about half of the legitimate interest from schools that had connections to the travel organization coaches, with the remainder coming from my son's legwork.  My son committed to a high academic D1 school that we targeted, and that school had no contact with son's travel coaches prior to my son committing there.  He just completed his first year of college fall ball and couldn't be happier.

From 15U-17U we received calls from Arsenal inviting my son to play for them.  We chose not to do so, partly because it would have involved driving over an hour to attend practice, and I wasn't sure that the time investment or playing for a team whose focus was on national exposure was suitable for my son.  At the time, we didn't know if this was the right thing.  It often felt like we were muddling through, but we have no regrets.  My son's summer travel team had a decent amount of talent and attracted more as time went on.  There were 6 D1 and about the same number of D3 commits on his team by the time they completed 17U.  I do think having talented players on the roster is important for creating interest for college recruiters (for my son's organization these were local D1-D3 schools).  One way to find out which travel organization attracts talented players is to look at PG commitments as Baseball Mom said.  You might also follow NJ PBR media posts to identify organizations with talent.  PBR in NJ is very active and does a good job of identifying and promoting talent in the state.  They attend travel organization scout days, but only the programs that have talent, and they tweet about their players.

I guess what I'm saying is that the "best" program will be dependent on the goals of the individual.  Even though my son was recruited to play D1 ball, I don't think the highest profile organizations like Arsenal and 9ers would have been the right fit for him.  However it is important to find an organization that provides good instruction and a track record of having players recruited to play in college.  There are several programs on your list that meet those criteria.

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