To peel off of the "Hunger" thread & particularly Overthehills last post - youth baseball has seemingly evolved into this battle of "winning" vs. "developing for the next level", and those two things both seem to be breeding an inherent selfishness in players that isn't good for either travel or H.S. ball.
We are just getting involved with a travel program that claims to stress "development" over "trophies", remains to be seen how that will work out. In general with travel ball, school grades seem to be secondary over winning (if discussed at all) and kids who participate in the travel program year-round get dropped come tourney time for an out-of-towner who throws a few clicks harder, which doesn't exactly promote team camaraderie. The business side of me completely understands why this is done, don't get me wrong - but does the average 12-16 year old get that? We got a trophy while burying three kids who played well all season getting us to this point...yay?
At the High School level it can get turned on its head - if you don't have the grades you can't play, simple enough. But here you see a 5'3" kid starting at 2B because he is "all heart" (but no bat - and the parents paid for that new L screen) or some kid with a frying pan for a glove starting in the OF while a legit player who has stood out at PG Showcases rides pine because "all he cares about is that dang travel team" or daddy doesn't donate enough money for a new scoreboard. Happily my 2018 is starting, but you can see trouble for the H.S. team brewing on the horizon. At least two of the best freshman players are already talking about leaving the H.S. program to focus on travel ball full time because "this team is a joke", and varsity has already lost a solid player for the same reason, guess it doesn't matter to them because as Overthehills points out the colleges aren't scouting the H.S. games anyways.
We have created an epidemic of kids who are just worried about themselves - "hey, we lost but I went 2 for 4 so its all good". Literally hear that every day from players on both of 2018's teams...and I am not sure how that kid ends up translating to higher levels of the game should they be lucky enough to get the chance. Halfway through 2018's freshman year the initial analysis would be this - travel ball is the future, high school ball is a continuation of Little League (daddy ball, $$$ = playing time, etc.). Both have a place if you can afford the time & money - but as we move forward will anyone be playing the game anymore for a reason other then their own stats?