just wondering if anyone attended the Showball Showcase in Orange County Nov 5-6, -land their impression. How many athletes, what was the range of skills, and what was the coach atmosphere like?
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My 2017 attended. He signed up as Catcher for his primary position, Pitcher as his secondary. Unlike every other showcase he has attended (PG, Headfirst, Top 96) they did not allow him to pitch an inning in either of the showcase games on Sunday. He was allowed to do a 10 pitch bullpen late on Day 1, and there were a good 15-20 coaches who stuck around to watch the players who listed Pitcher as a secondary position. So compared to all of the other showcases, there was much less opportunity for players who have P as their secondary position.
As for athletes, they break it up into two sessions, AM and PM. There were 9 teams of about 15 players each session, so say 130 or so morning and the same in the PM. On a positive front, they keep everything moving constantly so there is little to no time wasted in doing the standard drills (60 YD, fielding and throwing), BP and games. On the down side, the games feel really rushed as they play 7 "innings" in about 1:15-1:20 minutes. I think 5 batters per inning, 1-1 count and so on.
On the first day, they did spend about 1 hour in player position instruction with all of the coaches working at some position to help coach players. Of course if your MI son wants to be seen by the Brown coach and he is coaching the OF, there is no chance to be seen in that session. But they did divide the coaches up into the two game sites on Sunday, and each team plays a game at each site, so you are guaranteed to get to play the game in front of all of the coaches.
Overall, I would say the opportunity to meet coaches and actually talk to them was better than most showcases, but not as good as Headfirst. Because of the half-day, two short games, it feels like a one day showcase in terms of opportunity but you are paying for two days. That said, there is a larger number of coaches than most. I did not like the limited chance to showcase a secondary position, but other than that, it was a worthwhile experience. But I would HF and Stanford ahead of Showball overall.
Hey Sandiegorealist.......Went to the showball camp in Pasadena this last summer (pretty much the same experience as Backstop shared above).
We went to the Rising Prospects camp on that same weekend in San Bernardino (liked it a lot better than 'showball').
My 2019 went and hit the ball to the fence at both games ( 2 at bats the first game, 4 in the second). He only got 1 college (a high academic D3) emailing him after saying they saw and liked him at Showball and asked him to fill out a questionnaire. The few other emails only invited him to camps. The games were back to back and we did not see many coaches talking to kids because they didn't have any time between the games. It was our first Showcase but I heard from a friend there who also went to Headfirst that the skill range was narrower than Headfirst. It was a great first Showcase experience for my son and getting a small interest from the 1 college he actually would consider going to was worth the time/money.
2017 son went and thought it was very well run. lots of coaches and they all seemed very approachable. Parent talks were also very informative (Q&A sessions with 4 coaches). What I liked the most was the various levels represented, from SEC to D2 and from high academic to schools with less stringent entrance requirements. Very efficiently run, planned a Disney vacation around it. Because of this showcase, several schools have begun communicating with my son, schools which hadn't contacted him before. I thought it was worth it.
