Anyone have any experience with...

In follow up to this....

Does joining up with a "Showcase" team that nobody either knows about, or has anything good to say about a bad thing. Obviously the latter is a factor, but is it much more important to get connected with a better known team, with more attention paid to their players, or will a good kid always bring attention their own way?

If they have some good to mediocre players and some excellent above average players, will the attention naturally fall on the good ones, or does a teams overall performance help or hurt a players chances in these exposure situations.

Hate to be obnoxious about it, but I am just trying so hard to make the right decisions for our player. I am sure y'all have all been there before!

LB

Only advice I can give is to do some research on the coaches since the organization is new.

Welcome to the board, 2010-15-20 (man you got them scattered),

I don't know much about the Stix, although I have heard of them. IMHO, a showcase team is only as good as the people running the organization. By that, I mean they are experienced at taking their teams to the events that will get the kids the most/best exposure.

There are any of a number of very good organizations that do that. The Stix may be a good one, but if you truly want to look at a number of options and see which one fits your needs, you should look at several of these types of teams. I would list them here, but I might leave someone out and get assaulted by my good fellow posters, so if I do, please take pity on me (in no particular order):

Dallas Mustangs
Dallas Tigers
DBAT (Dallas Baseball Academy of Texas)
McKinney Marshals
McKinney Mavericks
Dallas Patriots
Dallas Panthers
Dallas Drillers/Fort Worth Drillers
Fort Worth Cats
Frozen Ropes
BLSA Chaps
Texas Blackhawks
Texas Dukes
Texas Champs
Centerfield Academy

Most have websites you can visit and contact them. www.bbidallas.org also has teams looking for players. There are also very good individual teams that showcase as well.

Thanks for the input.

T-Bird Dad, HA! I do have them all scattered. I wasn't brave enough to have kids close together, and now that means we don't have to pay for multiple college tuition at the same time, but it also means that we will be very poor for a very long time!

I will check out the teams you offered up, and the coaches of the other. I feel sure that we will find him a good place, I think I just need to "chill" on the issue a bit....not my forte. I do "wound-up" much better unfortunately for everyone around me.

Thanks again

I would just add to look at the tournaments in which they will play. That will have a major effect on exposure, obviously.

quote:

Originally posted by 2010-15-20:
Thanks for the input.

T-Bird Dad, HA! I do have them all scattered. I wasn't brave enough to have kids close together, and now that means we don't have to pay for multiple college tuition at the same time, but it also means that we will be very poor for a very long time!

I will check out the teams you offered up, and the coaches of the other. I feel sure that we will find him a good place, I think I just need to "chill" on the issue a bit....not my forte. I do "wound-up" much better unfortunately for everyone around me.
Thanks again

Chilling is good, but you seem to be looking for good information for your kiddo...nothing wrong with that-this is the place. Good luck and let us know where he "lands".

2010, you have a PM.

You ask: "If they have some good to mediocre players and some excellent above average players, will the attention naturally fall on the good ones, or does a teams overall performance help or hurt a player's chances in these exposure situations?" 2010, my son is a current h.s. sophomore and I can tell you that if you put your above-average son on a team with mediocre players, you will be very frustrated. We did this in the summer and fall of '05 and although our talented son had 3 or 4 other talented teammates, several mediocre players made errors on routine plays that made us wince and frustrated our son to no end. Besides causing frustration, these errors placed us in the losing bracket of many tournaments and we didn't progress very far. We've been told that college scouts do not typically attend games in the losing brackets -- although most of the time, you won't see any scouts anyway until you reach the 17U age bracket. This year our son will be playing for the most highly-regarded team in our region, and we expect a much different experience. Several of the teams that T-Bird Dad mentioned have good reputations all the way down here in San Antonio: Dallas Mustangs, Dallas Tigers, and Fort Worth Cats. DBAT and McKinney Marshalls ring a bell, but I don't really know much about them. The Dallas Mustangs, as well as the Arlington A's, are part of the highly-regarded Premiere Select league (www.premierbaseball.net) with top talent and top competition, but their tryouts for summer may have already occurred. (Ours occurred in January.)

ID, the website you listed is for the Premier Baseball association. It technically is not a league.

Up in Dallas, a select league is dividing its teams into two divisions and calling one of these its Premier League. That one truly is a league.

Texan, sorry for the misinformation. According to my understanding, the Premier association does operate somewhat like a league, in that the teams it represents play each other throughout the summer in tournaments that association members take turns hosting. (They do accept a few teams in their tournaments which are not a part of their association.) My dictionary defines "league" as "an association or alliance for a common purpose" and in that sense the Premier association appears to be a league.

It isn't as much a matter of dictionary definitions, as it is of avoiding confusion. In baseball terms, a league usually keeps standings and has a champion based on those standings. There are no standings kept in the Premier Baseball association. Although they do have a WS they host, as you know.

The Texas teams in Premier (not all are from Texas) do host invitiational tournaments. And they usually attend each others tournaments, but not always.


BTW - Who was that Dallas group that recently starting using that "Premier League" & caused all this confusion???

Texan, your BTW comment hits the nail on the head!