I thought I would post this as a heads up to other parents like myself that are trying to create opportunities for our high school baseball players and trying to figure out what showcases are opportunities for our kids, and which are financial opportunities for the people running the tournaments.
My son was contacted by Steve Bort of Bergen Beach by phone last October and invited to try out for the Bergan Beach team. My son was honored and excited and I agreed tro pay the $200 for the one-day tryout. I had some apprehension about this after checking out the Bergan Beach website, but I thought my kid earned the right to reach for the star based on his work ethic over the past several years so I wrote the check.
Over the next week my son received 3 or 4 more calls from Mr. Bort, in which he asked my son if he knew of any other players that would be interested in attending his tryout. It was at this point that I figured out that this "tryout" was about getting entry fees and not about inviting the best kids to an elite tryout. They were looking for parents who would pony up the $200, and I knew it - but again, I wanted to let my kid have his dream and take his shot.
But what bothers me is that the kids were promised a written evaluation within a few weeks of the October 26th event. I sent Mr. Bort an email in late November inquiring about our evaluation, and I received a curt one sentence reply stating that the evaluations woould be sent in December. He was much more verbose before he had my check in his hand. I'm writing on Jan 1 and have yet to receive anything from Bergen Beach or Bort.
Concordia College sponsored the event along with their head baseball coach, and the Chicago Pitch and Hit Club was represented there (Jack Gallo was one of the coaches, and was very helpful to my son and made the event worth the money by himelf), so I would assume that these two good entities would be concerned about their reputations as well. I hope they are aware of what Mr. Bort is doing (or not doing) here and do something to change it.
I have never posted to this forum before - what I am hoping to accomplish is to let parents know, parents for whom $200 is a lot of money and requires family sacrifice to pay it - what they may be getting into if they receive a call like this offering their son a great "opportunity" to try out for an elte Bergen Beach team.
Like I said, I'm a big boy and figured out from the get-go that this was a money making event for Bergen Beach rather than a legitimate tryout - and was OK with that to let my son take a shot. What bothers me is that I didn't even get the evaluation that I was promised for my $200.
I'm not on this forum very often, so feel free to respond to me personally at the address below.
John Kosar
kosar4@comcast.net
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