Feedback on Select Ball

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quote:

• What is your opinion of select baseball?
• How does select baseball compare to high school ball?
• What are the benefits of select baseball?
• What are the negatives about select baseball?

Remember this is coming from a player.

Select ball to me is a great way to challenge an individual's talent against other's talent around the country (or any many different areas). The main benefit for me in summer ball is that the overall talent level is higher than in high school baseball. For me personally, coming from a high school that does not stress athletics and especially baseball, summer ball is much more competitive and intense. I know people will argue that school pride and such makes high school more intense, which it may do for players at top level baseball schools, but for me summer ball is much more intense. Trying to beat the best of the best throughout the summer will make any team want to win as badly as they can. The main negative I find in select baseball is the pressure. Kids are under constant pressure to perform at ages where a kid is just trying to get through high school. Sometimes I feel like summer ball becomes more of a job to some kids. In a past tournament my team played in, if you lost 1 game in bracket play, you couldn't get back into the winner's bracket. I was joking with a coach and said, "so if we lose, we basically just play for fun." He very jokingly said, "yes, and you know we play to win, we don't play for fun." This coach is not an overly strict coach, but it symbolizes the pressure put on kids to perform.

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Originally posted by Dtiger:

For me personally, coming from a high school that does not stress athletics....

Dtiger - that surprises me, from an outsider looking in my impression of your school is that they do put a lot of emphesis on sports (especially football). They sure did go to a lot of trouble to get admitted to UIL...

sorry for the detour....

On Topic (kinda) -
Texas Total Baseball is a great magazine...if you haven't subscribed yet you are missing out...it is a great read for baseball junkies....

Cheapseats- relatively, when compared to other private schools, the emphasis put on athletics is AMAZING. Having said that, Jesuit doesn't worry about the success of the team half as much as it cares about forming good, respectable students that will become leaders. I do realize that they worked tons of time to get into the UIL, and I'm glad they did, but IMO, they did that out of necessity. Jesuit beat up on all the other private schools, so they got kicked out of the league. The UIL schools are much better competition, but if Jesuit was not good at sports to begin with, I doubt anyone pushes to be in the UIL. Jesuit wanted to be in a league where there was competition, now that we're in it, success is not the front runner. I can gaurantee you they spend half the time making sure they aren't breaking any rules for the UIL to get mad at.

As far as Jesuit being in UIL, Texas needs to get out of the dark ages and have Public and Private schools compete in the same leagues. As far as recruiting goes, tell me Flower Mound and Martin High School don't recruit in baseball and SLC in Football, that's a joke!

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Originally posted by cheapseats:
Texas Total Baseball is a great magazine...if you haven't subscribed yet you are missing out...it is a great read for baseball junkies....

TTB is awesome! Love this magazine and all the great contributors! We in Texas are so fortunate to have it! Thanks, TTB!

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Originally posted by reggie-3-77:
As far as recruiting goes, tell me Flower Mound and Martin High School don't recruit in baseball and SLC in Football, that's a joke!

I do have a house in the Martin school district that I'll sale for the right price if your thinking about moving.

I totally agree with Dtiger. Our school doesnt put as much emphasis on athletics as most schools. Having said that, the difference between high school and select is huge. In high school its more about practice and less about playing, but in select ball it is all about playing because they assume you have learned all you need to know during high school. Some teams may practice a little bit, but I think that is the biggest difference.

I think a huge advantage of select baseball is the competition level is huge. On great high school teams they may have 4-5 very good baseball players, but teams like the Tigers, Mustangs, etc have all great players.

Hope this helps.....

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Originally posted by 5sdad:
I do have a house in the Martin school district that I'll sale for the right price if your thinking about moving.

Hmmmmmm.

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Originally posted by jesuitbaseball:
I totally agree with Dtiger. Our school doesnt put as much emphasis on athletics as most schools.

Isn't Jesuit the school that basically forced the state to allow it to compete in the UIL rather than with the other private schools?

Just because they wanted to have the right to participate in the UIL, doesn't mean that athletics are their top priority. They simply want the opportunity to compete against the best.

• What is your opinion of select baseball?

Select baseball is excellent and there are many teams and many levels that a boy can play on and enjoy baseball while being challenged to get better. It prepares the player well for high school ball and gives them a look at what it would take to get to the next level if that is what they want.

• What are the benefits of select baseball?

Practice does improve play but not as much as in a game and in the case of select baseball the boys get to play a lot of games.

Playing against better competition helps a player understand what parts of their game they need to work on to get better.

Exposure to different coaches is always good for a player so they can learn more about the game.


• How does select baseball compare to high school ball?

From a parents point of view, Dtiger is correct in that select ball is at a higher level of competition than most high school games especially at the sub-Varsity level. Just about all the select teams the Marshals 15s played this summer were better than the JV competition we saw last year at Coppell in the old 6-5A district. That might change this year. But still we are talking about 5A programs.

• What are the negatives about select baseball?

Other than the added expense and the strain on the family.....

I do think that some player development gets lost in the coaches and organizations desire to win but in select that is actually better than in high school ball. So this negative is still a positive when compared to HS.

JMHO

True, and I'll stress that Jesuit was... asked to leave by other schools because of it's size. 250-275 boys per grade going up against some schools that have 100 boys and girls in 1 grade... not completely fair.

I'd like to make sure I am not complaining. Jesuit is about being well rounded, and I agree with the idea. I'd like to say Jesuit doesn't recruit, and chances are it will never recruit. I can only speak for baseball of course, but believe me, it ain't happening. We are probably one of the only Jesuit schools that don't recruit. If you look at some of the other Jesuit HSs around the country, they are tops in almost every athletic team possible.

Never said it was their top priority, just that the characterization that they don't put as much emphasis on athletics as most school might be a little bit of a stretch.

My first impression on summer select baseball vs. spring HS baseball is that it is MUCH HOTTER during the summer select baseball season compared to the HS season.

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Originally posted by dadofones:

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Originally posted by 5sdad:
I do have a house in the Martin school district that I'll sale for the right price if your thinking about moving.

Hmmmmmm.

I couldn't sale it to you because our son's play the same position.

Bought a copy of TTB at a Hooks game and loved it. My favorite part is that it covers the whole spectrum of levels of play. My subscription is coming!

One idea for increased subscribership (is that a word?) would be to set up a magazine subscription sales fund raiser for ball teams, similar to what ESPN does. You know, make $5. for you team for every subscription sold. I think there is a big market out there.

My son played for a select team whose stated objective was to get college baseball scholarships for its seniors and that's exactly what they did. In that very narrowly defined objective it was an incredibly successful program.

The team did not perform particularly well at many tournaments and the level of talent ranged from true D1 prospects to players that may not have been able to make competitive 4A or 5A HS teams. The coach had contacts and put the kids in front of college coaches and got deals done. Some of these kids likely would have gotten offers regardless of which team they played for and others most likely would not have found an opportunity to play college ball without this team or another like it.

Like many teams, you could find all kinds of things to complain about with the team but it definitely delivered on its main promise.

Krace4, sounds like a good organization.

An organization we know?

As much as I'd like to promote this organization for what I have seen it do, lately there has been so much bashing and trashing in the various threads I have been reading here that I think I'll keep a lower profile. I just wanted to put out there that this kind of program exists along with all the elite ones that get so much air time here. Some kids just love baseball and want to find a way to keep playing in college even if they are not D1 prospects. I was glad to see a bunch of them get to follow their dreams.

Some were true D1 prospects by the way but many who also got scholarships were not.

Few realize the odds of receiving a substantial scholarship at a D1 school. But, as has been said here many times, if a kid wants to play baseball in college...there is probably a fit for him somewhere.

From the 2003 Plano East Region II finalists, there was 1 draft pick, Matt Lenderman (2 2004 members of that team were drafted in '04 -- Eric Ridener and Jake Arietta), and 3 D1 players (Hughes, Dykes, and Nollen). But several played D1 JUCO baseball, others played DII and DIII.

As a parent, I want my son to be able to play baseball as long as he has the desire to do so -- at whatever level works for him.

SLUGGO - Glad you enjoyed the magazine. Greg Rajan does a great job for us covering the Hooks.

As for your suggestion about working with some of the youth leagues, we looked into that when we first started, but decided to put it on the back burner in order to focus on other areas first. I think it's definitely something we'd like to do in the future.

All ideas are welcome. Keep them coming.

And thanks to everyone who's responded so far concerning select ball. Great stuff!

TTB - Ditto on loving your magazine. Got my first subscription this week. Very informative.

As far as select ball, let me make a statement about "small town" select ball. Many of the posters here are from the DFW area and have experience playing with the more well known select ball leagues.

In my area, our select ball team is made of players from surrounding towns, all 1-3 A schools. The primary purpose of the coach is to build better ballplayers. For the seniors on the team that have a desire to play at the next level, the coach does try to enter us in showcases so that they (or anyone else) has a chance to be "seen". The team may not be the best; it may not win the tournaments; but the boys do learn how to be better players. They work hard, have fun, build friendships with boys they wouldn't have met but through baseball, and most of them develop the passion to want to play at the next level.

Our select ball team is better than our high school teams, primarily because around here, one does not have to "try out" for the HS team. The select team is made up of the players that want to play ball, not just the players looking for something to do.

The benefits of small town select ball:

1. Getting to play in different places on better ball fields than your own

2. Having something to do on the weekends, since our towns don't have movie theaters, bowling alleys, or malls.

3. Meeting new people and making life-time friends.

4. Being able to go to other towns' football games and knowing that some of their football players were your baseball buddies.

5. Renting RV's to go to World Series wood bat tournament in Colorado!!!


Disadvantages to small town select ball:

1. Money. (I guess that's true of any select ball team). You have to have the money to travel and enter all of the tournaments.

2. Not the best. We have good players, some great ones in fact. But, we know we're not always going to win even though we try.

3. Limited pitchers. We don't have a roster full of pitching, though we do have some good ones.

4. Don't get noticed. Because we're not always the best or win the tournaments, we don't always get noticed.

I think that select ball not only helps the players to become better, but it helps to fuel the desire to play higher.

lovethatbaseball:
Just a wonderful post about small town Texas ball and so true! That is what is great about this magazine:If you play ball in Texas, hopefully TTB will help you stay tuned in!
My son plays 5A, but my grandson,who is the "gifted athlete" in the family lives in a 3A town.
Guess what subscription he will be receiving from me!