Originally Posted by CaCO3Girl:
The thing that made my head glitch is the idea of some 2016 going to a showcase getting a 6 and because of that 6 he thinks he can and will play in college. We battle on this board so much about parents wearing rose colored glasses....I wonder how many people have viewed their kids PG score and thought a 6 or a 7 proved they were good enough to play in college because that is what the explanation of the numbers says.
I'm not arguing whether or not the grade is accurate...I'm arguing whether or not the explanations are accurate, or if they just give false hope.
Delusional parents are a reality, but that's really not the fault of any evaluator or measuring standard, and there is no cure other than the reality that they will face in the coming years. Much like a perfect SAT score is no guarantee that a student will attend an Ivy, neither does a good (or bad) PG grade guarantee playing (or not) at the next level.
We have a parent on my son's HS team who is completely delusional with his son's talent. He received the camp email blast for the Stanford camp and immediately began throwing that in the HS coach's face as his son being "recruited" by Stanford. His son is a rising Sr., made varsity as a backup last year (with an underclassman starting ahead of him) and likely projected for the same next season. He's an outfielder only. He plays no secondary position and doesn't pitch, so he's limited his options. Frankly, while his dad believes he's one of the top players on the team and the best outfielder, in all honesty was the 4th best OF and somewhere around the 9th - 12th best player. We currently have three DI SEC commits and just graduated a DI and DII with the 2015 class
He's not a bad player by any means. He just isn't cracking the starting lineup. I'm sure his dad will blame the coach, politics, etc., etc., but his PG grade is 7, which indicates he's a college prospect. I would agree that he is. He needs to add some strength and correct a few hitches, but he could certainly play college ball, just not in one of the top D1 conferences (Stanford most definitely included).
Now whatever his dad wants to make of his grade of 7 is up to him, but the grade is accurate based on my observation of the kid over the past three years. He's not an 8 (Excellent college prospect), but could just as easily be considered a 6, (potential college prospect). I could see where he would be graded a 7 from his single showcase based on his athleticism and whatever projectability was evident to the evaluators. He has played in over a dozen PG tournaments over the years and been named to all-tournament teams twice.
I guess this is a REALLY lengthy way of saying that any false hope is in the eye of the beholder and how THEY want to perceive what the definition of the grades mean to them.
There is nothing that PG or any of us can do to fix that problem. In fact, my solution is to just avoid the guy so I don't get roped into the one-sided conversation that would ensue. He doesn't have any interest in hearing the truth from me or anyone else. However, five years from now, reality will have revealed itself and he'll either be proven right, or confirm that politics, et al., were the reason his son didn't fulfill what should have been.