How Far will you travel?

There are players that travel 1hr, 2hrs, 3+hrs or more, and bypass local teams, to play on the best team possible.  Especially at 16-17U.

Kewartson's team pulls players from around our state.  Some were local (up to 45 minutes away), some an hour away, and 5-6 lived two hours away.

At this level, you want to play in front of college coaches and sometimes those colleges are further than 3 hours. Our schedule last summer had us traveling sometimes 6 hours one way, and East Cobb was 8 hours without stops.  

If your travel team is hours away, make sure the schedule includes colleges you may be targeting.

This past summer my son , and several other players from Fl and a couple other states, went and stayed with a host family for their summer team in GA

jlaro,

My son's baseball travel team was local, the tournaments were not.  We are in New York, while the tournaments ranged from New Hampshire to Florida.  My daughter is in much the same situation as your son for lacrosse.  She travels well over an hour for weekend practices in order to find the right program.  So far, it has been the best athletic-related decision we have made.

Hello again,

My son had a try out for this high level travel team and made the team. Its a travel team that is about three hours away then the team travels from there to areas like Ohio, KY, PA & WV, with some home games.

As a family we all agree that this what it takes to get to the next level. so vacation time is baseball from June until July 2014. what else could we do ? sit on a beach..?

yeah when we retire and the kids are grown up.....ha ha ha

Yep, vacations for us revolved around baseball for 4 years!  Go to Tripadvisor.com and research things to do and restaurants to hit at some of the locations you will be.  I loved exploring new cities and towns that I would not go to otherwise!  Make the best of it between games.

yeah, I know what you mean, when my son was on  U15 Babe Ruth his team

 went to Kentucky... near Louisville, so you know where we went... to get some bats engraved with player & team names, etc.

great place to see if you never been.. do it once...

Sophomore summer son played on travel team out of Conn, tournaments up and down east coast, Next summer he played for NY Nine, stayed host family that summer, we are from New Hampshire.  Got to go were the good baseball is.  An it paid off, got great deal at current school and the number #1 starter,  All summers and vacations from when he was 8 years old was based around his summer travel baseball.  Good times too.

We would play tournaments at Baseball Heaven, on Long Island, take the ferry over from Bridgeport Conn to Island.  Quality family time.

The Conn summer we met some great parents, started staying at camp/RV parks and camping, alot of family fun, I recommend travel to anyone.

Travel as far as you HAVE to, to find the results that SUIT your situation.

Last year we traveled 3 hours (1)-way for practices, very well respected team, PRIME tournament exposure.At this point and time, it was not the right fit for all involved.

HOWEVER, we now travel 4.5 hours (1)-way to a program that seems to be the RIGHT FIT, for my son, his goals, and college information to get him a scholarship to help pay for his education....

Depends on age.  We didn't play a lot of travel ball until age 15. Can't imagine going more than 3 hrs unless my son  was major talent-top 10 college team or so talented that he would be scouted out of HS. I've seen people spend several thous a summer traveling to play on diff teams and honestly they are not even top prospects-parents are being unrealistic IMO. It was not productive and nothing came out of spending all that money. 

We made good use of our travel to always set up un official visits along the way. Even if it was not on the dream school list. It gave our son the opportunity to talk with coaches without the stress of making a mistake. At the end of the of the 2 year journey, we visited 20 plus schools. He was able to meet with almost every coach at these schools. When it came down to making his decision, he knew what he liked & what he didn't like. 

Play for the travel team that is the best in your area, no matter how far. I regret not doing that for PO Jr. Too long a drive, too much money, they will find him. We got lucky, we found this site, got great advice and information. It also helps being a 6'4" lefty.

Good luck