How important is High School Ball, really?

My two cents.....Difficult to say if colleges will give you a pass. I guess it would depend on how good you are. It will be much more difficult to improve your game and skills without high school baseball from the perscpective of every day practices and skill drills. I realize your plan is to probably play summer travel ball, however keep in mind that most of your travel teammates will have played a full high school season/practiced every day before the travel season starts. That puts you at a big disadvantage. Baseball is a game of repetitive skills. IMHO, it isn't so much about what colleges think, it is more about what boarding school (lack of athletic programs) is going to do to your baseball game. I would have the same comments if it was tennis, golf or any other sport.

If baseball is a huge part of your life, you may want to talk this over with your parents. Your opportunity to attend this boarding school may be a great one to open up new doors, but based upon what you've shared with us it is going to be very difficult to keep your edge and improve your baseball game without a high school team and practices.

Heck, if you are considering a boarding school I would check these out!

Montverde has a gorgeous campus, and IMG is in a class by itself near Floridas Gulf Beaches.

http://montverde.org/Athletics/Baseball.aspx

http://www.imgacademies.com/baseball-academy/

Judging by your tag, I don't think boarding school is a good idea.

AntzdDad. burp!

If you throw 95 it is not very important.

High School baseball is not important to college scouts. It gives you a competitive schedule of games to keep you sharp, but has little bearing on college scouts. Scouts don't have time to watch high school games while their college season is going on. If you play for an excellent summer team and hit the showcase circuit plenty of scouts will see you. My son had 10 colleges seriously recruiting him who had seen him in the summer. Only 2 of them inquired about his high school stats. The college recruiter he decided to play for never asked about high school or talked to his hs coach. The bottom line is, you have to get infront of college coaches and show them what you can do and that usually is not going to happen in a hs game.

quote:

Originally posted by HRKB:
High School baseball is not important to college scouts. It gives you a competitive schedule of games to keep you sharp, but has little bearing on college scouts. Scouts don't have time to watch high school games while their college season is going on. If you play for an excellent summer team and hit the showcase circuit plenty of scouts will see you. My son had 10 colleges seriously recruiting him who had seen him in the summer. Only 2 of them inquired about his high school stats. The college recruiter he decided to play for never asked about high school or talked to his hs coach. The bottom line is, you have to get infront of college coaches and show them what you can do and that usually is not going to happen in a hs game.

Concurr! Junior has committed to a college programand no contact with the HS coach. He did get infront of the college coaches, and it was all positive from there. These days, many HS programs are in a sorry state but there are some who are doing it right.

HRKB and Sdleft have made some great points. The most important thing is to get in front of college coaches and be seen. No matter how that happens and typically you will get more exposure from the summer than you will in the high school season.

But I will slightly disagree with them. High school baseball is very important beyond it's an opportunity to practice for the summer. Here is a small list of the benefits...

1. You represent your community. You get to put on a jersey to represent the place you grew up. The community where you played Little League.

2. You get to work within the confines of a team. One of the drawbacks to summer ball is it has the potential to create selfish players. I've heard college coaches mention this on several occasions that while seeing players in the summer helps more they are seeing more selfishness out of them.

3. You get to play with your buddies a little longer. Those guys you came up with in Little League get to continue to compete. High level baseball is a business and while friendships do blossom you still have to really beat out the rest to be able to continue on.

4. You get to play for a state championship. While the average high school team can't truly compare to the better summer teams you will find that teams who go deep in the playoffs can play. Competing against teams like this is great, playing to be the best in your state is great.

5. You get to compete just for the sake of competing. That town down the road you don't like - well you have the chance to beat the **** out of them. You will probably end up at college with some of them and you will become friends eventually. But you can always hold the fact your team was better than them over their heads. I was able to do this back in the day. I played college with some guys I played against in high school. They became very good friends but I always let them know who won our games from high school.

Now as for whether you should go to this boarding school you have to figure out if the academics are head and shoulders better than what you would get in public school. If the education is better and you can do it then you should go for it. It will help you get into college just based on academics and you won't have to rely on athletics. If you can play and you get to play in front of coaches they won't hold this against you. They want smart kids because they hate worrying about eligibility. They want guys who can play and if the only time you get to play is summer then you better produce. But to go along with the ability to play you are a safe kid when it comes to grades due to your outstanding academic achievements.