Numbers are they up or down

What kind of numbers? Runs scored, kids trying out, attendance, hot dog sales?

My bad kids that tried out for baseball.

31 total for both varsity and JV. Think that might be an all time low number for our school.

I know at my son's high school, a number of seniors and at least one promising sophomore decided to hang up the spikes this year.

With the already changing demographic for our little slice of northwestern Fairfax, the numbers are trending downward.

Several of us "baseball dads" talked @ this very topic last night over a few, ahem, "adult" beverages, and the group view seemed to be that turnouts were about the same or lower than in previous years...
FWIW, district 4,10,& 16 Little Leagues' participation rates are rumored to be rather flat, yet Lisa L. @ NVTBL thinks they may crack the 200 team # this year or next...
Any ideas on how to improve the #s???

I asked son about this. He said 10 were cut from Varsity and 20 from JV (no separate 9th grade team). Several players "self cut" before the end of tryouts. Several that were cut from Varsity could have been stars at other schools. I don't have too much past experience in this area, but the numbers coming out for tryouts seem to be up this year.

Checked with my son as well. He said the number trying out was about the same this year as in the past few. Our local LL has reported a slight increase in numbers registered this year, but that's the first increase in several years.

Keewart,,,"several that were cut from Varsity could have been stars at other schools".

What schools or type of schools are you talking about?

This comment doesn't make much sense to me, or you are talking about one heck of a program.

The numbers in our area we have two high schools in our county and one school had 45 for both J.V and Varsity and the other school had 53 for both. Which is about the norm "we have a pay to play of $100" I wasn't sure if that would stop some people from playing or even trying out.

Superball, since some players had to be cut due to sheer numbers, and when most of the guys cut have played baseball since they were 5, they would have been welcome additions at neighboring schools that have struggled recently. When you have a bunch of guys that have to move up to Varsity, and only a few that graduated the prior year, plus add in a few transfers, it doesn't leave much room.

That's true, Keewart, and that is a problem, but it sure is a nice problem (for your program and for your coach). I am wondering (and I guess Superball is too, as well as some others) how your school program is so fortunate to be overstocked with phenomenal players, that several of the cut players could have been "stars at other schools." Is your school a public or private one? If public, what District do you play in?

Yep, nice problem to have. Alot of the players when they were younger played together on a local travel team. But as teens do, they get involved in other things or other sports and less time to baseball. Many of the current varsity players, but not all, do play on good teams during the summer/fall. Plus, it could have been an "overloading" of players in one class by the coach, which does happen some years.

Question for Zeus,
Just wondering, what does the $100 cover? Travel? Uniforms? (With cut backs in many counties/cities, I am surprised it isn't more.)

It covers absolutely nothing but athletic budget. Kids recieve nothing personally for it. I am sure our athletic department uses it to pay umpires, gas expenses and so on, but it is a county wide fee for playing athletics, it is $100 per sport played per student.

Loudoun County charges $100 per player per sport and that goes to either the school or the school system, not to the sport...any individual spirit wear or required gear that the kids get to keep (like hats) are paid for completely separately.

We had some kids "self-cut" this year - possibly due to the $100, but more likely due to the realization of available playing time. I'm kind of disappointed that at least 3 seniors decided not to play as they didn't play much last season...

I honestly don't have a problem in paying the fee to help cover costs of extra curricular activities, but I do not feel it is fair to levy the fee on sports teams only. I think all the activities should have the fee - like band, drama, math club, etc. It can get expensive with two kids playing multiple sports...