Playing Fall Baseball and Football

Does this fall team just play on weekends and not practice, or are they skipping practices due to football practices?

What r they getting out of it? A few at bats? Few innings pitching the day after possibly being starter for entire football game? If it were my kid they would only be playing one sport per season. 

Son played both f-o-o-otball (ya know the one in World Cup) and fall baseball. His soccer was the priority especially when he was a captain Sr year. As a sweeper (defender) he typically played all 80 minutes. What he got out of fall ball was AB's to keep his swing sharp and to provide some leadership to the younger members on the team. He felt allegiance to his Legion Team and they were willing to be flexible. They knew he would be present during winter workouts and full throttle in summer. He wasn't able to practice during the fall week with baseball. But son is a position player (MI/CF). I would probably feel different if son were a PO.

Well I think they are two different sports.  We don't have HS sanctioned fall baseball here.  I have seen football players play club baseball on Sunday when all school activities are off.  Usually, it is a just to stay loose type of thing.  Monday they are back in pads. 

 

As for spring football, I am not really sure how they could play.  At least around here, baseball plays 3-5 days per week, including most (if not all) Saturdays.  It would have to be sanctioned on Sundays, which just doesn't happen.  Now, it does come up during summer ball and 7 on 7.  Coaches have to arm wrestle for the player.    They generally work it out. 

Not sure if this is a "the kid plays football all week for gosh sakes, he needs a break" question or  a "he should commit to his football team and rest up on weekends" kind of question.  If the former, I'd say if the kid feels ok and wants to take some swings, good for him go play.  If the latter, I'd probably say the same thing.  I don't think playing baseball on Saturday or Sunday has any impact on a football players ability to be at 100% on Monday.

 

Taking the question at face value, I think a 7 on 7 spring passing league participation would be fine for a baseball player as long as it doesn't cause him to miss his baseball commitments.  It might even help with his conditioning.  I don't see how spring tackle football would work, given the need for daily practice.  But if there was some scenario where tackle football was available on weekends I'd be concerned about injury risk, and even if not injured a football game is grueling and does have an impact for the next couple days, so I don't think I'd be on board with that.

 

 

Mine plays both, but fall baseball is not school sanctioned in our state. It is a fun, laid back time to get some at bats and maybe throw a few innings. All weekly baseball practices are optional and mine doesn't go because of football. A lot of kids miss practices. He plays fall ball because he wants to. Football is his secondary sport and he's just playing for fun and to stay in shape.

There is school sanctioned 7 vs. 7 here in the summer. Mine goes to that too if he doesn't have a summer baseball game. However, he does miss a lot of the football lifting and speed/agility training in the summer because it's too much on game days. It's a give and take with a priority on baseball. We've been very upfront with all the coaches and there isn't an issue. When he has free time (which isn't much), he hops on his bike and races some motocross too. Again, all the coaches know and encourage it. It's the best workout of all his sports.

The way we do it, if a kid plays varsity football, we won't allow him to play on our school affiliated baseball team in the fall. If he plays subvarsity football and would like to play on our fall baseball team he's more than welcome, but if he wants to focus solely on football or having weekend down time that's fine, too.

 

Kind of a gentleman'a agreement with our football coach, who is great. I would hate to have a starting receiver break something in a fall baseball game.  

 

On the other side, varsity baseball kids aren't allowed to do any spring football activities until we're knocked out of the playoffs. A pretty good setup I think.

 

At my old school 2-sport kids had to stay in the football athletic period all year and go through all spring drills. Lost two varsity starters during district to 7-on-7 drills.

If you're playing football the right way on Friday night you should probably be too sore to get anything out of baseball on weekends.  

 

The way Ironhorse handles it is the way it should be handled.  Sometimes you need to take time off because you can do too much and you need to be a kid.

2016 does the same thing and he loves it.  Of course mom and dad are always worried about the possible injury factor with football but he really loves it and happens to be very good at it.  You are only young once... Although he's taking the week off from football when we go down to Jupiter in October.  Football coach understands that baseball is number 1 and will take him in any capacity.

Not sure if this means anything, but we run a fall league in Iowa.  They play on the weekends and practice occasionally during the week.  It usually has the top players in the state playing in the league.  In fact, over the past twenty years all but one player from the state that has been drafted out of high school has played in this league. That includes a first rounder, several second rounders and many more.

 

We always have some football players in the league.  These are usually football players that believe their future is baseball.  One year we had 5 players that were all starters on a state Championship football team. They would play football on Friday night and play baseball on the weekend.  I'm sure it was a grind for those kids, but all 5 went to DI colleges to play baseball and one ended up playing a bit in the Major Leagues.  The schools they went to were, catcher to Baylor, Shortstop to Notre Dame (and MLB), pitcher to Wichita State, Outfielder to U of Illinois, pitcher to U of Nebraska. One was named the football player of the year in Iowa.  The coach of that state championship football team was the father of the catcher who went to Baylor.

 

All five were scouted in the fall league and seen by the recruiters from the colleges they chose. So without saying it was a good thing or not, it worked out well for those kids. In fact, I think it really impressed the baseball recruiters knowing these kids just played a big football game on Friday night and here they were playing fall baseball on the weekend.

 

I'm not saying I would recommend playing football and baseball at the same time, but if we are in favor of multi sport athletes we are going to get some of this. Most kids know what they will play at the next level and will do what it takes to accomplish that.

 

Good or bad? I don't know, guess it kind of depends on the results.