Private School VS Public

IMO, make your decision to put your kid in private school vs public school based on the education, not the just the baseball.

You can find good trainers to work with your kid year round if the high school doesn't have them.

Your kid can play summer and fall ball on various travel teams if the high school season isn't as competitive as you'd like.

Padded stats are discounted by all evaluators. Mom and Dad and kid may like them, but they don't mean that much.

You can find the right mix, whichever route you choose.

better to be on the field getting reps with padded stats than sitting on the bench in a good program.... that is the balance that must be struck

Base it on an education first.
Public schools are great in this area if in advanced classes.
Stay in the public schools if you want to compete at a higher level.
If a pitcher or playing for Greenbrier Christian perhaps private school is ok.
Will not go against top competition in private school.
Will have to play alot of AAU ball or showcase to match public school competition.

thanks for all your help guys!

Bohn, your topic has cooled off for a few days, but I'll still jump in. It appears you have been advised that private school baseball is not the same caliber as public school baseball. Please consider the following.

Academics certainly need to be the primary determining factor in choice of schools. 99.9% of our kids will make their living doing something other than playing baseball. The public school AP and IB programs are excellent, but please do not dismiss private school education. I think most of the private schools offer a rigorous academic program. GCA, Norfolk Academy, NSA, Cape Henry and others (whom I apologize for not mentioning by name) offer extremely high level academic programs. Players from the private programs are well prepared for college...and for life. My family went with the private schools. We paid tuition to GCA for 19 years and make no mistake, it was a financial consideration then... and even more so in these uncertain economic times. Still, we feel the investment in our children was money well spent.

At GCA, baseball has been a big sport that has enjoyed considerable success. The facilities reflect the level of commitment to baseball. Our head coach, Gary Lavelle, has certainly been a major factor. Gary is without debate the premier pitching coach in this area. The opportunity to play for Gary has attracted many players and parents to the program. We scheduled 33 regular season games this year and play many public schools and top level private programs from Hampton Roads and outside the area and state. It isn't accurate to characterize our schedule as not facing "top competition" and our players stats as being padded. Admittedly some of our games are against teams/schools who don't have an emphasis on baseball, but overall our kids play a schedule that matches or exceeds anything the public school teams get. Certainly we play more games. This year we will play public schools Poquoson, Phoebus, Jamestown, Yorktown, Princess Anne, Bayside, Lake Taylor and Centerville High School. Private programs from out of the area include games against Liberty Christian, Lawrence Academy, Fredericksburg Christian and Steward School. We also will play games against our traditional private school opponents including Bishop Sullivan, Portsmouth Christian, Norfolk Academy, NSA and Cape Henry. If you take time to check out some of the programs you don't recognize, you will find several of them are top programs in their area.

The private school leagues have faired well when we have faced our public school counterparts. Last year GCA hosted an Easter/Spring Break tournament and the championship game featured GCA vs NSA, both private school teams. There were quite a few top shelf public school teams in that tournament, including Maury, P.A. and Kellam. A few years back we were invited to and won the Beach Blast Tournament. Many of our former players have gone on to play college and professional baseball. This paragraph is not intended to offend any public school players, parents or coaches. We certainly respect their programs and appreciate the opportunity to play the public school teams. We recognize they often have difficulty fitting non conference games into their schedule.

Bohn, make the decision that is best for your family, but make it on accurate information. Good luck.

I have commented on this topic before, being an outsider from NW Virginia, and I will again as far as GCA is concerned. GCA is an outstanding school as well as a baseball team with great coaching and mentoring for their atheletes, I personnaly know quite a few of them. They do not shy away from anybody as far as competition is concerned and they guide their boys in the right direction for the future. We have had the opportunity to play them in the past and are impressed with there organization. My son went to a public school, but that was his choice, he was given other options. All we can do as parents is advise our kids, but when it comes down to the final choice it must be the childs.

Agreed with everyone on here. STUDENT-athlete. Baseball scholarships are hard to come bye, especially full rides, so to have a good education and grades would help with scholarships. I am an education major at ECU and we learn that Private Schools, though most based religiously, have higher standards and students come out higher educationally. So IMHO it would be better to go private based on Education.

Baseball wise, players still come out of Private Schools and play college ball at high level programs. The playing level may not be as high, but it is still competitve; going back to when Morey(UVA/Cape Henry?) and Bulman (from GC I think and was at Louisburg) were big players coming out of private schools. As well as Philip Clark from Norfolk Collegiate, now a starter in the OF here at ECU. Though not as many come from private schools, that doesnt mean your son won't if he makes an impact.

On top of everything, your son will get another year of high school eligibility due to the way the transition is from what I understand.

In summary, go educationally first as many are finding themselves wandering away from the Student part of Student Athlete.

Bohn,

I'm not really up on the private/public school debate for Alaska's schools if that is where your from. ;-) An approach that my family has taken is to use what our County offers for advanced degrees in Chesterfield County, VA. My two oldest sons play HS baseball, and they are in a pre-engineering program.

Our county offers specialty eduation programs in Engineering, Leadership, Math/Science, etc...within the public schools. You have to test into the programs and they can be rigorous depending what you want to get out of them. The baseball in our County is pretty darn competitive as well.

I'd check your County to see if there is a specialty program that fits (and interests) your son for both academics and baseball.

Just another option to consider.

To me, it's just a matter of numbers. A public school with 2,000 kids, roughly 950 of whom are boys, has a better chance of fielding a quality team that goes 10-12 deep, than does a private school with maybe 5-800 students of whom maybe 300 are boys. That is, if you assume that the same % of boys are talented in baseball across the board, then you'll have a better shot at fielding a deep team the more boys you have to draw from.

That being said, there are certainly public school teams that struggle mightily. Some are in areas where there is no strong youth feeder/training system. Some have God-awful coaching.

And there are some private schools with very strong coaches who actually go so far as to attract kids to the school based on the opportunity to play in those programs. GCA is certainly one with that reputation. Paul VI is another. STAB maybe, too. Notre Dame Academy had that going on until a few years ago. In the Richmond area St. Christopher's does reasonably well, and Steward School has built something pretty darned strong in recent years. Trinity, Benedictine and Collegiate tend to have their strong years without ever really being bad.

In the main I would stick with the best academic situation you can afford. For most kids that's where their future lies. Baseball is, for most, still just one form of recreation, and should be kept in that perspective.

But for the kid who truly has talent, who wants his shot at D-1 ball, and who finds himself stuck in a troubled program, a move to private school can pan out. It is something to think about. And if you move from a public school to one of the privates mentioned here, your wallet might suffer but I don't think your son's education will. So I can see where some might consider baseball as a factor in making that kind of a move.

On the other hand, I have also seen the perennially disgruntled parent types who end up paying 16k/year only to find that their son now rides the bench at private school instead of in public school. So you might ask someone trusted if they will give you an honest assessment of your son's chances before you find that a fool and his money are soon parted.

Fenwaysouth,

Excellent point! I had totally forgot about this. Though it is hard to get into some academies, they do have them in the Beach Schools.

Ocean Lakes - Math and Science
First Colonial - Law
Princess Anne - Baccalaureates
Tallwood - Global Studies?
Landstown - Technology
Salem - Music and Arts
Bayside - Medical

The other 4 high schools, Kellam, Cox, Green Run and Kempsville, thought not with academies are still fine places for education.