Question about your Youth Program?

In DFW, there is www.bbidallas.com. (travel ball/select ball)

Pony has a program. http://www.pony.org/home/defau...nu_category=Baseball

San Antonio & Austin have select leagues...

Where in "central Texas" are you?

quote:

In my situation, I have been told I will have complete control.

What about the board of directors?

The youth ball affiliation will have nothing to do with the quality that feeds the high school. It's not the name on the label that makes a program strong. It's the people behind the program.

The best way to prepare kids for highs school ball is have clinics to learn the fundamentals of the game. Have them run by people who know what they're doing even if you have to hire them.

We have Select for our HS kids, its all around our area and we have 18u and 16u in a select league. i'm trying to imporove our LL program for the kids that aren't good enough to play 9u or 10u Select? Also, under the former coach, there have been issues with the LL program, so I am looking for other ideas to help improve the situation.

At the 9-12u years it does not matter what affiliation you have, it is all about proper development. You can play whatever umbrella you want but if the coaches do not teach the fundamentals and challenge the players to get better, what is the difference.

The same goes for the "select" travel teams, you can play with or against the best competition you can find but if the players are not trained or developed and just get kicked around, what is the advantage of paying the extra cost of playing for a "select" team.

I agree, if you want the youth programs to be a pipeline for your high school, send coaches or players down to help develop them, but in California if not positioned correctly it may be called recruiting and it is against CIF contact rules.

Depending on the size of the LL program, below 12U there is probably little impact you can have. Maybe some fundamentals clinics and to teach baseball the way you want it played. Maybe some one-day coaching clinics to help dad-coaches put together efficient practice plans.

At 13-14U is where I think you can have the most impact. By this point you will have the kids that are at least semi-serious about baseball. I would encourage teams to practice and use your JV field. Because they are on your fields, it will make it easier to work with these coaches on developing efficient practice plans, and work on fundamentals they way you want it taught,

Encourage and help coaches to put together travel feeder teams that flow up into your program. When my son was 13, I went to the HS coach and he allowed me to cut the field down to 54/80’ for 13U travel games. (my parents also helped with a lot of the field maintenance) We would schedule 3 way double headers on the field when the HS program was not using them. The coach would come by and see the kids and also helped out with our practices. I would sometimes schedule my practices to begin as soon as the HS team was wrapping up their practices. Our kids got to know the coach and vice versa. It could also be done with the LL Jr. program. Encourage off-season travel teams made up of the Jr All-Stars.

I had keys to the batting cages and facilities and we used them (and helped maintain them) Our kids were much better because of it. The reality is that you are looking for the 10-15 best kids in the area and trying to get them ready to enter your program. When the kids hit the HS program the coach knew them, and they knew what to expect from him. It was a huge win-win for everyone. Our coach continues to be involved in the Jr Program and helps make sure there is a travel team using our fields.

We now put on 54’/80’ tournaments at our facilities. It gives the program our best $$ generator of the year, it keeps baseball active in the community; the local kids get to know the coach and the program. We have LL All-Star, Pony All-Star and local travel teams competing. We have now added 16U/18U teams so it gives our HS kids tournament experience against travel teams.
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Main thing we did to keep up with the times is to form travel/tournament teams at the beginning of the season (by tryout) and adjusted our in-league rules to keep players playing in both league and travel without penalty or overuse. Lots of Sunday baseball for those desiring it.

Our enrollment rose to over 1,000 players and our league began to win section and region tournaments with regularity and nearly made it to the World Series on several occasions.

We also doubled the number of kids who moved onto HS baseball and saw about 10-times the number of kids eventually move onto college or pro ball.

We were Pony-affiliated and ran everything we did by the Zone office.

Just to point a particular item point made by JB, its key not to "punish" or some how "prohibit" playing on outside travel team. Our local Babe Ruth league did just that and all of a sudden it was much easier to set rosters etc.., however the level of play significantly declined which did not benefit anyone.

When the league allowed kids to play on outside teams it had a pool of players it could call on to sub for missing players during the regular season. THis had two benefits, kids who really wanted to play, got to play alot if they signed up to be a sub, and kids who wanted to play a weekend tourney etc. got to play w/o killing their team.