Question on HA schools and travel

He needs to be where the coaches/schools he’s interested in will be. Most likely it won’t be with that travel team. I’d pick out a couple of HA showcases and find a team that will allow him to miss tournaments for the showcases. A good coach will understand the importance and accommodate. If the coach isn’t understanding it isn’t the right fit for your son

I think he's gone to Showball already - that should definitely be your plan for rising senior summer.  HAs recruit heavily from those showcases.

My feeling is that players need to play the best competition they can in the summers, "even" if they're aiming at HA D3s.  Where is this travel team playing that will cost a lot of money and no coaches will be there?  Where is it that you think his target school coaches will be?

A shame he doesn't like the other players, though - I agree that if there's a lot of travel, at least it should be fun.

@anotherparent posted:

I think he's gone to Showball already - that should definitely be your plan for rising senior summer.  HAs recruit heavily from those showcases.

My feeling is that players need to play the best competition they can in the summers, "even" if they're aiming at HA D3s.  Where is this travel team playing that will cost a lot of money and no coaches will be there?  Where is it that you think his target school coaches will be?

A shame he doesn't like the other players, though - I agree that if there's a lot of travel, at least it should be fun.

We will be playing exclusively in the Midwest. 3 tournaments are in Chicago/SE wisconsin for Primetime. One is in indy, 1 PBR in WI, and PG in Iowa. Most, if not all the schools he's interested in do not go to those events.

We will definitely be at Showball again this year and looks like HF is also coming to Chicago in August. All the schools he likes are in the northeast or east coast with the exception of 1 in StL.

As for the kids issue, the kids on the team that he knows are the kind that just don't put in the effort. They don't push themselves at practice if the show up, they don't show well in games. You are probably thinking why I stay where I am, but the program runs a fantastic off-season training. I'm personally willing to pay my full fees just for that training because I saw what it did last season. Even if he played on the other team with all his friends, he still wouldn't get seen but at least he would be having fun doing it.

If we were to do rising senior summer again (and assuming my kid would've been healthy), he'd skip playing on his travel team that did the national circuit because of what the other posters said - very few of the HA coaches are present - and would've considered joining the Elite National Academic team that hits up the Northeast HA tourneys. Showball is still relevant and son went late (October) because of injury. In their coaches panel that included Harvard, Rochester, Swarthmore & Johns Hopkins, they gave us this appropriate advice:

"If your travel coach guilts you into playing in a meaningless local tournament that none of us are attending, I question what they are doing for you besides taking your money. Travel organizations should be doing whatever it takes to prepare & place their players at the next level."

This literally happened to us by our travel coach this fall (!) when my kid told him that he's going to Showball + a couple of camps instead of 2 dumb Five Tool tourneys where only some local schools (of no interest to him) would be present.

A buddy's son who played for an Ivy didn't even play on a summer team - only trained & did camps + showcases rising senior summer and it worked out for him.

My kid also proved you don't have to play any meaningful baseball your rising senior summer to have a shot, so I think your gut is spot on.

One other thought:  D3s do recruit from their camps, if you are the kind of player who will impress in that format.  Get your travel coach/instructor to contact them with a recommendation before you go.

And I guess that's why having a travel coach could be useful, if he has credibility and you don't have anyone else to play that role.  Because I'd like to think that college coaches want to know a bit more about the player than just what they can see.  But I will say that the process was non-linear for my son, even back in 2018.

@anotherparent posted:

One other thought:  D3s do recruit from their camps, if you are the kind of player who will impress in that format.  Get your travel coach/instructor to contact them with a recommendation before you go.

And I guess that's why having a travel coach could be useful, if he has credibility and you don't have anyone else to play that role.  Because I'd like to think that college coaches want to know a bit more about the player than just what they can see.  But I will say that the process was non-linear for my son, even back in 2018.

Fortunately, even if we leave he still has a "travel coach" that he's played for as recently as last year and worked with for over a decade. That coach has some kind of clout as he has 2 former players in the MLB at the moment. His pitching coach also has very good connections and is unrelated to his travel team.

We are doing 1 camp for sure this Jan (Babson, son's top choice at the moment) but outside that, his pitching coach recommended nothing else in winter because weekends are his high intent bullpens and he said he's better off waiting until after Feb to show off his arm when he's sitting more around 84-85 at that point. I get it, don't show if you aren't ready to impress. We will probably end up doing more of the camps in the summer for 2 reason, 1. The right people are there, and 2. We make some great memories traveling around together (which are worth so much more).

@txbball25 posted:

If we were to do rising senior summer again (and assuming my kid would've been healthy), he'd skip playing on his travel team that did the national circuit because of what the other posters said - very few of the HA coaches are present - and would've considered joining the Elite National Academic team that hits up the Northeast HA tourneys. Showball is still relevant and son went late (October) because of injury. In their coaches panel that included Harvard, Rochester, Swarthmore & Johns Hopkins, they gave us this appropriate advice:

"If your travel coach guilts you into playing in a meaningless local tournament that none of us are attending, I question what they are doing for you besides taking your money. Travel organizations should be doing whatever it takes to prepare & place their players at the next level."

This literally happened to us by our travel coach this fall (!) when my kid told him that he's going to Showball + a couple of camps instead of 2 dumb Five Tool tourneys where only some local schools (of no interest to him) would be present.

A buddy's son who played for an Ivy didn't even play on a summer team - only trained & did camps + showcases rising senior summer and it worked out for him.

My kid also proved you don't have to play any meaningful baseball your rising senior summer to have a shot, so I think your gut is spot on.

I think this is pretty good. I have a 2025 LHP who was on the top travel team in the state but was just a relief pitcher. Got hurt last winter so didn't play at all during the jr HS, rising senior summer, or this fall. Made it back to throw in exactly one fall academic showcase. Through that showcase and emails to coaches, he's had detailed discussions with several schools and coach support offers from 3 HA programs so far for ED2.  The former travel coach hasn't been involved at all. Im sure he'd try to help if we asked but it's just not the world his players usually orbit. My take is that if you are a pitcher and absolutely know you want to be at a HA D3, the specific travel club is not too important.  Spend the money on development and go to showball headfirst. If you have outrageous video of him with good stuff, he'll land at the appropriate place.

@txbball25 posted:

If we were to do rising senior summer again (and assuming my kid would've been healthy), he'd skip playing on his travel team that did the national circuit because of what the other posters said - very few of the HA coaches are present - and would've considered joining the Elite National Academic team that hits up the Northeast HA tourneys. Showball is still relevant and son went late (October) because of injury. In their coaches panel that included Harvard, Rochester, Swarthmore & Johns Hopkins, they gave us this appropriate advice:

"If your travel coach guilts you into playing in a meaningless local tournament that none of us are attending, I question what they are doing for you besides taking your money. Travel organizations should be doing whatever it takes to prepare & place their players at the next level."

This literally happened to us by our travel coach this fall (!) when my kid told him that he's going to Showball + a couple of camps instead of 2 dumb Five Tool tourneys where only some local schools (of no interest to him) would be present.

A buddy's son who played for an Ivy didn't even play on a summer team - only trained & did camps + showcases rising senior summer and it worked out for him.

My kid also proved you don't have to play any meaningful baseball your rising senior summer to have a shot, so I think your gut is spot on.

I also second this, I think you'll waste a lot of money on guess work if the right coaches will be at the right tournaments the travel team goes to.  Or that your son will be pitching during the game they are in attendance. IF it's not a program that has your coach contact college coaches before the tournament to let them know who will be there and confirm they will see your game, I'd not waste my time.

Target the schools your son wants to go to and contact them,  spend your money on camps and showcases run by or attended by the specific schools your son is interested in  AND  Make sure they will be there and they know you are coming.

If your son wants to get some game time in.   Check out city leagues or Pony/Thoroughbred leagues, There are some that will allow younger guys to play on much older teams, it's a good place to get work in without a major commitment and you can't beat $180 for a season, and not traveling, paying for hotels and airfare, while spending more time in the weight room.

My 16yo did that in the fall, catching for 23u team and they were as good as anywhere else he could have played in the fall. And the pitching was better.  He's been asked to come back in the summer when it's mostly college and post college players.   There is something to be said about being around older guys, more mature guys, and calling a game as a catcher.  After all, they don't break college teams into age brackets, you have to deal with upper class-men. I was asked if I worried about what older kids may talk about with him,  I told the person far less than what kids on his HS team did.  He really enjoyed playing with the guys.

I agree with @txbball25 and @HSDad22.   Target the schools, go to their camps.   Attend the HA showcases that the D3 HA coaches attend.   Chances are very good they are going to have to see your son more than once.   

My son's national travel team was great for exposure to show he could compete at a high level but it did very little to generate interest even after his team won the PG WWBA in East Cobb many years ago.   He was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole in terms of travel teams.  If think if he could do it over again, he definitely would have done it differently as we wasted time and money chasing programs that weren't a fit.  I think my son just happened to have some talent and a lot of luck to wind up where he did.  Getting D1 offers provided him leverage with Ivy coaches, and D3 HA coaches.   He picked the best engineering program among them.

Just my experience.