Should I???

quote:

I am not sure I understand some of the responses here. If I let my kids do what they wanted (or thought that they wanted) at 9,10 the inmates would be running the asylum.

AMEN!

I think most people are saying that parents should use their kid's input as ONE factor in making a parental decision as to where and what they ALLOW them to play.... I believe most parents make the decision as to where they allow their children to play when they are 9.... I know I did.
Fungo

PS: I had to "take" him to ball games until he was old enough to drive himself (16) so I was really the director of operations of his ball playing and he was just the worker.

Great advice so far!
Save your time and your money when they are younger than 13 - you'll be glad you did.

As an aside; a couple years back, my sons played on the same Babe Ruth team for a summer (in our area, the baseball in this league is not as competitive as in others) on their "off" days from travel with a bunch of their LL and early travel friends (a lot of whom were no longer playing with hopes of moving on). I "coached." In spite of that, they had the best time; my wife took pictures just because it had been so long since we had seen them play without "game faces" on.

There are great, and not so great, competitive and not so competitive travel experiences. Having experienced pretty much every variation thereof, I still fall on the side of not overemphasizing the travel level too early.

Yes, a great coach and the proper perspective can make for a wonderful experience (we have been very fortunate in that regard and have had only a very few bad experiences). Still, from a "baseball" standpoint, I just don't believe that being the best 9 year old makes you anything more than the best 9 year old (and then, probably for about a month). And with that "success," are you creating burdens that a 9 year old simply shouldn't have to deal with at that stage?

All of this is just my opinion, of course, but in my view it really is a process, one that when you get on, it is darn hard to get off of (short of quitting, of course). Keep baseball a "get to do" and not a "have to do" as long as you can. The state of his game and enthusiasm for the sport will tell you when the time is right to move up.

I think Ole Ball Coach has it about right...Great Coach and Proper Perspective are keys...I think that's why one son has been successful in baseball and the other is playing lacrosse!

We started my older son in "travel" ball at 9 mostly due to the lack of talent in the local LL. There was actually quite a bit of talent, but only a few good kids per team and the first "travel" team was almost all kids from that LL...but, I put travel in quotes for a reason...the team did two or three tourneys and some Sunday DH, but they also continued to play LL...Compared to the schedules of many of the teams we played or knew, the team was more of an independent team that played some tourneys...

Most importantly, the coaches / parents made sure it stayed a fun learning experience rather than it being all about winning...Those players were the All Stars (along with others), but they were the obvious leaders and mostly the top players.

Through 14U, that team had a few different coaches and only one of them seemed to be more about winning / his kid rather than learning and the team...he didn't last long...we also had some parents who were too intense and some who decided it was too much time or money...but there was a core of kids and parents that made it a wonderful experience that none of us would have wanted to miss...

My younger son started at 8 with a 9U team and then moved to the 9U team the next year when they started up...while some of the coaches were wonderful, others were some of the worst I've seen (in LL or travel)...same thing goes for the parents on that team...Overall, it was not nearly as good an experience for my younger son or for us as with my older son's team...after his 14U fall season, he'd had enough and is now playing lacrosse. Still, he loved much of his time and wouldn't have wanted to miss some of those times.

In terms of the boys making decisions, we would always ask them what they wanted to do...We always told them that we wanted them to be involved in sports, but that it was up to them to decide which sport(s). If they said they wanted to play baseball, the question was which - "travel", house league or both...Of course it really wasn't up to them to make the final decision. Obviously they had to make the team and, perhaps less obvious, we had to determine if the costs (time, money, etc.) were within our means. But we would not have done the "travel" if they weren't interested in making that commitment and following through with it...

While I wouldn't have had it any other way I used to sometimes look back on all the other activities I missed out on when baseball got real serious. I can't imagine taking away all the other summer activities at such as early age to focus on baseball. I'm happy I have other memories of summer as a kid.

The same thing happened with my kids. Baseball and softball became so serious it takes (took) up most of the time. I'm happy they have summer memories of other events before baseball/softball consumed them.

As long as a kid is learning sound fundamentals in his preteen years the level of competition isn't going to matter.