sports parents (King Richard)

@RyanS posted:

Tennis is so different than baseball, the fact that it's solo completely changes the way you train to compete. Remember, the Williams sisters were at an academy where there were top juniors,  men and women training. They got to compete everyday with some of the most accomplished players around. It's not like some travel team practice, they got to train and compete with players who were much better than them. It was not just the two of them playing together, although that happened alot. Imagine your 13 year old showing up for BP and having different big leaguers throwing each day. Hitting with better players is a big part of Tennis training,  it is far easier for the women to find this than men, I'm not being sexist just honest. There is a down side to these academies as most of the kids get chewed up and spit out, it's a very tough for most players.

tennis is a really bad bet financially for most. if you think baseball is though financially and all that to make it to the majors try tennis.

Tennis is super expensive with private coaches, academies and all that. Parents of top tennis players have other invested several 100k into the careers until they are 18 and it only gets more expensive from there on.

Break even point for tennis is about number 120 in the world, until you reach that you invest a ton of money into coaching, travel, hotels and so on.

@baseballhs posted:

I met a dad at several big showcases. His son only trained, never played travel/club ball. He did play for hs and did go to showcases. The experiment is still in process but he was good. He was at all the invite only showcases and committed and went to a P5.,

I totally could see this work, especially for a pitcher (95 with control is 95 with control) but the question is how you keep a kid motivated like that.

I have noticed that especially boys usually need competition to stay engaged (while girls sometimes tend to enjoy "the process" a little more).

In my experience boys train to win tomorrow, not to get better in the long run and to keep them engaged you need to balance drill work and "games" at least 1 to 1, if not 1 to 2.

With older kids like 15+ it can work to work focused longer but with 8-14 years all the boys want is competition.

With my younger boys I'm usually doing like 20 minutes of focused drill work on mechanics and then the rest of the time I invent little games that are designed to reinforce what they have learned (and they still almost get to fight each other over that meaningless game).

@baseballhs posted:

I met a dad at several big showcases. His son only trained, never played travel/club ball. He did play for hs and did go to showcases. The experiment is still in process but he was good. He was at all the invite only showcases and committed and went to a P5.,

In our county at the time my 2017 was in HS, if you wanted to be in a travel team you had to drive an 1-2 hours to get to practices and home games. Very few did. Most played only HS, HS-affiliated fall ball, and Legion in the summer.  Almost all of this group played Juco to D2.  Very few D1-bound players went this route; most went to Juco first.  There were a very few players on travel teams, but they were mostly exceptional talents.

I tend to agree that it works better for pitcher.  Playing Travel ball and doing the showcase circuit is pretty hard to juggle without overusing your arm.  This kid's dad ran a baseball facility, so I'm sure he could work on skills whenever he wanted.  I think we honestly could have done the same (pitcher).  I would say almost all of my son's recruiting came from camps or showcases.  He played travel ball but it wasn't a top team...it was a group of mostly kids that played together from 8U on.

@Dominik85 posted:

I totally could see this work, especially for a pitcher (95 with control is 95 with control) but the question is how you keep a kid motivated like that.

I have noticed that especially boys usually need competition to stay engaged (while girls sometimes tend to enjoy "the process" a little more).

In my experience boys train to win tomorrow, not to get better in the long run and to keep them engaged you need to balance drill work and "games" at least 1 to 1, if not 1 to 2.

With older kids like 15+ it can work to work focused longer but with 8-14 years all the boys want is competition.

With my younger boys I'm usually doing like 20 minutes of focused drill work on mechanics and then the rest of the time I invent little games that are designed to reinforce what they have learned (and they still almost get to fight each other over that meaningless game).

It’s amazing how the process has changed. I’m the fourth generation of college baseball players. My son is the fifth. My great grandfather played in the 1890’s. My father played Big Ten football before getting injured and transferring to what is now a NESCAC as a legacy. My father never mentioned if he dreamed of playing in the NFL.

I never trained to play. I just played and played and played in season starting at about age seven. The first team was LL at age nine. I did the same with basketball and football in season. I figured I would play baseball through college just because I saw myself as a baseball player first.

Halfway through high school we moved to a baseball hotbed. I started being noticed my major colleges and pro scouts. I was shocked. I didn’t get caught up in it. I just kept playing and playing and playing. There weren’t showcases.  The closest thing were MLB tryouts and word of mouth from scouts to college coaches. Essentially, the colleges found you. They showed up to high school and Legion games.

I played three high school sports. My son was cut from high school basketball being told he couldn’t possibly focus on three sports. High school coaches expect offseason participation and training. It’s the nature of large classification high schools now. He was offered scholarships to private schools. I found it amusing he was offered academic scholarships if he would play at least two sports. He was scouted by 17u teams. They asked him what were his target schools.

Re girls enjoying the process: I believe the correct term would be socialization. Girls are less likely to transfer if they don’t start. They don’t have a MLB dream. There’s only Team USA (the best of the best). My daughter was a fourth outfielder for four years. Her view was she played enough, enjoyed her teammates once several realized she wasn’t a potential date (a whole other conversation about female college sports) and was at the right school for her future.

@baseballhs posted:

I tend to agree that it works better for pitcher.  Playing Travel ball and doing the showcase circuit is pretty hard to juggle without overusing your arm.  This kid's dad ran a baseball facility, so I'm sure he could work on skills whenever he wanted.  I think we honestly could have done the same (pitcher).  I would say almost all of my son's recruiting came from camps or showcases.  He played travel ball but it wasn't a top team...it was a group of mostly kids that played together from 8U on.

The drawback is the lack of ability for a position player to work on instincts against top competition in a high speed environment. When my son was fourteen he asked a question that told me he had “it.” He was playing 16u. He asked me when I played sports if the game went into slow motion allowing the time to always make the right decision.