Travel, Select, Elite, does it matter?

First let me say I commend you for thinking ahead about your son's future. I run across a lot of parents who just assume things work out on their own.

My personal opinion is that elite, travel and select are all fancy titles for teams. You are going to find some of those teams are great and will do a great job preparing your son for college and you will find some of those teams are horrendous. You will find the same thing with high school teams.

The advantage is you usually have more choice in the elite, travel and select teams while the choice on high school teams is limited.

To me the whole process of getting better in baseball should be broken into three areas.

1. Spring - play high school ball
2. Summer - find a good team to play on regardless of the title - do some research
3. Fall - find a good team to play on regardless of the title - do some research

The winter is used to rest / recover from baseball and weight train and condition for the upcoming seasons. Now all this will change if your son plays another sport because he now has to prepare for it.

I think you are on the right track in trying to prepare for the futre and this a great resource for information.

baseball


At your sons age he needs "reps" and solid coaching/instruction and he need not be worrying about exposure---that will come in time---it is not needed now


Forget the titles of teams--find a team that gives him what he needs now "REPS"

You didn't say what posi9tion your son plays.
In general if he is getting good fundamental training it may not matter , however in terms of confidence and skill ;evel it may. I feel a BB player when he reaches 14-15 should play at the hidhest level possible depending on his goals. In our area elite is the highest level and the coaching is usually much better with ex ball players teaching the skills. Often the player who has not got proper training struggles with the higher level of play. Things like throwing, footwork, what do I do when ? and proper conditioning are taught to players in the elite level. It costs much more to play elite and the travel can be quite extensive.
The biggest thing is the confidence you can play with the best teams. That is something you acquire over a period of playing high level ball. If his goal is to play beyond HS you have to play at a high level just to get noticed.

Thank you Coach and TR and Bobble! I truly appreciate all your input. I understand he does not need exposure now. It's not so much titles I'm "worried" about, but the quality of teams with those titles.
I know there is alot of things I don't know, that is why I'm here! Now I'm going to sound really stupid, but what is "reps"?
BTW, he's mainly SS, CF, sometimes 3rd.

It's no problem asking questions in here. Reps mean repetitions - taking more groundballs, flyballs, swings, etc....

With good instruction you could put your son on a "All Super Star Stupendous Team" and he will be fine but if you have poor instruction then that same team will hurt him. Look into the coaches background and qualifications and sign up for the best ones.

quote:

My personal opinion is that elite, travel and select are all fancy titles for teams.

In some cases pay your money and you can have any fancy name you want

The most important thing is to learn skill sets at your son's age. TR is referring to doing the skills over and over properly until it becomes second nature. The more you repeat a skill the quicker and more competently you perform that skill. Knowing what to do in a situation can shave a fraction of a second off the reaction time and make the difference on a play.
Rather than debate the title you should be concerned about coaching and the competition the team plays.
You should find the best team in your area and find how well they are coached specific to your son's position. A position player needs good footwork and mechanis and it is important to learn this at an early age. At 14-15 it becomes important to play great competition and in most cases it is the elite teams who travel to top tournaments and play ranked teams. If you son doesn't have the skills he will have a problem making these teams since the best players in your area are competing to play for them. It is also tougher to break into these teams at a later stage.

quote:

In some cases pay your money and you can have any fancy name you want

Actually not sure it has anything to do with money. you can call a team anything you want to call it.

Guess more important would be what other people call the team.

BaseballGr8, yes, the team matters and the coaches matter, but the name doesn't. My son's 12U-14U team was "just" a travel team. A community-level AAU team here in Florida. But we finished in the final eight (you can call it 'Elite Eight' if you like) every state tournament we were in, finished 5th at 13U nationals, and won the 14U fall state championship. They're all freshmen, now, and every one of those boys is playing HS ball. Most are on JV, two are on varsity. One's pitching relief, and the other just finished his first season as the starting 2B on the district runner-up.

We were lucky to have some coaches (dads) who cared; one of them was in the Mets organization for a while as a SS and was a fantastic coach. We never paid more than enough to cover tournaments, etc. Around $300 or so per season.

When time for a change came, it wasn't that we were looking for another team, but our former team disbanded because all the boys were in HS (and at different schools). You're right that time flies. But 2B was invited to join a travel team that will be going to the big tournaments (East Cobb, Jupiter, Ft. Myers) this summer. It costs significantly more, and 2Bdad and I won't be able to travel to every game at every tournament, but it's worth it so that 2B can get his feet wet on a bigger stage. He's gotten a great foundation from his youth travel team and his HS team, and we know he'll do just fine. I hope you have the same good luck as we've had!

Good coaching (physical and mental) is more important at that age then the level of the team. By age 15 you should be looking at more competitive teams......with good coaches.

I will add that just because a coach is a former pro player or scout doesn't mean they are a good coach for your kid. i.e. how much does a former pitcher know about catching? hitting? How much does a former catcher know about playing SS? Pitching?

I have found there are plenty of good coaches out there that will actually help a good kid out w/o trying to drain his parents bank account! My son's catching coach has never charged him a dime or asked for anything in 8 years. Paying for a coach doesn't insure you are getting the best!!

I don't measure how good a coach is by his w/l record, I measure him on how his players improve and move on.

Travel = $
Elite = $$$
Select = $$$$
Scout = $$$$$

Finding a good team with good coaching = priceless

BTW make contact with the HS coach and make sure he plays with their summer team in his incoming Fr yr

The three kids playing JV as freshmen at our high school were the three who played at the highest level of travel ball available after eighth grade. They probably would have been the three best players in their class anyway. But facing 80+ pitching and facing stacked lineups pitching in 14U travel prepared them to be ready for more than freshman ball. These three will make varsity as sophomores. Two will should in the field. The third and one of the position players will get time on the mound.

I think the #1 thing to look for is quality coaching, with reps a second consideration. After only doing older teams for the last five years, we added a 13/14 team this spring, with the focus on teaching the boys fundamentals first, and results on the field a distant second. I am completely amazed at how little some of the kids I've seen, on our team and others, have been taught at the younger/lower levels.

You want to play on a team that spends a lot of time teaching the game to your son, and one that plays plenty of games so that he'll get lots of experience.

BOF-
Really? Scout team $$$$$??
Both my boys have played on Scout teams and it never cost anything. Maybe not all scout teams are alike??

I think it is important to find the best team possible in which he can also contribute. But the most important thing you can do -- and often this costs little money -- is concentrate on the offseason training aspect. If your kid works harder in the offseason than anyone else it will not matter what team he plays for at age 13/14. When it really counts, at age 17/18, he will be better than the competition.

I would say a lot of what you do depends on the skill level of your son. Some kids have the fundamentals down by 13 or 14. They do need to fine tune, but they are pretty good already. In that case, you need to be facing the best competition there is. If your son is good, but needs the fundamentals reinforced, find a team that focuses on that and the competition doesn't matter as much. Games can be a way of polishing your skills. Either way you go, get on a team that gives you plenty of "reps". Doesn't matter how good you are, the only way to get better is to take more ground balls, more fly balls and get more at bats.

I appreciate all this great advice! I am not sure what the future holds, but this season is still young. His team is doing several tournaments this summer. Don't know if they would be considered "top tournaments" but I would expect them to see some good competition. It seems in my local area there are so many travel teams now. Some really good, some OK, and some not so good. That is based on teams that my sons travel team has played, and some of what I've heard. It also seems that alot of the teams shift kids every year, and new teams starting and others disbanding. I don't think there is one team full of "great players", but mostly each team has 2-3 great players and the rest from good to ok.
I believe his travel coach is looking into getting this team to see more even more "competitive" type of teams/tournaments next year. I think it might mean even more travelling then we are doing this year, and we're doing alot this year.
We of course want to do the right thing, but don't necessarily want to pay big $$$ if we don't need to. It's already expensive enough! I think he is fine where he is now, but I know with HS now on the horizon that we should be as informed as possible.
It helps to get advice from others who know alot about this stuff!