threeunassisted posted:Instead of fighting TB our local LL embraced it. They go so far as to make the LL schedule as TB friendly as possible. They schedule age groups every other Saturday off. So this saturday TB and CP play and Minors and Majors are off. The next Saturday its reversed. So any rec player who wants to double down and play TB can play every other weekend without missing Rec games.
The year my youngest was a league age 12 year old, of the 12 kids on his rec team, 10 played some sort of TB.
The league is thriving and has won several State Championships at several age levels over the last 8 years. About 95% of the kids on last years Varsity of the nearest HS (an AAAA school that has been a top 10 school statewide the last few years) came up through that LL.
That is great to hear. I am hoping that our youth travel league makes this transition as well. So far they have fought it, and it's been decimated. For the "all star" travel team, in order to be considered, a player has to make a minimum of 80% of the rec games, and has to commit to be at 100% of the travel tournaments as well. As a result, they have driven away a lot of good players.
To be fair, another way to look at that is that more kids get a chance to play travel ball, it's just that the quality of the baseball suffers.