Practices: opened or closed?

my daughter plays WRMS...8th grade

I go to practices and sit as a silent observer..just to enjoy watching her play!!

I'm at all the games and keep stats for the team...i talk to my daughter and all the girls, but only encouragement, never anything negative or demeaning.
They are most about having fun right now, as only 3 girls on team have prior travel ball experience....and thats what theyre doing is having FUN!!!!!

 

One should never make that comment. Travel ball vs school ball is apples and oranges. It totally depends on which programs you're comparing.

 

Start a thread on this. List ALL the quality North Carolina HS programs and compare to the number of quality TB programs. I'll bet HS exceeds TB!

In TB recruiting takes the place of teaching. Its much easier to recruit talent than to develop talent. Most TB programs lack the ability to develop talent and don't even try. Thats one reason its apples and oranges.

Eleveted rec. ball? Not in central NC and probably not in the east and west.

By the way, its almost impossible for college coaches to observe HS because their seasons run at the same time.

 

There is no way that quality HS ball exceeds quality travelball. First, what is your idea of quality ball... the teams record? I hope you don't use that for a a hs team. Lets just take Kings Mtn's. conference. If you go by records how many quality teams were there? Now if you look at other factors there were probably not many quality teams. There are probably one maybe two quality teams from each conference.

How about someone taking a poll of the players and ask them what they would rather play and which has more quality teams?

IMO, travel ball far exceeds hs ball as far as quality teams.

 

great

great post. agree with all your points. hope it will always be that HS's can't legally recuit (well some do recruit but won't start that here & now). Got nothing against TB at all, but they should be able to put together monster teams when they have no limits on areas to recruit from.

 

My 2 cents

I also coach HS and summer ball
I can tell you that because of no limits on where or how you can get players Summer ball is more competitive. But over the years I have been blessed with players that have won two state championships in three trips at HS and summer teams that have won various state and nationals (for what that title is worth)
I can tell you that from my coaches point of view that playing in the HS State championships is by far the most exciting and important experience I have had in this sport. And if you ask the girls I bet that they would agree.
And in years to come they will remember the HS championships much more fondly then any summer ball game.
This is not to take anything away from summer / travel ball. It is in a very large part that those teams and coaches have contributed to the sucess of our HS team. HS and summer ball are, as one poster put it Apples and Oranges. And I feel that they compliment rather then oppose each other.
Both are important in the student athletes quest to play at the college level.
Summer ball for the extended season, coaching and exposure to college recruiters and HS ball for the team and community sprit and showing college recruiters that a prospective athlete has the abiility to ballance School, five day a week practices, homework and a social life that is needed to suceed in college
Thanks for the soap box, and please dont rip me too bad.
Ray

 

You mention 8 TB programs. There were 40 top 10 HS programs last year (1A-4A) in NC. I'm certainly not familiar with all 40, but I wager that few are slouch programs.

There are 50 HS conferences in NC. Take the top two from each and that gives you 100 programs. Probably not too many slouches there either. And some conferences have three or four decent programs.

I saw 16 programs in Raleigh last June. No slouches there, and I know several good ones that got bumped before the final four (and they don't get to go pay their money and sign up and play again next weekend)!

The second and third rounds of the playoffs involved 64 teams playing 48 games. Nearly 60% of those games were one or two run games, suggesting good competition.

I'm not saying HS is better than TB, I'm saying comparing them is apples and oranges. For example, TB plays time limits, TB plays tie breakers, TB plays drop dead format, TB crams too many games in too little time. (Sounds a little like rec. ball to me). HS plays real softball.

As for the issue of teaching, does anyone really believe that players are recruited to organizations like Lady Blues, Curve, Cardinals, etc. and then taught to play? No, I think they know quite a lot before they arrive. The function of these organizations is to tweak skills and showcase the talent that someone else has developed over years of work...and some of them do a fantastic job of that. Once again, apples and oranges.

 

Very well stated!