Plantation

I keep hearing of this tournament in Plantation Fl. What teams are going to this? What are the ages?

 

Rising Stars

It is called the Rising Stars Showcase. They run one in the summer, fall and winter. Fall is nice, not as hot. Summer and fall are the biggest ones for timing reasons of corse. They play at Bamford Sports Complex, around 16 fields or so and other parks in town. Usually runs around 4 days. Tons of colleges attend; I never missed it. As for teams, many ASA Golds and A's. They want a high talent level year after year so that college coaches will continue to come and recruit / attend. There are a lot of Fl teams, but you have from Cali to Midwestern to NE to Louisiana so on and so forth. Probably a solid argument for the biggest showcase out there in terms of teams attending and coaches attending. Colorado, etc have a lot, but for this side of the US this one is huge and very good talent. I have seen everyone recruit there. UCLA, TN, UF, UGA, LSU, UA, AU, UAZ...pretty much the ACC, SEC, many PAC 10's, Big 10's, etc. Lots of Division II's as well. Many of the southeastern Div II's attend one if not both of these tournaments. Great way to be seen if you do your work ahead of time in contacting coaches and getting a confirmation they will be there. If you want and know you can play Div I, you have a great chance at being seen and followed there along with Division II. Many well kept secrets we would recruit became exposed at this very tournament and moved on to great Div I careers and they were found right there at RS.

The "Gold Coast Hurricanes" is the team / program that hosts. The website is: http://www.risingstarsevents.com/

For those of you not familiar with FL, Plantation is in Broward County. You could fly into Ft. Laudrdale, Miami or West Palm Beach if you ever decided to enter a team. The people who run it are very helpful. If Patti Shotwell still runs things, it is still first class. I believe Cyd still runs the tournament as well. They are nice people, hard workers.

Being that it is a showcase, the focus is on 18 & under teams. They have smaller 16 & under pools as well. The tournament is always full and always has a waiting list.

 

Here is the Team list
http://www.risingstarsevents.com/teamsfall.htm

We are going down with a team from Delaware.

 

thanks

Appreciate the info. With this info why don't more NC teams play in this showcase? It looks like the biggest of the Fall season.

 

Great, Informative post...

A Great, informative post! Thanks for the information!

 

Money....

It takes funds to get a team down there! Not to mention you have to enter this one early, early! Fills up fast!

 

Rising Stars Showcase

Good Luck to the Carolina Lady Blues Gold/ Legacy Gold. Hope all you ladies have a safe trip and play well.

 

agreed, but also

we just do not have a lot of "Gold" or ASA "A" programs in the area. In Fl and many other parts of the country they are a dime a dozen and can play at that level. The majority of our teams here are playing NSA & limited ASA, but I do believe we have enough talent in the area to field more competitive programs to go down there and compete. You simply have to be in one of those two classes to be accepted to attend. Our teams here tend to play more showcase ball and less trophy tournaments. Some play ASA and go to Nationals, but not the majority in our area. The people who do RS want a dense talent pool for coaches to recruit from and they feel that requiring teams to be an ASA Gold or ASA A Classification will build their case for continuing to bring in better talent to watch, therefore the college coaches will keep coming back. Not many showcases require teams to do this, but it helps them get better talent / teams and also has cut down the list of teams trying to get it. I can tell you as a former coach that the number of fields they have and different pools playing, it is very difficult to see everything you want to see. As a coach you need to be very orgazined and have an agenda you can stick to when going to this tournament because you can really get overwhelmed trying to hit every field or every park. You need to have those kids and their schedules set before going and then you have to plan for the kids you find that you did not know about before hand. This is a tournament where if both coaches from the university can attend, they should to cover as much as possible. Lesson here, if your DD goes to this tournament with a team, she needs to get her schedule and recruiting info out to the schools well in advance and follow up with emails, mail, and phone calls to the coach reminding them. Her best shot is to keep putting her name in front of the coach so they take the time to go see her, and then they may only see her for 3-4 innings sometimes. The kids have to be ready to play hard every out in this one. This is truly a tournament where if a coach sees a kid throw a helmet, mouth off or have bad body language, they will get up and leave and move on for good. They don't have the time to give a second chance to go watch the same kid that weekend. Just too much to see and always another kid that can replace a bad attitude or what is perceived as one by the coach. Hope this all helps.

Good luck to those teams attending! Go get those scholarships!!!!

 

Good post eyesup! I hope all our DD's going to this tournament will read your post.

 

Fall v. Summer....

....might want to check a little closer on either the Fall or Summer gigs. Don't forget about the D1 college Fall window of Oct. to Nov. Also My DD played for 2 teams last yr. in the Fall and that experience was awesome. KEY!!!!!...Bamford is the Park to be playing at in general. Piccollo was nice and the other park certainly had a vast # of coaches attending the games. But if a chance arises to play at the festival put on by Bamford, go for it. Also, try not to miss the Fort Lauderdale boat show, its special, AND, the Halloween costume party on Los Olas Blvd. IS A MUST! TAKE YOUR CAMERA! Your DDs will have a ball playing in front of a BooKoo of coaches and also will enjoy the costume contest, BTW, they probably should leave downtown before Midnight. Wish I was there this year!