No Respect for Raleigh

Matt Zeblo, '07 Broughton graduate, is playing for Belmont University, Nashville, TN.

 

3 points here to make

#1 the original thread was about the fact that not alot of Raleigh area kids got mentioned on this site. And that is a fact. Most of the people that post on this site are from out west. West of the triangle. Im from the triangle area and our hs is located between Raleigh and Durham. There are a few more posters from the triangle area and the eastern part of the state. But the fact is most are from the western part of the state. It is only natural for the people that post on here to post about the players that they are familiar with. The teams they see play and the players they see play. There are some outstanding players in the triangle area. I mentioned a few of them in an earlier post. But until we get some local folks that want to come on here and tell us about the triangle area players which includes the Raleigh area its not going to change.

#2 the thread has shifted to the talent level of the Raleigh area. This area is growing at a very swift pace to say the least. More and more high schools are being built and the talent pool is being spread out. Much like mlb when you have expansion. The more schools the more teams and the less dominant those programs are going to become. Garner has lost a large portion of their area to new schools. Wake Forest Rolesville has as well and a new school is already on schedule to be built. Many more area schools are in the same boat. This should not stop people from posting about the players or the teams. But again that is up to those that know and go watch the players.

#3 there is no middle school baseball in Wake County. Im not sure this is a real problem but that can be debated. In the day so to speak you had the South Wake Storm AAU , The Blaze AAU , The Raleigh Red Wings , The RockHounds AAU , The Thunder and a few more. Im not sure if these programs still exist or not. It takes people that want to coach and have a true interest in seeing kids get good coaching and instruction at a young age to make a difference. Again Im not sure if they have this or not in the Raleigh area. But it is really hard to build a traditional powerhouse type of program when you are constantly losing players and players are moving in and out of your program due to new schools opening all the time. And there is only so many players of a high caliber to go around when your talking about this many schools in one area.

The Raleigh area has some outstanding players in it. Hopefully we will hear about them on this site from the people that go to the games and know the players. I have often wondered why I dont see many kids from the triangle at showcase events I go to. You dont see many tryout for Impact or Hurricanes etc and attend ID camps. It could be that the interest as a whole is just not there.

 

My 2 cents worth

Jon, good to see you posting on here. Good luck to you this season – and tell your dad Mac’s mom says hi.

I’m not sure why the Raleigh area folks (including myself) are reluctant to post information on TBR about our baseball programs. Maybe we’re just lazy. With four sons, I’m usually too busy to stop and compose anything worthwhile. I also see these sites as male dominated and while I read them every day, as a mom, I am hesitant to stick my two cents worth in. I confess to going to Sanderson’s website as well as TBR many times last year for updates on games and CAP 7 standings.

As far as media coverage – the N&O has done some nice feature stories on individual players (including my son), but their ongoing daily coverage of high school baseball is rather pathetic. They do a somewhat better job in their affiliate newspapers, The North Wake News and The Cary News. But in the N&O we get only daily scores listed and a few articles about the Bobby Murray tournament. Much better coverage of the Wake Forest, Wakefield and southern Franklin county high school baseball teams can be found in the Wake Weekly (www.wakeweekly.com). Matt Morgan does an amazing job for our local paper covering all sports in these schools. In addition, Tim Candon, formerly of the Wake Weekly, is now the sports editor of The Cary News (www.carynews.com) and does a good job covering high school baseball in the Cary/Apex/Holly Springs/Morrisville area (including this article from last fall about women’s baseball trying to gain a foothold: http://www.carynews.com/sports/baseball/story/7123.html ) . I saw Tim at several showcase tournaments over the summer following players from the Cary area. And I know he is very responsive to suggestions from his readers. So it seems the local papers are a much better source of information than our “major metropolitan” newspapers.

As far as the talent level in the Triangle area, I have observed the following:

1. Soccer is HUGE in the Triangle. CASL (Capital Area Soccer League) is the 800 pound gorilla. Started 34 years ago, CASL now has thousands of players in the Triangle, major corporate sponsorship (Adidas, Coca-cola, SAS, PowerAde, Eurosport, WakeMed, WRAL) and access to 44 Triangle locations for fields, including their “home” locations at SAS soccer park in Cary and the 17–field location in North Raleigh, donated by WRAL). With all this sponsorship (read: money) comes publicity and with that comes lots of young parents signing little Johnny (and Jill) up for soccer. Baseball has NOTHING in our area to compete with this. Not even USA Baseball, which is great, but is really just now getting a good foothold here.


2. The population of the Triangle area has grown exponentially over the past 20 years. The school system has exploded with this growth. When we moved to Wake Forest in ’92 there was one high school and it drew kids from Rolesville to Wake Forest down to Millbrook. Families living in North Raleigh (all the way down to Raven Ridge, if you’re familiar with the area) sent their kids to Wake Forest – Rolesville. The closest high schools were East Wake in Wendell and Millbrook in North Raleigh. The WF-R HS baseball team was strong then. Numerous guys left WF-R for college ball and the pros (Derek Foote-’94, Braves, 6th round; Daniel Caldwell-NCSU and later the Cubs; Joe Bauldree-’95, Braves, 12th round; Jarrett Shearin-’95, Expos, 28th round, Andrew Taylor - '05, NCSU to name a few recent ones). Now in our little area we have Wakefield HS, Wake Forest-Rolesville HS, Knightdale HS and a new high school (Heritage) opening in a year or so. The number of baseball players has not expanded proportionately to the growth of the population so we are spreading our players out. In addition, I know that as WF-R HS’s program was weakened by this dilution of talent, some players that would have gone to WF-R HS applied for transfer to other more stable programs, including Broughton, and to further exacerbate the problem, the excellent coaches who skippered these programs retired or left in frustration with the weakened programs. Attracting good coaches to weak programs is not easy and the problem just spirals down from there. We are fortunate at WF-R to now have an energetic and bright young coach who played here and has come back to coach. He is dedicated to improving baseball at WF-R and I have high hopes – but the growth problem and dilution of talent continues to work against us.



(BTW, showcase and travel baseball have filled a huge void here for players wanting to advance to the next level. Legion ball is all but dead in the WF area. I know for Mac, Perfect Game and Impact Baseball (Dirtbags) were crucial in getting exposure to college coaches as well as finding a team of "like-minded" players.)


3. Baseball is the red-headed stepchild to football. Always has been. Always will be. In our area, football is king. The feeder program for young football players is excellent. We have the Titans and the Bulldogs and both of these football programs do a great job getting kids ready to play high school football. Baseball has NOTHING in our area to compete with this. Kudos to the guys who started these programs and continue to run them. No offense to those of you involved with them, but our local baseball programs for kids are a joke. I say this from the perspective of one who once ran one of these local rec programs with 400 kids in it. Oh and by the way, the N&O covers high school football with gallons of ink. I’m not whining – these are just the facts.


As far as the upcoming season, WF-R has a few returning seniors (Andrew Austin – RHP (NC Blues, old Thunder team); Matt Davidson (Tidewater White Sox) – 3b; Jeremy Muse (Tidewater White Sox, old Thunder team) – IF, RHP; Marshall Walter (Redwings) – SS, RHP and Williamson (Thunder, Dirtbags) – OF, RHP). There are also some promising Juniors trying out (John Faircloth (NC Blues) – SS, RHP; Bryce Freeman (Titans) – OF, RHP; Taylor Gleason (too many travel teams to mention!) – OF; Kris Abshire - big 1B; John Allen Renn (NC Blues) - 2b, RHP, OF; Zach Renn (Tri-County Hawks) – C; Tyler Buckley – 1B. We’ll do ok, but no one is mentioning us in the same breath with the words “State Championship.”



Sorry to prattle on so long - this looks more like 4 cents worth!

 

Mother's know best

Great informative post.....who says women don't know as much as men?....Braves you better apologize for being a male chauvinist moderator!!

 

I apologize for the mini-thread jack earlier. Being a member of the media, I don't take too kindly to being accused of not doing the job.

BaseballBuzz hits it out of the park (no punintended). CASL is a monster in the Triangle, but there is plenty of good baseball talent in the area. Soccer has such a grip on things up there, it's harder for baseball to get noticed.

It does get noticed, however.

OK, done with the media portion of this.

Raleigh--post your info!

 

OH, Braves . . .

I never meant to imply that anyone here had treated me with anything less than total respect and kindness. I certainly haven't seen any chauvinism on this board!

It's just that I don't particularly like the image of the "baseball mom" as most people think of it. . . . ok, now I've managed to offend all the men and all the women! My reluctance to post here is totally my hang-up, not anyone else's fault!

Now there is another popular board that I will probably never post on again . . . full of hateful talk and angry people. I did post there once upon a time until a dad spit the invective "rec ball mom" at me in one of his posts, as if that is the ultimate insult (to me, it isn't). Funny thing is, his son and mine ended up playing together on a showcase team, and when I told his son the story we got a big kick out of it. He now calls me "rec ball mom" and I love it. His dad, however, never could bring himself to speak to me. I like to think he was totally ashamed of himself! Taught me a lesson about the lack of anonymity in cyberspace!

 

Welcome..

....aboard BaseballBuzz. You should post more often. We're pretty much friendly over here. We'll be seeing you, oh, around the second game of the season. Hope Mac's not pitching.

 

Thanks, D

We look forward to hosting you guys. Tell Buddy to take it easy on us.

Thanks for the invite to post more. From now on, I'll post whenever I feel I have something useful to say (which according to my husband is not that often).

 

BaseballBuzz:

What a GREAT post! Thanks very much for sharing the information!



Despite the apparent challenges, the Triangle has produced a steady stream of very fine players over the years (including one of my son's best friends and college teammates from Broughton, Matt Danford); and, it will continue to do so. This board is greatly enhanced with contributions such as yours; so, please keep it coming!

(Perhaps I can catch one of your son's games when I come to Cary later this Spring to watch UNC play.)

 

To my dear Baseballbuzz,

Please feel free to post anything you want at anytime. You have just elevated the intelligence level of this site (no disrespect to the rec ball dads).

...and please do not take time to decide whether your post will be useful or not; that has never been a requirement

Seriously, we are excited to have you on here. Although we have nowhere near as many mothers posting as I would like, I can say with confidence that the one's we do have are outstanding in their contributions.

It has never been about informing only. I like to think we are a "baseball" family. Sometimes it is nice just to say "hi". Sometimes it's nice just to say "", sometimes it's nice just to laugh or cry, but whatever brings you to post, it's nice to have you interact.

I would also like to thank Solarte for chiming in. Mike's a great guy and is always willing to help in anyway he can. We are fortunate to have him as a member of our board.

Your Pal,

Braves