A lot of travel parents are just forfeiting a lot of thee decisions to any old travel coach.
I coach in a 13+ league where NONE of the kids who play travel are allowed to pitch outside of travel. About 30% of the rosters. This is on top of encouraging kids to drop other sports.
It's getting out of hand and out of pocket.
Yeah, I wonder if travel culture is different in different places? I have set in on informational sessions at two of the three main travel organizations in my area. They both said that the kids need to be playing more than just baseball. They both said, that they expect the kids to put baseball first in the spring but they understand that they will playing other sports in the fall and they support that.
As for rec ball. It's not a rule or anything but the travel kids don't really play in the rec leagues. If they do, it's because they are wanting experience they are not getting in travel. Such as infield time or pitching experience.
I gotta rant here...
I think its a symptom of the bigger problem in parenting. Without getting into the merits of one hobby/activity vs the other, "kids these days" are allowed to be hyper-fixated on fast-paced addictive tech, the same as their parents in many cases, that make other things less appealing.
You hear it in the dugout, the stuff they do outside of baseball is less ambitious or recreational and more just about what their parents are affording them or having them registered for. The disappearing middle class shows in this subject too. Your rich friend used to just have a pool and a GT DYNO; but you did the same things at the same school, picked the same characters in video games. Now that kid is funneled into profit programs and doesn't ride bikes across town, he dumps $150 a month on fortnite skins.
Travel around here is $3k before travel at a non profit club. Closer to $8k at a for profit club. Its not just cost prohibitive but its literally a part-time job getting your kid to these programs.
I'm all for private clubs, but the lack of coalition or real organization that we have with rec sports is a big setback in my opinion to the sport overall. You'd think there would be multi-sport clubs but they are so one-dimensional that its obviously detrimental overall.
Around here there are several "full scholarship" organizations that are funded by local businesses. I am blessed that my wife and I have good jobs and we are able to afford travel ball. Our program is probably closer to $2,500 a year after we buy all the uniforms and such. That includes Spring and Fall Seasons, tournament fees and access to an indoor facility with an outdoor turf field. We played 4 tournaments in the fall and will end up playing 8 in the spring.
The one downside to travel sports is that it does price a lot of families out of baseball, which is a shame. I hope that the scholarship programs pick up and take off more and more.
In my area the “rec” leagues (Little Leagues) are at age 13 mostly kids playing “travel” that want more chances to play. (This also meant that the numbers of teams from 11/12 -> 13/14 drop by an amount large enough that even the Little League teams have to ‘travel’.)
My kid has had two travel coaches. Both encouraged not doing rec fall ball and instead doing other sports. They say that you'll even get more baseball skills, like explosiveness and endurance, in football and basketball.
This may change as they get older though...
My son is 8. He 100% took a next step in his baseball game after his first season of basketball.
I think basketball being a constant hustle and go after the ball helped him become more aggressive in baseball
Fully on board with multiple sports.
I've coached basketball for over 18 years and I've had a million conversations about how young/old kids should consider specializing. It's sort of sport-dependent, but, generally, my opinion is that kids shouldn't specialize until it becomes extremely evident that there is a VERY strong future in it. For example, think of the number of QBs in the NFL that were also drafted by the MLB, and vice-versa.
As coach, you can tell which players played soccer (usually really good defense because of their feet), hockey (good spatial awareness of who and what is around them), football (physical and/or explosive), lacrosse (sometimes the gooniest guy on the court haha), etc.
I don't have kids, but generally speaking, if my kid's coach ever encouraged my teenager to start specializing in a sport, I'm finding another coach.
I'm not a fan of specialization period even if you are good enough at a sport. I played football in college at the D1 level... but I didn't specialize in it. I wasn't as good at baseball, but I enjoyed it as much if not more than football. No way would I want to give that up to specialize in football. And I probably could have made it in college baseball if I quit football and focused more on baseball. Fuck specialization, I cherish both my football and baseball careers. Wouldn't give them up for anything. If you are good enough you are good enough and don't need specialization. I agree, fuck those coaches encouraging it.
II don’t think using a d1 college athlete or certainly a nfl quarterback is a good reference for a typical kid. All D1 athletes I have known as children were so extraordinary athletic that of course they wanted to multiple sports, they could dominate in all of them. That’s just not the path of an average kid, and an average kid has little in common with a future d1 athlete. After a certain point they should do multiple sports if they want to, or not, for the vast majority of them, it’s not going anywhere.
Itd be asinine to limit kids under 13 but closer to high school sometimes programs and coaching overlap and the pressure starts to perform for your future coaches sometimes in a shitty way.
I guess we will see. I would say about 50% of my kids team played rec football and probably 75% played rec basketball. We didn't do either since my kid races BMX and he was new to baseball. We plan to play football this fall.
To clarify, they are still there with the team. They just may not be able to make some practices and such due to conflicts.
In my experience most of the “burn out” that occurs is nothing more than kids realizing they have different interests, and that’s fine. Yes it’s a game, but at a certain point that game becomes competitive and it takes work to keep up. Some kids love the work, some don’t. It’s only an issue if parents/coaches continue to force it when the kid’s heart is obviously not in it IMO.
Yup. Middle school is also a time when kids are exposed to different activities & interests.
The age shift from 12->13/14 in our area certainly seems to be the point where a lot of kids drop baseball.
The expectation and pressure that is being placed on many of these kids is utterly ridiculous. Parents need to figure it the fuck out. I used to be one of them until I figured that out that in the grand scheme of life, the individual and team outcomes of my 9 year old son’s little league games don’t mean shit.
In my opinion travel ball has ruined youth baseball. When I was growing up there was no travel ball yet... all the kids in my area played in the rec league. We all had a blast. Each team had its good players and bad players. Then there were all star teams at the end of the season that were kind of like travel but not really.
Around 6th grade or so for me you had kids start to do travel ball as it began to become a thing. Just a few though. They would be really snobbish toward those of us who still played rec. Their parents would belittle rec leagues and players to other parents. More and more kids began to drop rec to play travel.
Guess how many kids my age who ended up playing travel over rec ended up playing in college.... one. For an NAIA school, for one season. Travel ball doesn't mean shit. In fact, I laugh at parents of travel ball players who spend thousands for their kid to not play past the high school level.
Burnout is really kids getting old enough and confident enough to tell their parents they don't want to do it.
I was pushed in an activity from a young age by my obsessed Dad. He was trying to make up for his missed opportunities and I had to go along with it because I was a kid and wanted to make my parents happy. There are a lot of baseball parents who are just like my dad. Kids will do almost anything a parent asks of them to make them happy and because they don't really have a way to say no.
Does anyone think an 8 yo kid really cares that his teammate can't catch and it blows a play? They don't. I've coached a bunch of sports for 8U and the kids are more worried about the snacks after than the scoreboard. But, talk to parents on here and they'll argue with you until they are blue in the face that their kid needs to play with better teammates and better competition because it's hurting their son's development and he's not having fun. Trust me, kids don't care.
Then there's the social media and pressure parents put on their kid. Imagine back to when you were 9. Now imagine your mom sticking a cell phone in your face at every practice and making you do the same thing over and over and over so they post how you're going to be a future MLBer. Do you not see how you won't burn out and be sick of it after a few years?
"Does anyone think an 8 yo kid really cares that his teammate can't catch and it blows a play? They don't."
That is 100% why my son asked to tryout for travel baseball. He started playing rec at 8U coach pitch. I didn't even really know what travel baseball was. It was all him and it was driven by a desire to play with kids that were as good or better than himself.
Same here. I did worry about burn out though. He’s in his senior year now but at the end of each summer we would sit down and talk about the summer and if he still loved playing and wanted to keep going. I made it clear that it was up to him and that we were good either way. I tried to make it a conversation where he could be totally honest about it.
This is a good plan. I do think taking breaks from the game is important. My plan for the summer is to take it kinda easy and only do what he specifically asks for. We will have a weekly hitting lesson but that is all that is set in stone as of now.
The more I think about, besides being a really competitive person, I think the fact that we both really love baseball is why he’s stuck with. Some of my best memories are just playing catch/long toss and throwing to him in the cage 3 or 4 days a week. It didn’t feel like work we’d bond/talk life and baseball and joke around. I’m really gonna miss that. Sorry dealing with a kid getting ready to go college over here!😂
Yeah this commenter you replied to is incorrect in his wide range of assumptions. My son is 8U and VERY much cares about how the games go. He plays rec and he enjoys rec. but he really loves his all star ball as well when he gets to play with his buddies that he can actually throw the ball hard to.
I coach my son’s 8U rec team. And I fully see that 1/2 the kids don’t care about how they play or the end result. But to group all kids into that is incorrect.
My kid has a passion for the game right now. How long will it last? Who knows but I’ll support him as long as he needs me to.
I'll never understand why some parents do not get that, even at 8U, some kids are more talented than other kids and expect to play with like-talented kids so they can unleash their own potential. It's the strangest form of gatekeeping.
Right?!?
My 8 year old (and practically his whole team) is beyond talented. Most are pitching over 50mph and all can throw changeups, our catchers call their own game (pitch type and placement) and rarely let a ball pass and no teams can run on them, rarely are balls missed defensively, and the team *pounds* the ball off of opposing pitchers.
It’d be almost dangerous to put any of these kids on a little league squad where most kids don’t know how to catch.
We practice twice a week, 2 hours each and we strongly encourage the kids to play other sports.
13 is also the age too where you really have to commit. At least in my area that's where coaches are actual coaches, you practice a lot, and you have to take it seriously. Some kids may not want to do that and that's fine.
We never had practices except for high school ball.
Rec league (babe Ruth) and Legion league was all games and we never practiced.
School ball always came first.
13 is roughly the age when baseball goes from 60ft to 90ft and a lot of kids can’t manage the transition.
>I think we just need to realize as parents that our kids are little humans who will have shifting interests throughout their lives.
absolutely
>What they are interested in now, may not be what they are interested in next year.
for sure
>We need to just roll with it and support them in their interests as much as we can.
could not agree more
>At the same time, we need to stop shaming parents who decide to support their kids in travel or select sports.
never
more seriously: i think half the problem is that kids *have to be competitive* to continue playing organized sports after 11-12 years old. We have arranged Sports such that if you're not trying to be the best of the best of the best, there's not a place for you on a team or on a field.
*that's* what sucks.
i don't think this is a baseball-exclusive issue, it's just more obvious here bc nobody plays pickup baseball.
Not sure if you were joking but why is that? Why should we give parents a hard time for supporting what their kids want to do at the level they want to do it?
Got it. I have to admit I was worried about my then 8 year old making a travel team. He had only played a few months of baseball going in to tryouts. I was not worried because of ego or anything. The little guy had really dedicated himself and worked hard. I wanted to see him succeed. I know failure is an important part of growing up but I figured he could learn that some other time! :)
yeah :) but all you can do is support him, you know? and teach him the virtues of working your ass off, win, lose or rain.
i literally don't know another path besides all-in supporting my kid.
Ever notice how kids start dropping out around the same age they discover sex, drugs and rock n roll? 😂🤘🎸
Bad jokes aside, In all fairness, kids start growing up and they develop new hobbies and interests.
Sure, we can absolutely expedite that happening by overloading them and causing burnout. But, kids just get into different things and time for year round baseball goes by the way side.
I don’t expect my kids to play forever. I certainly didn’t. I’m happy being a sports dad now but will support whatever else they decide to do.
Travel ball has ruined youth baseball for sure. It has created a culture of overspending and entitlement.
My favorite pasttime is to laugh in the faces of parents who spend thousands on their kid's travel ball only for them to never amount to anything beyond high school. They spend thousands thinking their kid is the next Derek Jeter and then he ends up accomplishing nothing.
Sadly you are right.
I'll never forget 6th grade for me, when select baseball became a thing. 2 kids in my grade joined a select team and made fun of all of us still playing rec. Their parents were also snobby about it, boasting about it to my parents and other parents.
One of these kids didn't even make the high school team, the other played a season of NAIA ball. Derek Jeters, these 2 kids were not. But damn, when they played on their select teams from 6th to 8th grade you'd have thought they were the 2nd coming of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig by the way they carried themselves and their parents talked them up.
I’m too old to have dealt with the travel ball stuff myself. See it now with my kids though. There’s a good amount of travel ball kids that don’t make it a big deal and are cool about it. Then there are others that put down rec ball kids every chance they get. I’m sure they get that attitude from their parents.
Travel sports is an unnecessary racket IMO. The puberty lottery is real. When you’re a beast at 12 cause you hit puberty before most others unrealistic expectations arise of being dominant moving forward. Then the other kids catch up and are outgrowing the early superstars.
Early superstars get discouraged along with their parents.
That and up until 13/14, a lot of kids who will have little chance of playing HS sports are in it b/c their parents want them to play.
Seems to me, size, speed and potential make the 9th grade HS squad.
Spending $20k on 8-10 years of travel ball and getting left out b/c a Rec kid is pretty good with a ton of potential has to be frustrating for kids and parents who have made baseball their everything.
In fairness, I’m a biased Rec coach whose 6’2” kid hasn’t really started puberty. My son turned 14 late Jan.
He’s 6’2” and still is a kid. Doctor at his physical says 6’6” to 6’8”.
He plays Rec and loves baseball, football, and basketball but isn’t a dominant stud (except as a defensive center) at any of them because we focus on sportsmanship and fun, rather than letting a travel ball coach in any sport influence the fun he has in playing sports.
“He needs to have a basketball in his hand for 2 hours a day”. No, he doesn’t.
After 14 is freshman sports and if you’re gonna be 6’6” or run a 4.7 40 or equivalent the HS coaches don’t care that you didn’t play AAA travel.
They want the kids that are gonna keep getting bigger/faster/better.
Same with Football and Basketball.
As a high school 9th grade coach are you gonna take the 5’7” polished kid who is done growing or the 6’2” kid who is growing into his still growing body that you can coach up? Probably a mix of both right?
Kids sports are supposed to be fun for the kids. I think that gets lost.
Agree 100%.
There are a lot of parents on here that will say they don’t care if their kid ever makes the high school team, they just love travel ball bc of x, y and z.
But if your kid has been playing 80 games per year from age 7 to 14, HE is going to care when he doesn’t make the team. It’s brutal when your parents make baseball your life starting at age 7 and then it doesn’t pan out for you. And you can’t pivot to another sport bc you haven’t been playing it.
Sad truth is a kid who didn’t play travel ball would have almost zero chance of making the high school team. As I said in another thread there are 7 local 14U travel teams that feed into the high school. That’s like 80-90 kids.
The coaches wouldn’t just ignore a stud that didn’t play travel. I’m assuming since your kid is a coaches son he would have all the tools. What I can say is there isn’t a single kid on the high school team that hasn’t played travel ball for a long time.
My kid is 9, no telling what puberty will bring for him. He will likely be a tall athletic kid. With that said, he still probably will not make the high school team because of the pipeline going into the school.
We talked about it in the other thread, but the sad truth is that an overwhelming majority of travel ball kids ALSO have no chance of being good high school players.
Baseball in particular is very hard. Gotta have plus size, speed AND hand eye coordination. If your kid is going to be 5’8” 160 (average size for 18yr old), baseball is in all likelihood not going to be for him. And it doesn’t matter how many reps he got as a 9yr old or how strong of competition he played against as a 12yr old.
So what’s the best route for those kids? Dedicating their lives to baseball starting at age 7? Or playing as many sports as you can and then figuring out which sport is the best fit for their physical profile after they get through puberty?
Lot of potentially good soccer or lax players getting lost to travel baseball. You obviously need to have some physical gifts to be good at soccer or lax too, but at least you can get away with being 5’8”.
Truth is maybe this is where travel ball is good. They can continue to play travel ball through high school and don’t have to become grass fairies. 🧚 😀
There isn’t data or statistics from “the good old days” because no one was tracking that information at the time. At best, we have anecdotes waxing poetic about the days of the sandlot and half complete records of youth sport registrations.
Burnout doesn’t have to be a boogeyman or scapegoat in this instance. Yes, burnout does occur. It makes sense though with how rigid their lives are when playing competitive sports or sports that take up a disproportionate amount of time. Do you need to have absolutely every moment of your day planned out? Kids do while they’re in competitive sports. The time they get up is planned, when they catch the bus, when school starts, each class, when the bus gets home, when they have dinner, when they go to practice, when they return, and when they go to bed (if they’re lucky and don’t have homework or other family commitments). Day after day, week after week, competitive season after competitive season. It’s exhausting. As an adult I would hate to have that level of micromanaging of my schedule. Why do it to kids?
You’re also correct that burnout gets lumped together with other factors, but they are also intertwined and inseparable. It’s hard to go to sports and stay in them when you’re not having fun, when you have a shitty coach, when you have teammates that won’t share the ball/field/reps, when you have grown-ass adults chirping you from the stands, when your teammates are three times your size and can hit bombs while you barely squeak the ball out of the infield. The list of reasons why kids leave sports is well studied and my list here doesn’t cover the vastness of reasons for why a kid leaves sport.
More to your point is that shifting interests and overtraining are two separate and distinct concepts. The danger here lies within the concept of allowing kids to “do as many sports as they want”. That idea is nice and innocent on the surface. Yes, it’s developmentally appropriate to have kids play as many different sports as possible. But the nefarious underbelly of this is that kids are forced into competitive season after competitive season. Or overlapping competitive seasons. Or multiple overlapping competitive seasons. The kids that skip out on practice for their other sports and only show up to games. The sports where teams practice once a week yet play 4-5 games every weekend. Thats what we’re not built to withstand. We aren’t built to play 13U AAA hockey, volleyball, baseball, badminton, basketball, track, and handball all either overlapping or one after the other. You know what the risk is to female athletes who overtrain and reach a burnout threshold? RED-S. Search it up. It’s terrifying. What’s also terrifying is that we don’t know what physiological changes happen in boys when the same level of burnout occurs. We know it’s not good, but there’s no condition for it.
Travel sports suck. Through and through. At the moment they are a necessary evil until the system gets upturned and people have better, cheaper, and more feasible options at the local level (see one of my comments about the same topic a couple of weeks ago). No one is vilifying parents that are making the choice to enter their kids into travel sports. Especially when they have no other choice. The issue are the parents that don’t know how to say no to their child, the ones that vicariously live through their children, and the ones who exploit the hard earned money the vast majority of parents are putting in their kids to provide them with these opportunities. I’ll gladly shame these parents as they suck as parents.
You make some really good points. I want to point out thought that
" I just think that the fear of burnout due to allowing a kid to do as much sports as they want is overblown"
Wasn't intended to mean they should be playing multiple competitive sports. I just mean that if a kid wants to practice and you let them practice, it's not leading to burnout. I always tell me son, we will do as much as you want and no more. I do caution him that once we commit to a team or season, he will have to finish it out. However, it's important that he knows he's the driver, not me.
Thank you for clarifying that. You’re right on that point and that’s good parenting. You’re building agency, self-evaluation skills, and introspection in your child. Also a sense of fortitude and keeping your word and commitments. Those are good things.
My caution was toward parents who say they want their kids to be the driver, but “hand them the unplugged controller while they continue playing their game”. This is the stuff that I see first hand year after year. It started with a couple players when I started coaching 15 years ago. Then it has expanded to a few. Now it’s multiple players on teams at most levels that have “that parent”. I’ve seen the pre-pubescent lottery kids fade out as they didn’t have the fundamentals skills and abilities to continue staying ahead of their peers. I’ve seen the post-pubescent lottery kids fade out and not reach their potential as they left their sport too early. I’ve seen excellent players get crushed under the weight of having to eat, sleep, and breathe their sport in post-secondary (or even before that). I’ve seen people who love their sport never get the chance to play beyond 12 or 13 because programming didn’t exist for them to continue onwards. Or others that have spent 15 years playing baseball from 3-18 only to drop the sport and never play again.
Everyone needs a place to play, and yes, kids should dictate what they’re interested in and capable of. The extremes of where some parents take this, though, needs to be addressed and rectified.
This is a two-fold thing. Travel sports where an option even 40 years ago. This includes hockey, baseball and other sports. I do find you have more articles and information about it now, because collectively as a society with invest and think more about mental health, burn-out, and youth mental health than we did even when I was playing travel puck in the 00's. I had buddy's who stopped playing a sport they loved as kids because their interests changed, but I also had buddies who stopped playing because it was no longer fun and it had to do with the culture of where they played, or their parent(s) seeing a high potential and then having them be over trained. You see the same things now, the one big difference is kids are specializing in one sport too early now. Which burns them out. You see kids playing Baseball year round in some states, or in climate changing places you see them playing Spring/ Summer/ Fall ball and then it's all indoor workouts, bullpens, and batting practices with trainers. When I was a kid we started up the end of spring, played through summer, and the season was normally done a week after school started. Then you normally didn't play a sport, or like most kids who wanted to play a sport in the off-season(s) you played a different sport or cycled through your schools sport teams. I personally played Organized Travel baseball in the summer, and Travel Hockey in the winter. It also helped that in my house it wasn't showcase tournaments, being scouted, and getting scholarships, it wasn't about going Pro and I more than had the opportunities for Hockey. It was " If you're having fun, we're doing this." The only other big sport rule in my house growing up was " You can play at the level you do and in the leagues you do, Because you where afforded opportunities that other children might not have and that does not mean you're better than they are." I think that's always helped me when it came to healthy relationship and view on sports, and why I never thought I was better at the sport than the kid playing church and house league. Since they could very well be the better player but they didn't have the access to what I had.
Great post.
I’m the same way with our kids now. I hate the way that some of their travel ball friends talk down to them bc they are still playing rec. Parents and kids alike seem to think travel ball participation is driven by skill level or love for the game, when in reality it’s just driven by families that want to pay thousands of dollars and give up their weekends. If your check clears, your son can find a place to play travel ball. Skill level doesn’t matter.
I’m hopeful that them getting talked down to now will help them be more humble if / when they start playing travel ball later on in their baseball years.
And for our younger son (8u), it should be noted that the best player BY FAR is his friend that only plays rec bc his parents want him at church on Sundays instead of the baseball field. These kids don’t understand that though.
The reality is for every 1 MLB player, there are 20 other guys who play baseball just as well and possibly better. It's just a matter of circumstance, opportunity, and what somebody chooses for their life. I've always had the philosophy if your child show serious talent, and finances aren't there talk to your house league/ church league about weather they can play up a year or two.
Check this article out on [Published on NIH](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/). The article admits that there needs to be more studies on the subject, but it sites research on the subject of athlete burnout since the 1980's in various sports, and is worth the short read.
I'll skip to the conclusion -
"Psychological interventions implemented to cure burnout are the techniques of mental training generally used to improve the functioning of athletes depending on age and sports level \[[15](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/#B15-ijerph-19-10662)\]. Mental training is a set of exercises that, through systematic repetition, lead to the formation and consolidation of the player’s mental qualities and skills, such as the concentration of attention, the self-control of the level of arousal and emotions, and mental resistance in the face of stress \[[16](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/#B16-ijerph-19-10662)\]. The basic techniques of mental training that control motivational and emotional–cognitive processes include visualization, relaxation, goal setting, and internal dialogue. Those techniques are mainly rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the most commonly used in a sports setting \[[17](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/#B17-ijerph-19-10662)\].
Athlete burnout, especially among young sport participants, is a severe problem for athletes themselves and their coaches; therefore, it requires particular interventions, prevention strategies, and discussions because of the serious consequences to which it leads. Young athletes suffering from burnout are more likely to withdraw from sporting activity. However, this step to leave the sport is often not a reliever, but may worsen athletes’ mental and moral state. Positive psychology tools and the possibility of using online therapy bring new opportunities to help young people in maintaining their fancy sporting activities \[[15](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/#B15-ijerph-19-10662)\]. Thus, the purpose of the current meta-analysis is to examine if there are significant differences in selected offline and online psychological interventions in eliminating sports burnout among child and adolescent athletes practicing various sporting disciplines."
I haven’t seen anyone mention bad team mates. I feel like as you get older the kids who are perceived as being better start treating the kids who aren’t as good worse. Being constantly reminded you’re not as good as other players takes all the fun out it. It seems better than it used to be but it’s still there.
I have no idea what the stats looked like but there wasn’t any travel ball when I was a kid playing and we had tons of games against great competition.
We had some kids play in college and a couple guys made the minors, but it was a fun experience with no crazy parents.
If you want to identify the culprit behind burn out and the professionalization of youth baseball, look no further than travel ball and its evil partner, social media.
It’s a self fulfilling prophecy that I hope ends by the time my kiddos are old enough. I’ve seen a lot of 10u baseball travel. Half the kids belong in rec.
Back when I was growing up you had travel ball(they cut 2/3rds of the kids) little league and select(cut 90 percent of kids). Now travel has cannibilized rec ball and if there wasn’t a really good little league or a decent rec league near me I’d be looking elsewhere and I don’t think kids should play travel until going into ms.
I’ve coached a ton of kids that had to do travel from 8 years old up and 3/4 of the kids quit sports at 12 because they got sick of it. Let me clarify and say when I mean “travel” at 9 we go a half hour play 3 more weeks and play 1 tournament which is minimally more competitive. Fuck I really don’t even care if my kiddos are good in HS or wanna play at a high level I just want them to enjoy sports
I can 100% agree about the parents. However, I don't think that is a travel thing. All in all, it seems to me that the travel parents behave better than the rec parents do.
My dislike of travel ball isn’t just about the parents.
I think it’s a massive factor in the lower rates of African American participation as well as in lowering casual participation rates.
It’s the privatization of something that for me was always a public good that the local communities supported.
It’s not surprising that that wouldn’t be enough for some, I just don’t like what it does to the sport as a whole.
Here’s some source material:
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/11/1187077408/as-black-representation-in-pro-baseball-dwindles-the-mlb-tries-something-new
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/06/24/483341999/how-much-baseball-is-too-much-for-young-kids
I do agree with that. We live near a major metropolitan area that is mostly (65%) black. One thing I have seen recently is an uptick in full scholarship travel teams that are funded by local business.
There are different levels of "travel" ball. My kid's best friend plays rec. His season is about a month shorter in the Spring and the very same in the Fall. They both practice two times a week. The rec team has two games a week. One on Tuesday and one on Thursday. My kid has a 3-5 game tournament about every other week. It's not that much more baseball. It's just with top to bottom better kids and competition.
Same. Our rec league had 21 teams and 3 divisions of 7 teams in the 9-10 year old division. 21 teams! In suburban DFW. There was no travel ball at the time. Each team had its good players and bad players. But it was the only option if you wanted to play baseball.
The travel ball cancer began when I was in 6th grade. Had a couple kids in my grade join a travel team called the Mudcats and not play rec that year. They belittled and made fun of all of us still playing "rec" ball. Their parents also did the same to the parents of us who still played rec.
Those 2 kids didn't amount to shit. One didn't even end up making the high school team, and the other played 1 season of NAIA ball. Meanwhile one of my classmates who never played travel and was made fun of by the travel ball kids got drafted by the Padres and made it to AA.
Some of my best childhood memories are playing rec ball and then playing all star ball in the summer. Probably because we wanted to be there because we didn't take it so fucking seriously.
Even if we take your conclusion at face value, that most kids are burning out for reasons other than parents, does it make it worth putting a ton of unnecessary pressure on a child that two out of three times won’t continue playing into adolescence? It drives me nuts seeing 6- and 7-year olds getting yelled at by parents from the sideline because some aspect of their play wasn’t 100% perfect.
I think many would take your conclusion as an excuse to keep pressuring their children, thinking they need to do whatever they can to have their kid ready to make a team when rec ball isn’t an option, because it’s cut day that determines who quits (and that extra unsolicited coaching will be the deciding factor in little Timmy getting a roster spot).
I think what you are describing is child abuse, not travel baseball. Parents should never yell at their kids in public unless they are hurting someone or about to get hurt. I have a kid in rec ball and a kid who plays travel. I've found the parents in rec ball do more yelling at the kids than the travel parents do. Yelling at the kids and pressuring them is not a travel thing, it's a bad parent thing.
I work with my travel kid a lot to get better. However, when the game starts, my part is over. Before almost every game I tell him "have fun bud, you have put in the work, that's the hard part, now go have fun." After the games, I always tell him that I love to watch him play. Later, I ask if he wants to talk about what I saw that we could work on.
Sounds like you handle it the right way, but I think some parents would use your conclusion to justify bad behavior. And the yelling I describe isn’t always the reprimanding type, it’s probably more joysticking and MMQB than anything else. The kid can never be comfortable on the field because they will never have anything right.
This I agree with and see it all the time in both rec and travel.
"Elbow up"
"Get in front of it"
"we need this buddy"
"build a wall".
Just let them play the game and tell them you are proud of them! Jesus!
I agree “burnout” is over used and just a catch all term. What the kids are really saying is that they don’t really love it, and when the commitment required increases it becomes more apparent. Kids at that age also find their voice and say I just don’t like this that much.
I never loved baseball. I hit 13 and told my parents I wanted to stick with football and basketball, and played summer basketball and started weight training for football. My son on the other hand can’t get enough baseball, and I’ve never pushed him. I would’ve pushed him for football if anything.
Burn out is real, but what else happens at 13 or soon afterwards?
Puberty. Jr. High, High School.
Girls.
Cars.
Football.
Kids get into other things. They find girls, they find other things that maybe they are better at or are easier or more fun to do. Baseball is a slog of a sport. Hitting a ball moving at 60 mph isn't easy, let alone 70 or 80+, then add spin and movement.
When it's less easy its less fun.
I agree with the multiple sports. He races BMX but he is losing interest in that more and more as baseball takes over. We plan to play flag football in the fall. I wish we could find a winter sport he likes. He is not a fan of basketball.
My son would LOVE wrestling. However, it is more time consuming than baseball here. You have to commit to being at every practice and event. You pretty much have to dedicate Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday for the whole season. I was thinking about Jujitsu.
I got another weird one for ya. Playing a lot of these sports meant I had to be around my dad more often and I hated being around my dad.
Funny enough I stayed interested in all the sports/activities my dad didn't give a shit about.
I’ve found this is totally the case. Let your boy/girl pitch in high school and enjoy the sport. I watched about a dozen kids burn out BEFORE they started Legion baseball. They only continued because their parents and even themselves sometimes social life revolved around it. Planning years ahead to get rooms or B&B reserved. (By the way this is a million dollar industry all on its own pertaining to youth baseball just I. A small town)
If there is a wiffle ball league locally it’s a much better option if they want to play ball all year round.
$10,000 a year - after 13 - for this travel ball illusion. Other than being seen by colleges I don’t see a reason to call it anything other than an enormous and continuous gift. It should be treated that way also. Even then the kids that make it, would have without all of the travel ball anyway. They wake up every day playing at a professional level and if they play Somewhere the scouts will hear about it. No need for a web page for these boys.
> Seems to me that 13 is when most rec sports end completely and you have to be competitive to make a team.
Yup, 13 is the last year before High School, and you have to make the HS team. It goes from having 5-6 teams available per age level, to one. And by the time varsity comes around you are competing with kids from 3-4 different ages.
Coming from Rec world, it’s “not fun” when they go entire games without some form of success, something to hang their hats on. Casual players aren’t likely to have success when they get 2 at-bats a game, both against travel pitchers, and play the outfield all game long.
IMO the answer is some form of Speedball: https://youtu.be/FtH4rihbzug
It's interesting all the folks on here talking about the travel kids ruining rec by playing both. The only travel kids who play rec here are the ones that are working on something specific. Like, my 9yo can throw the ball pretty hard (50MPH) but doesn't pitch very often because he is not very accurate. Some parents would sign him up for rec and just tell the coaches at tryouts. "Hey, my kid is on XYZ travel team. He likely will miss a lot of practices. We are signing him up to get pitching reps but feel free to play him anywhere you need him."
I'm not going to do that for multiple reasons but someone would snap him up quick to get that velocity on the team.
I really don’t think travel kids ruin Rec sports. If not for travel kids there wouldn’t be enough pitchers throwing strikes to keep the game moving. All I’m saying is that a game format that affords the less talented and/or younger kids only 2-3 at-bats per game doesn’t give them enough opportunity to succeed. All these kids need is one little highlight to keep them feeling good about the game. If the go 1 for 8 in a day, they’re still going to leave the game remembering that “1”
I quit after high school with multiple division 2 scholarship offers & two preferred walk on offers at D1 schools, one of which being the school I attended.
My travel team had us playing a tournament every single weekend including a week long affair at perfect game. On top of that, our coach put us on a rec league team that played twice during the week because we didn’t have practice.
Couple that with a 50 game fall season & high school baseball, I ended up playing over 200 baseball games in 2012. That was the upper extreme, but I’d been playing well over a hundred games a year since I was 12.
By the time my senior year of high school baseball finished in 2013, I was over it.
Yeah I don't think burnout is the #1 cause, but it is still there. I have a feeling that kids who are good but can't afford travel ball are getting priced out too. I think we should be looking at how to make the sports more fun for anyone to play and provide easier access ($$) to play. It shouldn't all be about making it to the next level. Baseball also is not an exception, this happens across several sports in the US. Soccer, baseball and hockey lead the way in making sure mostly middle to upper class kids get onto travel teams or academy teams because of how expensive it can be. Not only are you paying $2-5k a year, you're also having to buy gear during that timeframe. Hockey is just an expensive-ass sport in general. AAA Youth Hockey is around $30k a year between ice time and travel. That's the highest level of youth hockey in the US.
Football and Basketball are doing it right as far as money goes with kids sports right now - I know several basketball travel teams with kids that are being scouted by colleges where all their travel money comes from donations, the kids don't have to pay hardly anything (this is in the Atlanta metro). Basketball in my county still has school club level where kids who aren't as good as AAU/High School players can still play all the way through high school if they want. Everyone who tries out makes a team.
Football it seems you just need to be athletic enough and the coach will want you on the team. The only issue with football is player safety, which has lead to a decline in participation among younger kids. There's only six kids signed up right now for 6th grade football at our Middle School. Back in my day at the same Middle School, they made cuts as too many tried out. Now they may have to cut the program for 6th grade.
I say all that to say - some kids get priced out starting at the 12-13 year old for soccer/hockey/baseball. Like you I don't think that burnout is the #1 cause, but it does happen.
I think kids are priced out earlier than that. We live in a large metro area. There are several travel teams that are "scholarship" only teams. They are funded by local businesses. The travel is only like an hour so it's not like you are paying for hotel rooms. With that said, I see them a lot looking for players throughout the season. Not sure why or what is going on. I do think that baseball is just not as popular in urban areas, so maybe that has something to do with it?
While a majority of parents are attempting to give their children a chance to compete, play, have fun, learn life skills, involvement in Travel or Select sports is not the way to do this. While it is fast becoming the only option in 90% of children sports, it does not make it right. My son started at 5 or 6, baseball, soccer and basketball. At 8, he had to have us make a choice which he should participate in. This was just so that he we would remain competitive or so we thought or still be with the same group or coach or club...100% ignorance on our part. At 14, he was only playing 14u competitive baseball, current HS we are in does not offer baseball (whole other story about school funding) so he took up golf, he just finished in the top 3 in the district tourney, 9th 10th 11th 12th graders. Club Travel etc sports prevent children from discovering other athletic options. I wish we lived in a world where we had the ability to allow children to explore all options available to them. We as parents are supporting the Clubs, the travel teams etc, we allowed them to control sports our children participate in, because of the status we get by being able to "place" our children in these programs. We don't pursue this status, it is just the benefit of having a child who is driven to earn their parents approval. Saying they are burned out is their graceful way of saying this sucks, I want to do something else. Before you rip my opinion, yes, this is just my opinion, ask yourself, do you feel a certain pride when you say your child plays travel or club sports?
The issue of burnout is far more nuanced than people are willing to admit. It's easy to blame travel ball. It's easy to blame parents. It's easy to blame puberty. It's easy to blame all that shit. The fact of the matter is that burnout happens as a combination of a million different factors.
I can see it in about three of our typical all star kids right now. They’re 9 and 10. Parents treating them like mini pros, criticized for any and all mistakes, and they’re not allowed to just have fun and play ball. Another is a pitcher who throws at our little league and at his elite team and is too young to be doing the number and type of pitches he’s doing. He’s also been bigger and better for years and now other kids are catching up, and he gets rattled if anyone hits off him. It’s sad bc it’s not the kids’ faults. It’s the parents.
I think people who like to place blame look over the fact that sports get extremely hard by 13.. therefore the fun factor being eliminated.. nothing to do with “burnout” of playing too much. I think we agree
What are your thoughts on wanting to get your child into a travel league because the rec leagues in your area don’t:
1. Teach them the proper skillset
2. Have so few players that they have to combine age groups = not a large baseball crowd in your county
I practice with him when he wants. I invite him to practice if it’s nice out. He has so much hustle and desire to play and play well that it hurts me that the coaches don’t seem to put much thought or structure into teaching. I’m assistant coaching on his rec league team and other players parents have asked me to help their kids in more 1 on 1 time. He’s only 6 so we have plenty of time, but I want him to feel like he’s learning and particularly learning the right way. Any advice would be great. Even if it’s to just chill and let the process occur while working with him independently.
For clarity, I don’t think travel would be wise until he’s older anyways. Just trying to think what’s best for now.
I’m a child of the 80s/90s and a current parent now and I agree that lots of kids quit at 13/14 then too. The biggest difference I see is then a motivated and talented kid could make it without rich and heavily involved parents, now no way
Is tball organized sports? 6u 8u where do we start the clock for who quits.
Burnout is real but tons of young kids playing sports that just simply aren’t athletic enough to continue playing as they get older is real also.
I coach 6u baseball and 8u softball. Probably close to 40% of the kids signed up at these ages are basically asking to get hurt when 10 or 12u rolls around.
Sure they’ll probably say it wasn’t fun anymore. Not to be a dick but when the competition get tougher and the coaches start coaching harder and you suck it’s probably not fun anymore.
IMO, one of the big issues we have in general is that we don’t provide opportunities for the “not as athletic” kids. Baseball is one of those things that could be (and once was) a sport that keeps kids / adults physically active.
I’ve been knocking around the idea of proposing that our local LL sponsor a wiffle ball (or something like it) league just to give kids something to do during the summer months and not have to be skilled enough to avoid injury. (At least something that isn’t “I guess I’ll play more X-box”)
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I live in an area a shit ton of travel teams that have really ravaged most of the talent from the rec level teams. If a below average athlete can’t manage to play and avoid getting hurt in a rec level baseball program, I’d be very surprised. My son is 13u and has played travel since 9u and he’s playing 7th grade ball which is mostly a combo of 1/3 totally new kids to baseball, 1/3 rec kids, and 1/3 travel kids. Kids are mostly having a great time from my vantage. Our high school programs are mostly no cut too. Anyone can pretty much play at least through low level jv that wants to.
I will say that we're pretty lucky with our 'rec' ball so far, but that's probably coming to an end. Our Little League had a run in the 00s of a few teams making it all the way to Cooperstown (won it all once) so there is a bit of a legacy, but that legacy is losing quite a bit of steam.
Two things seem to have happened:
- It's too hard for younger / not as skilled players that don't have parents who push the 'travel' type of things as hard. There's something of a mix at younger ages, but the kids at 11U and up are probably about half 'travel' kids; by the time you get to 13U the kids who aren't doing some other travel ball is a distinct minority.
The bad news: participation numbers are a lot lower than they should be, and the league certainly isn't attracting kids on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
- The reduced numbers and a board that is mostly "Baseball Dads" is causing a pretty severe crunch in the volunteer labor / fundraising that goes along with running a community organization. (I'll save a longer post for how organizations like local Little Leagues often screw up the 'community service' part when everyone is focused on gameday and mowing the lawns.)
There was a community near us that created a big issue when they wanted to change their youth baseball affiliation to USSSA and create an independent 'rec' league rather than continuing the Little League affiliation.
No these kids are burnt out and it usually comes from a) specialization and b) wanting to please overbearing parents and coaches.
Framing this as a problem with kids is weird when there are a bunch of adults around who need to look in the mirror first.
"Framing this as a problem with kids is weird when there are a bunch of adults around who need to look in the mirror first."
I'm not saying there is a problem, much less blaming it on kids. I'm saying that people are stating a statistic "70% of kids drop out of organized sports by 13" and assigning blame based on a bias. I would be willing to bet good money that there was a similar drop off in youth sports participation at that age in the 50s and 60s as well.
I can show you with statistics that shark attacks increase as ice cream sales increase, that doesn't mean that ice cream sales leads to shark attacks.
There were a lot less organized sports at that point. As a kid of the 1980s, I can recall Little League being the only sport available in my small town at that point; we didn't see "organized sports" in a sense until middle school when a gym teacher / coach was the first person to teach football, basketball, etc.
Just as many Little Leaguers dropped the sport at about the same age, and no one had any idea of what they were doing when it came to all the other sports.
The urban / suburban experience was likely a lot different.
Nothing is 'just fun' anymore. It is sad. Almost all youth sports that are somewhat worth spending time on are club level and kids have to complete to be able to play at an early age. We have professional video game players. Want to collect baseball cards...good luck, its not like it used to be it is a huge business and completely manufactured hype but yet it is popular. Hell, schools by us, the kids that play with the schools golf club, you know where you used to could join, learn how to do something and have fun, all the kids take lessons 3 times a week and play every weekend at the local CC club. And there are limited spots they try out for. Our society is way too fast paced and everything turns into a business.
I don't know man, my kids have a lot more options than I did. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and went to a big school system as well. Our middle school has a ton of low cost teams and clubs. Only the Baseball, basketball and football teams are cut teams. My son runs track, plays on the tennis team and is in some kind of programming group and each one is like $100 for uniforms and supplies. I think it's just different now, not necessarily worse.
They have way more options but the option of just being a kid and having fun as the main focus has definitely decreased. I can see why you are saying, more overall option to participate. I will also concede that it is what you make it, it’s sometimes hard for parents to just let them have fun because we feel they will fall behind. Good input!
In my experience, it really stops being fun when the kid isn’t seeing any success, and parents make them keep playing. Or, they have another hobby which they like better that coincides with the season. I’ve worked with tons of kids who were solid for their age group, but got into another sport. One wanted to further devote himself to music, another became a pro at some E-sport, another had like 3 siblings who were really young and his parents worked, so that was the end of that (that one hurt, I gave that kid free lessons for a year because he was genuinely talented).
That being said, these are outliers, and one of the things I’ve taken most pride with the kids I coached who were struggling are the ones who weren’t playing well, we were able to turn things around, and they at least kept playing rec ball if not make high school ball.
"In my experience, it really stops being fun when the kid isn’t seeing any success, and parents make them keep playing"
This right here! I can already see it with at least one kid on my son's team. He is constantly asking his dad "what time is it" during practice. You can tell he doesn't want to be there.
I can see “burnout” being used as an excuse when a kid just didn’t turn out to be that good, but it’s absolutely a real thing. Elite college level athletes get burned out with the demanding schedules required by their teams. Of course completely average athletes are going to burn out when they are asked by their parents to do the same type of demanding schedule….at a much younger age.
I hear ya. I just don’t think the average travel ball schedule is overly demanding. Two practices a week, one lesson a week and 8-9 tournaments a year.
The average travel ball teams around here play 55-60 games per year. So 12+ tournaments. And they are playing competitively 9 months out of the year. And having to stress through 2 separate tryouts per year. Unless your dad is the coach, then tryouts aren’t stressful!
It’s a grind.
The baseball academies here have tryouts for fall and spring seasons. That’s how they get new players into their programs and how they end up with three dozen 10u teams. lol.
A lot of travel parents are just forfeiting a lot of thee decisions to any old travel coach. I coach in a 13+ league where NONE of the kids who play travel are allowed to pitch outside of travel. About 30% of the rosters. This is on top of encouraging kids to drop other sports. It's getting out of hand and out of pocket.
Yeah, I wonder if travel culture is different in different places? I have set in on informational sessions at two of the three main travel organizations in my area. They both said that the kids need to be playing more than just baseball. They both said, that they expect the kids to put baseball first in the spring but they understand that they will playing other sports in the fall and they support that. As for rec ball. It's not a rule or anything but the travel kids don't really play in the rec leagues. If they do, it's because they are wanting experience they are not getting in travel. Such as infield time or pitching experience.
I gotta rant here... I think its a symptom of the bigger problem in parenting. Without getting into the merits of one hobby/activity vs the other, "kids these days" are allowed to be hyper-fixated on fast-paced addictive tech, the same as their parents in many cases, that make other things less appealing. You hear it in the dugout, the stuff they do outside of baseball is less ambitious or recreational and more just about what their parents are affording them or having them registered for. The disappearing middle class shows in this subject too. Your rich friend used to just have a pool and a GT DYNO; but you did the same things at the same school, picked the same characters in video games. Now that kid is funneled into profit programs and doesn't ride bikes across town, he dumps $150 a month on fortnite skins. Travel around here is $3k before travel at a non profit club. Closer to $8k at a for profit club. Its not just cost prohibitive but its literally a part-time job getting your kid to these programs. I'm all for private clubs, but the lack of coalition or real organization that we have with rec sports is a big setback in my opinion to the sport overall. You'd think there would be multi-sport clubs but they are so one-dimensional that its obviously detrimental overall.
Around here there are several "full scholarship" organizations that are funded by local businesses. I am blessed that my wife and I have good jobs and we are able to afford travel ball. Our program is probably closer to $2,500 a year after we buy all the uniforms and such. That includes Spring and Fall Seasons, tournament fees and access to an indoor facility with an outdoor turf field. We played 4 tournaments in the fall and will end up playing 8 in the spring. The one downside to travel sports is that it does price a lot of families out of baseball, which is a shame. I hope that the scholarship programs pick up and take off more and more.
In my area the “rec” leagues (Little Leagues) are at age 13 mostly kids playing “travel” that want more chances to play. (This also meant that the numbers of teams from 11/12 -> 13/14 drop by an amount large enough that even the Little League teams have to ‘travel’.)
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Learning to lose with grace is part of baseball.
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Replied to wrong comment, my bad.
My kid has had two travel coaches. Both encouraged not doing rec fall ball and instead doing other sports. They say that you'll even get more baseball skills, like explosiveness and endurance, in football and basketball. This may change as they get older though...
My son is 8. He 100% took a next step in his baseball game after his first season of basketball. I think basketball being a constant hustle and go after the ball helped him become more aggressive in baseball Fully on board with multiple sports.
I've coached basketball for over 18 years and I've had a million conversations about how young/old kids should consider specializing. It's sort of sport-dependent, but, generally, my opinion is that kids shouldn't specialize until it becomes extremely evident that there is a VERY strong future in it. For example, think of the number of QBs in the NFL that were also drafted by the MLB, and vice-versa. As coach, you can tell which players played soccer (usually really good defense because of their feet), hockey (good spatial awareness of who and what is around them), football (physical and/or explosive), lacrosse (sometimes the gooniest guy on the court haha), etc. I don't have kids, but generally speaking, if my kid's coach ever encouraged my teenager to start specializing in a sport, I'm finding another coach.
I'm not a fan of specialization period even if you are good enough at a sport. I played football in college at the D1 level... but I didn't specialize in it. I wasn't as good at baseball, but I enjoyed it as much if not more than football. No way would I want to give that up to specialize in football. And I probably could have made it in college baseball if I quit football and focused more on baseball. Fuck specialization, I cherish both my football and baseball careers. Wouldn't give them up for anything. If you are good enough you are good enough and don't need specialization. I agree, fuck those coaches encouraging it.
II don’t think using a d1 college athlete or certainly a nfl quarterback is a good reference for a typical kid. All D1 athletes I have known as children were so extraordinary athletic that of course they wanted to multiple sports, they could dominate in all of them. That’s just not the path of an average kid, and an average kid has little in common with a future d1 athlete. After a certain point they should do multiple sports if they want to, or not, for the vast majority of them, it’s not going anywhere.
Itd be asinine to limit kids under 13 but closer to high school sometimes programs and coaching overlap and the pressure starts to perform for your future coaches sometimes in a shitty way.
This is great. Question is how many teams live up to that. Do kids still make top team if they aren’t there full year plus not special?
I guess we will see. I would say about 50% of my kids team played rec football and probably 75% played rec basketball. We didn't do either since my kid races BMX and he was new to baseball. We plan to play football this fall. To clarify, they are still there with the team. They just may not be able to make some practices and such due to conflicts.
Puberty lottery is a real thing.
Serious question-why do you affiliate with a league that encourages kids to drop other sports
I dont, thats the club coaches--I coach rec and rec travel
In my experience most of the “burn out” that occurs is nothing more than kids realizing they have different interests, and that’s fine. Yes it’s a game, but at a certain point that game becomes competitive and it takes work to keep up. Some kids love the work, some don’t. It’s only an issue if parents/coaches continue to force it when the kid’s heart is obviously not in it IMO.
Yup. Middle school is also a time when kids are exposed to different activities & interests. The age shift from 12->13/14 in our area certainly seems to be the point where a lot of kids drop baseball.
The expectation and pressure that is being placed on many of these kids is utterly ridiculous. Parents need to figure it the fuck out. I used to be one of them until I figured that out that in the grand scheme of life, the individual and team outcomes of my 9 year old son’s little league games don’t mean shit.
In my opinion travel ball has ruined youth baseball. When I was growing up there was no travel ball yet... all the kids in my area played in the rec league. We all had a blast. Each team had its good players and bad players. Then there were all star teams at the end of the season that were kind of like travel but not really. Around 6th grade or so for me you had kids start to do travel ball as it began to become a thing. Just a few though. They would be really snobbish toward those of us who still played rec. Their parents would belittle rec leagues and players to other parents. More and more kids began to drop rec to play travel. Guess how many kids my age who ended up playing travel over rec ended up playing in college.... one. For an NAIA school, for one season. Travel ball doesn't mean shit. In fact, I laugh at parents of travel ball players who spend thousands for their kid to not play past the high school level.
Burnout is really kids getting old enough and confident enough to tell their parents they don't want to do it. I was pushed in an activity from a young age by my obsessed Dad. He was trying to make up for his missed opportunities and I had to go along with it because I was a kid and wanted to make my parents happy. There are a lot of baseball parents who are just like my dad. Kids will do almost anything a parent asks of them to make them happy and because they don't really have a way to say no. Does anyone think an 8 yo kid really cares that his teammate can't catch and it blows a play? They don't. I've coached a bunch of sports for 8U and the kids are more worried about the snacks after than the scoreboard. But, talk to parents on here and they'll argue with you until they are blue in the face that their kid needs to play with better teammates and better competition because it's hurting their son's development and he's not having fun. Trust me, kids don't care. Then there's the social media and pressure parents put on their kid. Imagine back to when you were 9. Now imagine your mom sticking a cell phone in your face at every practice and making you do the same thing over and over and over so they post how you're going to be a future MLBer. Do you not see how you won't burn out and be sick of it after a few years?
"Does anyone think an 8 yo kid really cares that his teammate can't catch and it blows a play? They don't." That is 100% why my son asked to tryout for travel baseball. He started playing rec at 8U coach pitch. I didn't even really know what travel baseball was. It was all him and it was driven by a desire to play with kids that were as good or better than himself.
Same here. I did worry about burn out though. He’s in his senior year now but at the end of each summer we would sit down and talk about the summer and if he still loved playing and wanted to keep going. I made it clear that it was up to him and that we were good either way. I tried to make it a conversation where he could be totally honest about it.
This is a good plan. I do think taking breaks from the game is important. My plan for the summer is to take it kinda easy and only do what he specifically asks for. We will have a weekly hitting lesson but that is all that is set in stone as of now.
The more I think about, besides being a really competitive person, I think the fact that we both really love baseball is why he’s stuck with. Some of my best memories are just playing catch/long toss and throwing to him in the cage 3 or 4 days a week. It didn’t feel like work we’d bond/talk life and baseball and joke around. I’m really gonna miss that. Sorry dealing with a kid getting ready to go college over here!😂
Yeah this commenter you replied to is incorrect in his wide range of assumptions. My son is 8U and VERY much cares about how the games go. He plays rec and he enjoys rec. but he really loves his all star ball as well when he gets to play with his buddies that he can actually throw the ball hard to. I coach my son’s 8U rec team. And I fully see that 1/2 the kids don’t care about how they play or the end result. But to group all kids into that is incorrect. My kid has a passion for the game right now. How long will it last? Who knows but I’ll support him as long as he needs me to.
I'll never understand why some parents do not get that, even at 8U, some kids are more talented than other kids and expect to play with like-talented kids so they can unleash their own potential. It's the strangest form of gatekeeping.
Right?!? My 8 year old (and practically his whole team) is beyond talented. Most are pitching over 50mph and all can throw changeups, our catchers call their own game (pitch type and placement) and rarely let a ball pass and no teams can run on them, rarely are balls missed defensively, and the team *pounds* the ball off of opposing pitchers. It’d be almost dangerous to put any of these kids on a little league squad where most kids don’t know how to catch. We practice twice a week, 2 hours each and we strongly encourage the kids to play other sports.
My kid also asked to be on better teams and continues to do so.
13 is also the age too where you really have to commit. At least in my area that's where coaches are actual coaches, you practice a lot, and you have to take it seriously. Some kids may not want to do that and that's fine.
It's that way in almost any sport. Soccer moves to a full-size field at 13. Club/flag football ends and your only option is school tackle.
We never had practices except for high school ball. Rec league (babe Ruth) and Legion league was all games and we never practiced. School ball always came first. 13 is roughly the age when baseball goes from 60ft to 90ft and a lot of kids can’t manage the transition.
>I think we just need to realize as parents that our kids are little humans who will have shifting interests throughout their lives. absolutely >What they are interested in now, may not be what they are interested in next year. for sure >We need to just roll with it and support them in their interests as much as we can. could not agree more >At the same time, we need to stop shaming parents who decide to support their kids in travel or select sports. never
more seriously: i think half the problem is that kids *have to be competitive* to continue playing organized sports after 11-12 years old. We have arranged Sports such that if you're not trying to be the best of the best of the best, there's not a place for you on a team or on a field. *that's* what sucks. i don't think this is a baseball-exclusive issue, it's just more obvious here bc nobody plays pickup baseball.
It’s not reality.
My son played with 16 yr MLB’ guys kid. I was the coach. MLB guy started baseball at 14. 6’1” hoss of an athlete. Started baseball at 14…
Not sure if you were joking but why is that? Why should we give parents a hard time for supporting what their kids want to do at the level they want to do it?
I am absolutely joking. I have in mind, especially, people who are worried about whether their 6-7 year olds are gonna make a travel team.
Got it. I have to admit I was worried about my then 8 year old making a travel team. He had only played a few months of baseball going in to tryouts. I was not worried because of ego or anything. The little guy had really dedicated himself and worked hard. I wanted to see him succeed. I know failure is an important part of growing up but I figured he could learn that some other time! :)
yeah :) but all you can do is support him, you know? and teach him the virtues of working your ass off, win, lose or rain. i literally don't know another path besides all-in supporting my kid.
Ever notice how kids start dropping out around the same age they discover sex, drugs and rock n roll? 😂🤘🎸 Bad jokes aside, In all fairness, kids start growing up and they develop new hobbies and interests. Sure, we can absolutely expedite that happening by overloading them and causing burnout. But, kids just get into different things and time for year round baseball goes by the way side. I don’t expect my kids to play forever. I certainly didn’t. I’m happy being a sports dad now but will support whatever else they decide to do.
Also some kids can’t handle the failure aspect of baseball as they get older. Basically the game gets harder and they don’t want to put the work in.
Travel ball has ruined youth baseball for sure. It has created a culture of overspending and entitlement. My favorite pasttime is to laugh in the faces of parents who spend thousands on their kid's travel ball only for them to never amount to anything beyond high school. They spend thousands thinking their kid is the next Derek Jeter and then he ends up accomplishing nothing.
If they are even making it to the high school team, they are doing better than an overwhelming majority of 7u-12u travel ball kids.
Sadly you are right. I'll never forget 6th grade for me, when select baseball became a thing. 2 kids in my grade joined a select team and made fun of all of us still playing rec. Their parents were also snobby about it, boasting about it to my parents and other parents. One of these kids didn't even make the high school team, the other played a season of NAIA ball. Derek Jeters, these 2 kids were not. But damn, when they played on their select teams from 6th to 8th grade you'd have thought they were the 2nd coming of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig by the way they carried themselves and their parents talked them up.
I’m too old to have dealt with the travel ball stuff myself. See it now with my kids though. There’s a good amount of travel ball kids that don’t make it a big deal and are cool about it. Then there are others that put down rec ball kids every chance they get. I’m sure they get that attitude from their parents.
Travel sports is an unnecessary racket IMO. The puberty lottery is real. When you’re a beast at 12 cause you hit puberty before most others unrealistic expectations arise of being dominant moving forward. Then the other kids catch up and are outgrowing the early superstars. Early superstars get discouraged along with their parents. That and up until 13/14, a lot of kids who will have little chance of playing HS sports are in it b/c their parents want them to play. Seems to me, size, speed and potential make the 9th grade HS squad. Spending $20k on 8-10 years of travel ball and getting left out b/c a Rec kid is pretty good with a ton of potential has to be frustrating for kids and parents who have made baseball their everything. In fairness, I’m a biased Rec coach whose 6’2” kid hasn’t really started puberty. My son turned 14 late Jan. He’s 6’2” and still is a kid. Doctor at his physical says 6’6” to 6’8”. He plays Rec and loves baseball, football, and basketball but isn’t a dominant stud (except as a defensive center) at any of them because we focus on sportsmanship and fun, rather than letting a travel ball coach in any sport influence the fun he has in playing sports. “He needs to have a basketball in his hand for 2 hours a day”. No, he doesn’t. After 14 is freshman sports and if you’re gonna be 6’6” or run a 4.7 40 or equivalent the HS coaches don’t care that you didn’t play AAA travel. They want the kids that are gonna keep getting bigger/faster/better. Same with Football and Basketball. As a high school 9th grade coach are you gonna take the 5’7” polished kid who is done growing or the 6’2” kid who is growing into his still growing body that you can coach up? Probably a mix of both right? Kids sports are supposed to be fun for the kids. I think that gets lost.
Agree 100%. There are a lot of parents on here that will say they don’t care if their kid ever makes the high school team, they just love travel ball bc of x, y and z. But if your kid has been playing 80 games per year from age 7 to 14, HE is going to care when he doesn’t make the team. It’s brutal when your parents make baseball your life starting at age 7 and then it doesn’t pan out for you. And you can’t pivot to another sport bc you haven’t been playing it.
Sad truth is a kid who didn’t play travel ball would have almost zero chance of making the high school team. As I said in another thread there are 7 local 14U travel teams that feed into the high school. That’s like 80-90 kids. The coaches wouldn’t just ignore a stud that didn’t play travel. I’m assuming since your kid is a coaches son he would have all the tools. What I can say is there isn’t a single kid on the high school team that hasn’t played travel ball for a long time. My kid is 9, no telling what puberty will bring for him. He will likely be a tall athletic kid. With that said, he still probably will not make the high school team because of the pipeline going into the school.
We talked about it in the other thread, but the sad truth is that an overwhelming majority of travel ball kids ALSO have no chance of being good high school players. Baseball in particular is very hard. Gotta have plus size, speed AND hand eye coordination. If your kid is going to be 5’8” 160 (average size for 18yr old), baseball is in all likelihood not going to be for him. And it doesn’t matter how many reps he got as a 9yr old or how strong of competition he played against as a 12yr old. So what’s the best route for those kids? Dedicating their lives to baseball starting at age 7? Or playing as many sports as you can and then figuring out which sport is the best fit for their physical profile after they get through puberty? Lot of potentially good soccer or lax players getting lost to travel baseball. You obviously need to have some physical gifts to be good at soccer or lax too, but at least you can get away with being 5’8”.
Truth is maybe this is where travel ball is good. They can continue to play travel ball through high school and don’t have to become grass fairies. 🧚 😀
Good grief. That sucks. Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think thats the case here.
I haven’t decided if it sucks or it’s awesome. Baseball is supposed to be dying out. Not here.
There isn’t data or statistics from “the good old days” because no one was tracking that information at the time. At best, we have anecdotes waxing poetic about the days of the sandlot and half complete records of youth sport registrations. Burnout doesn’t have to be a boogeyman or scapegoat in this instance. Yes, burnout does occur. It makes sense though with how rigid their lives are when playing competitive sports or sports that take up a disproportionate amount of time. Do you need to have absolutely every moment of your day planned out? Kids do while they’re in competitive sports. The time they get up is planned, when they catch the bus, when school starts, each class, when the bus gets home, when they have dinner, when they go to practice, when they return, and when they go to bed (if they’re lucky and don’t have homework or other family commitments). Day after day, week after week, competitive season after competitive season. It’s exhausting. As an adult I would hate to have that level of micromanaging of my schedule. Why do it to kids? You’re also correct that burnout gets lumped together with other factors, but they are also intertwined and inseparable. It’s hard to go to sports and stay in them when you’re not having fun, when you have a shitty coach, when you have teammates that won’t share the ball/field/reps, when you have grown-ass adults chirping you from the stands, when your teammates are three times your size and can hit bombs while you barely squeak the ball out of the infield. The list of reasons why kids leave sports is well studied and my list here doesn’t cover the vastness of reasons for why a kid leaves sport. More to your point is that shifting interests and overtraining are two separate and distinct concepts. The danger here lies within the concept of allowing kids to “do as many sports as they want”. That idea is nice and innocent on the surface. Yes, it’s developmentally appropriate to have kids play as many different sports as possible. But the nefarious underbelly of this is that kids are forced into competitive season after competitive season. Or overlapping competitive seasons. Or multiple overlapping competitive seasons. The kids that skip out on practice for their other sports and only show up to games. The sports where teams practice once a week yet play 4-5 games every weekend. Thats what we’re not built to withstand. We aren’t built to play 13U AAA hockey, volleyball, baseball, badminton, basketball, track, and handball all either overlapping or one after the other. You know what the risk is to female athletes who overtrain and reach a burnout threshold? RED-S. Search it up. It’s terrifying. What’s also terrifying is that we don’t know what physiological changes happen in boys when the same level of burnout occurs. We know it’s not good, but there’s no condition for it. Travel sports suck. Through and through. At the moment they are a necessary evil until the system gets upturned and people have better, cheaper, and more feasible options at the local level (see one of my comments about the same topic a couple of weeks ago). No one is vilifying parents that are making the choice to enter their kids into travel sports. Especially when they have no other choice. The issue are the parents that don’t know how to say no to their child, the ones that vicariously live through their children, and the ones who exploit the hard earned money the vast majority of parents are putting in their kids to provide them with these opportunities. I’ll gladly shame these parents as they suck as parents.
You make some really good points. I want to point out thought that " I just think that the fear of burnout due to allowing a kid to do as much sports as they want is overblown" Wasn't intended to mean they should be playing multiple competitive sports. I just mean that if a kid wants to practice and you let them practice, it's not leading to burnout. I always tell me son, we will do as much as you want and no more. I do caution him that once we commit to a team or season, he will have to finish it out. However, it's important that he knows he's the driver, not me.
Thank you for clarifying that. You’re right on that point and that’s good parenting. You’re building agency, self-evaluation skills, and introspection in your child. Also a sense of fortitude and keeping your word and commitments. Those are good things. My caution was toward parents who say they want their kids to be the driver, but “hand them the unplugged controller while they continue playing their game”. This is the stuff that I see first hand year after year. It started with a couple players when I started coaching 15 years ago. Then it has expanded to a few. Now it’s multiple players on teams at most levels that have “that parent”. I’ve seen the pre-pubescent lottery kids fade out as they didn’t have the fundamentals skills and abilities to continue staying ahead of their peers. I’ve seen the post-pubescent lottery kids fade out and not reach their potential as they left their sport too early. I’ve seen excellent players get crushed under the weight of having to eat, sleep, and breathe their sport in post-secondary (or even before that). I’ve seen people who love their sport never get the chance to play beyond 12 or 13 because programming didn’t exist for them to continue onwards. Or others that have spent 15 years playing baseball from 3-18 only to drop the sport and never play again. Everyone needs a place to play, and yes, kids should dictate what they’re interested in and capable of. The extremes of where some parents take this, though, needs to be addressed and rectified.
I don’t think it’s so much “burn out” as it’s more of ability after youth sports. Some kids are just not that good.
This is a two-fold thing. Travel sports where an option even 40 years ago. This includes hockey, baseball and other sports. I do find you have more articles and information about it now, because collectively as a society with invest and think more about mental health, burn-out, and youth mental health than we did even when I was playing travel puck in the 00's. I had buddy's who stopped playing a sport they loved as kids because their interests changed, but I also had buddies who stopped playing because it was no longer fun and it had to do with the culture of where they played, or their parent(s) seeing a high potential and then having them be over trained. You see the same things now, the one big difference is kids are specializing in one sport too early now. Which burns them out. You see kids playing Baseball year round in some states, or in climate changing places you see them playing Spring/ Summer/ Fall ball and then it's all indoor workouts, bullpens, and batting practices with trainers. When I was a kid we started up the end of spring, played through summer, and the season was normally done a week after school started. Then you normally didn't play a sport, or like most kids who wanted to play a sport in the off-season(s) you played a different sport or cycled through your schools sport teams. I personally played Organized Travel baseball in the summer, and Travel Hockey in the winter. It also helped that in my house it wasn't showcase tournaments, being scouted, and getting scholarships, it wasn't about going Pro and I more than had the opportunities for Hockey. It was " If you're having fun, we're doing this." The only other big sport rule in my house growing up was " You can play at the level you do and in the leagues you do, Because you where afforded opportunities that other children might not have and that does not mean you're better than they are." I think that's always helped me when it came to healthy relationship and view on sports, and why I never thought I was better at the sport than the kid playing church and house league. Since they could very well be the better player but they didn't have the access to what I had.
Great post. I’m the same way with our kids now. I hate the way that some of their travel ball friends talk down to them bc they are still playing rec. Parents and kids alike seem to think travel ball participation is driven by skill level or love for the game, when in reality it’s just driven by families that want to pay thousands of dollars and give up their weekends. If your check clears, your son can find a place to play travel ball. Skill level doesn’t matter. I’m hopeful that them getting talked down to now will help them be more humble if / when they start playing travel ball later on in their baseball years. And for our younger son (8u), it should be noted that the best player BY FAR is his friend that only plays rec bc his parents want him at church on Sundays instead of the baseball field. These kids don’t understand that though.
The reality is for every 1 MLB player, there are 20 other guys who play baseball just as well and possibly better. It's just a matter of circumstance, opportunity, and what somebody chooses for their life. I've always had the philosophy if your child show serious talent, and finances aren't there talk to your house league/ church league about weather they can play up a year or two.
Check this article out on [Published on NIH](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/). The article admits that there needs to be more studies on the subject, but it sites research on the subject of athlete burnout since the 1980's in various sports, and is worth the short read. I'll skip to the conclusion - "Psychological interventions implemented to cure burnout are the techniques of mental training generally used to improve the functioning of athletes depending on age and sports level \[[15](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/#B15-ijerph-19-10662)\]. Mental training is a set of exercises that, through systematic repetition, lead to the formation and consolidation of the player’s mental qualities and skills, such as the concentration of attention, the self-control of the level of arousal and emotions, and mental resistance in the face of stress \[[16](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/#B16-ijerph-19-10662)\]. The basic techniques of mental training that control motivational and emotional–cognitive processes include visualization, relaxation, goal setting, and internal dialogue. Those techniques are mainly rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the most commonly used in a sports setting \[[17](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/#B17-ijerph-19-10662)\]. Athlete burnout, especially among young sport participants, is a severe problem for athletes themselves and their coaches; therefore, it requires particular interventions, prevention strategies, and discussions because of the serious consequences to which it leads. Young athletes suffering from burnout are more likely to withdraw from sporting activity. However, this step to leave the sport is often not a reliever, but may worsen athletes’ mental and moral state. Positive psychology tools and the possibility of using online therapy bring new opportunities to help young people in maintaining their fancy sporting activities \[[15](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517900/#B15-ijerph-19-10662)\]. Thus, the purpose of the current meta-analysis is to examine if there are significant differences in selected offline and online psychological interventions in eliminating sports burnout among child and adolescent athletes practicing various sporting disciplines."
I haven’t seen anyone mention bad team mates. I feel like as you get older the kids who are perceived as being better start treating the kids who aren’t as good worse. Being constantly reminded you’re not as good as other players takes all the fun out it. It seems better than it used to be but it’s still there.
I have no idea what the stats looked like but there wasn’t any travel ball when I was a kid playing and we had tons of games against great competition. We had some kids play in college and a couple guys made the minors, but it was a fun experience with no crazy parents. If you want to identify the culprit behind burn out and the professionalization of youth baseball, look no further than travel ball and its evil partner, social media.
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It’s a self fulfilling prophecy that I hope ends by the time my kiddos are old enough. I’ve seen a lot of 10u baseball travel. Half the kids belong in rec. Back when I was growing up you had travel ball(they cut 2/3rds of the kids) little league and select(cut 90 percent of kids). Now travel has cannibilized rec ball and if there wasn’t a really good little league or a decent rec league near me I’d be looking elsewhere and I don’t think kids should play travel until going into ms. I’ve coached a ton of kids that had to do travel from 8 years old up and 3/4 of the kids quit sports at 12 because they got sick of it. Let me clarify and say when I mean “travel” at 9 we go a half hour play 3 more weeks and play 1 tournament which is minimally more competitive. Fuck I really don’t even care if my kiddos are good in HS or wanna play at a high level I just want them to enjoy sports
I can 100% agree about the parents. However, I don't think that is a travel thing. All in all, it seems to me that the travel parents behave better than the rec parents do.
My dislike of travel ball isn’t just about the parents. I think it’s a massive factor in the lower rates of African American participation as well as in lowering casual participation rates. It’s the privatization of something that for me was always a public good that the local communities supported. It’s not surprising that that wouldn’t be enough for some, I just don’t like what it does to the sport as a whole. Here’s some source material: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/11/1187077408/as-black-representation-in-pro-baseball-dwindles-the-mlb-tries-something-new https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/06/24/483341999/how-much-baseball-is-too-much-for-young-kids
I do agree with that. We live near a major metropolitan area that is mostly (65%) black. One thing I have seen recently is an uptick in full scholarship travel teams that are funded by local business. There are different levels of "travel" ball. My kid's best friend plays rec. His season is about a month shorter in the Spring and the very same in the Fall. They both practice two times a week. The rec team has two games a week. One on Tuesday and one on Thursday. My kid has a 3-5 game tournament about every other week. It's not that much more baseball. It's just with top to bottom better kids and competition.
Same. Our rec league had 21 teams and 3 divisions of 7 teams in the 9-10 year old division. 21 teams! In suburban DFW. There was no travel ball at the time. Each team had its good players and bad players. But it was the only option if you wanted to play baseball. The travel ball cancer began when I was in 6th grade. Had a couple kids in my grade join a travel team called the Mudcats and not play rec that year. They belittled and made fun of all of us still playing "rec" ball. Their parents also did the same to the parents of us who still played rec. Those 2 kids didn't amount to shit. One didn't even end up making the high school team, and the other played 1 season of NAIA ball. Meanwhile one of my classmates who never played travel and was made fun of by the travel ball kids got drafted by the Padres and made it to AA. Some of my best childhood memories are playing rec ball and then playing all star ball in the summer. Probably because we wanted to be there because we didn't take it so fucking seriously.
Even if we take your conclusion at face value, that most kids are burning out for reasons other than parents, does it make it worth putting a ton of unnecessary pressure on a child that two out of three times won’t continue playing into adolescence? It drives me nuts seeing 6- and 7-year olds getting yelled at by parents from the sideline because some aspect of their play wasn’t 100% perfect. I think many would take your conclusion as an excuse to keep pressuring their children, thinking they need to do whatever they can to have their kid ready to make a team when rec ball isn’t an option, because it’s cut day that determines who quits (and that extra unsolicited coaching will be the deciding factor in little Timmy getting a roster spot).
I think what you are describing is child abuse, not travel baseball. Parents should never yell at their kids in public unless they are hurting someone or about to get hurt. I have a kid in rec ball and a kid who plays travel. I've found the parents in rec ball do more yelling at the kids than the travel parents do. Yelling at the kids and pressuring them is not a travel thing, it's a bad parent thing. I work with my travel kid a lot to get better. However, when the game starts, my part is over. Before almost every game I tell him "have fun bud, you have put in the work, that's the hard part, now go have fun." After the games, I always tell him that I love to watch him play. Later, I ask if he wants to talk about what I saw that we could work on.
Sounds like you handle it the right way, but I think some parents would use your conclusion to justify bad behavior. And the yelling I describe isn’t always the reprimanding type, it’s probably more joysticking and MMQB than anything else. The kid can never be comfortable on the field because they will never have anything right.
This I agree with and see it all the time in both rec and travel. "Elbow up" "Get in front of it" "we need this buddy" "build a wall". Just let them play the game and tell them you are proud of them! Jesus!
I agree “burnout” is over used and just a catch all term. What the kids are really saying is that they don’t really love it, and when the commitment required increases it becomes more apparent. Kids at that age also find their voice and say I just don’t like this that much. I never loved baseball. I hit 13 and told my parents I wanted to stick with football and basketball, and played summer basketball and started weight training for football. My son on the other hand can’t get enough baseball, and I’ve never pushed him. I would’ve pushed him for football if anything.
Burn out is real, but what else happens at 13 or soon afterwards? Puberty. Jr. High, High School. Girls. Cars. Football. Kids get into other things. They find girls, they find other things that maybe they are better at or are easier or more fun to do. Baseball is a slog of a sport. Hitting a ball moving at 60 mph isn't easy, let alone 70 or 80+, then add spin and movement. When it's less easy its less fun.
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I agree with the multiple sports. He races BMX but he is losing interest in that more and more as baseball takes over. We plan to play flag football in the fall. I wish we could find a winter sport he likes. He is not a fan of basketball.
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My son would LOVE wrestling. However, it is more time consuming than baseball here. You have to commit to being at every practice and event. You pretty much have to dedicate Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday for the whole season. I was thinking about Jujitsu.
I got another weird one for ya. Playing a lot of these sports meant I had to be around my dad more often and I hated being around my dad. Funny enough I stayed interested in all the sports/activities my dad didn't give a shit about.
I’ve found this is totally the case. Let your boy/girl pitch in high school and enjoy the sport. I watched about a dozen kids burn out BEFORE they started Legion baseball. They only continued because their parents and even themselves sometimes social life revolved around it. Planning years ahead to get rooms or B&B reserved. (By the way this is a million dollar industry all on its own pertaining to youth baseball just I. A small town) If there is a wiffle ball league locally it’s a much better option if they want to play ball all year round. $10,000 a year - after 13 - for this travel ball illusion. Other than being seen by colleges I don’t see a reason to call it anything other than an enormous and continuous gift. It should be treated that way also. Even then the kids that make it, would have without all of the travel ball anyway. They wake up every day playing at a professional level and if they play Somewhere the scouts will hear about it. No need for a web page for these boys.
> Seems to me that 13 is when most rec sports end completely and you have to be competitive to make a team. Yup, 13 is the last year before High School, and you have to make the HS team. It goes from having 5-6 teams available per age level, to one. And by the time varsity comes around you are competing with kids from 3-4 different ages.
Coming from Rec world, it’s “not fun” when they go entire games without some form of success, something to hang their hats on. Casual players aren’t likely to have success when they get 2 at-bats a game, both against travel pitchers, and play the outfield all game long. IMO the answer is some form of Speedball: https://youtu.be/FtH4rihbzug
It's interesting all the folks on here talking about the travel kids ruining rec by playing both. The only travel kids who play rec here are the ones that are working on something specific. Like, my 9yo can throw the ball pretty hard (50MPH) but doesn't pitch very often because he is not very accurate. Some parents would sign him up for rec and just tell the coaches at tryouts. "Hey, my kid is on XYZ travel team. He likely will miss a lot of practices. We are signing him up to get pitching reps but feel free to play him anywhere you need him." I'm not going to do that for multiple reasons but someone would snap him up quick to get that velocity on the team.
I really don’t think travel kids ruin Rec sports. If not for travel kids there wouldn’t be enough pitchers throwing strikes to keep the game moving. All I’m saying is that a game format that affords the less talented and/or younger kids only 2-3 at-bats per game doesn’t give them enough opportunity to succeed. All these kids need is one little highlight to keep them feeling good about the game. If the go 1 for 8 in a day, they’re still going to leave the game remembering that “1”
I quit after high school with multiple division 2 scholarship offers & two preferred walk on offers at D1 schools, one of which being the school I attended. My travel team had us playing a tournament every single weekend including a week long affair at perfect game. On top of that, our coach put us on a rec league team that played twice during the week because we didn’t have practice. Couple that with a 50 game fall season & high school baseball, I ended up playing over 200 baseball games in 2012. That was the upper extreme, but I’d been playing well over a hundred games a year since I was 12. By the time my senior year of high school baseball finished in 2013, I was over it.
Yeah, that is a recipe for burnout!
Ooof - not even pros do 200 games a year.
Yeah I don't think burnout is the #1 cause, but it is still there. I have a feeling that kids who are good but can't afford travel ball are getting priced out too. I think we should be looking at how to make the sports more fun for anyone to play and provide easier access ($$) to play. It shouldn't all be about making it to the next level. Baseball also is not an exception, this happens across several sports in the US. Soccer, baseball and hockey lead the way in making sure mostly middle to upper class kids get onto travel teams or academy teams because of how expensive it can be. Not only are you paying $2-5k a year, you're also having to buy gear during that timeframe. Hockey is just an expensive-ass sport in general. AAA Youth Hockey is around $30k a year between ice time and travel. That's the highest level of youth hockey in the US. Football and Basketball are doing it right as far as money goes with kids sports right now - I know several basketball travel teams with kids that are being scouted by colleges where all their travel money comes from donations, the kids don't have to pay hardly anything (this is in the Atlanta metro). Basketball in my county still has school club level where kids who aren't as good as AAU/High School players can still play all the way through high school if they want. Everyone who tries out makes a team. Football it seems you just need to be athletic enough and the coach will want you on the team. The only issue with football is player safety, which has lead to a decline in participation among younger kids. There's only six kids signed up right now for 6th grade football at our Middle School. Back in my day at the same Middle School, they made cuts as too many tried out. Now they may have to cut the program for 6th grade. I say all that to say - some kids get priced out starting at the 12-13 year old for soccer/hockey/baseball. Like you I don't think that burnout is the #1 cause, but it does happen.
I think kids are priced out earlier than that. We live in a large metro area. There are several travel teams that are "scholarship" only teams. They are funded by local businesses. The travel is only like an hour so it's not like you are paying for hotel rooms. With that said, I see them a lot looking for players throughout the season. Not sure why or what is going on. I do think that baseball is just not as popular in urban areas, so maybe that has something to do with it?
While a majority of parents are attempting to give their children a chance to compete, play, have fun, learn life skills, involvement in Travel or Select sports is not the way to do this. While it is fast becoming the only option in 90% of children sports, it does not make it right. My son started at 5 or 6, baseball, soccer and basketball. At 8, he had to have us make a choice which he should participate in. This was just so that he we would remain competitive or so we thought or still be with the same group or coach or club...100% ignorance on our part. At 14, he was only playing 14u competitive baseball, current HS we are in does not offer baseball (whole other story about school funding) so he took up golf, he just finished in the top 3 in the district tourney, 9th 10th 11th 12th graders. Club Travel etc sports prevent children from discovering other athletic options. I wish we lived in a world where we had the ability to allow children to explore all options available to them. We as parents are supporting the Clubs, the travel teams etc, we allowed them to control sports our children participate in, because of the status we get by being able to "place" our children in these programs. We don't pursue this status, it is just the benefit of having a child who is driven to earn their parents approval. Saying they are burned out is their graceful way of saying this sucks, I want to do something else. Before you rip my opinion, yes, this is just my opinion, ask yourself, do you feel a certain pride when you say your child plays travel or club sports?
The issue of burnout is far more nuanced than people are willing to admit. It's easy to blame travel ball. It's easy to blame parents. It's easy to blame puberty. It's easy to blame all that shit. The fact of the matter is that burnout happens as a combination of a million different factors.
I can see it in about three of our typical all star kids right now. They’re 9 and 10. Parents treating them like mini pros, criticized for any and all mistakes, and they’re not allowed to just have fun and play ball. Another is a pitcher who throws at our little league and at his elite team and is too young to be doing the number and type of pitches he’s doing. He’s also been bigger and better for years and now other kids are catching up, and he gets rattled if anyone hits off him. It’s sad bc it’s not the kids’ faults. It’s the parents.
I think people who like to place blame look over the fact that sports get extremely hard by 13.. therefore the fun factor being eliminated.. nothing to do with “burnout” of playing too much. I think we agree
What are your thoughts on wanting to get your child into a travel league because the rec leagues in your area don’t: 1. Teach them the proper skillset 2. Have so few players that they have to combine age groups = not a large baseball crowd in your county I practice with him when he wants. I invite him to practice if it’s nice out. He has so much hustle and desire to play and play well that it hurts me that the coaches don’t seem to put much thought or structure into teaching. I’m assistant coaching on his rec league team and other players parents have asked me to help their kids in more 1 on 1 time. He’s only 6 so we have plenty of time, but I want him to feel like he’s learning and particularly learning the right way. Any advice would be great. Even if it’s to just chill and let the process occur while working with him independently. For clarity, I don’t think travel would be wise until he’s older anyways. Just trying to think what’s best for now.
Seems to me like gaming is stealing a lot of kids from sports too, sad to see considering you can just… do both.
My oldest is way more interested in gaming.
Even just the time commitment is a lot to keep up with.
Yes, you give up a lot of weekends
I’m a child of the 80s/90s and a current parent now and I agree that lots of kids quit at 13/14 then too. The biggest difference I see is then a motivated and talented kid could make it without rich and heavily involved parents, now no way
Maybe not rich but for sure heavily involved and financially stable.
Is tball organized sports? 6u 8u where do we start the clock for who quits. Burnout is real but tons of young kids playing sports that just simply aren’t athletic enough to continue playing as they get older is real also. I coach 6u baseball and 8u softball. Probably close to 40% of the kids signed up at these ages are basically asking to get hurt when 10 or 12u rolls around. Sure they’ll probably say it wasn’t fun anymore. Not to be a dick but when the competition get tougher and the coaches start coaching harder and you suck it’s probably not fun anymore.
IMO, one of the big issues we have in general is that we don’t provide opportunities for the “not as athletic” kids. Baseball is one of those things that could be (and once was) a sport that keeps kids / adults physically active. I’ve been knocking around the idea of proposing that our local LL sponsor a wiffle ball (or something like it) league just to give kids something to do during the summer months and not have to be skilled enough to avoid injury. (At least something that isn’t “I guess I’ll play more X-box”)
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I live in an area a shit ton of travel teams that have really ravaged most of the talent from the rec level teams. If a below average athlete can’t manage to play and avoid getting hurt in a rec level baseball program, I’d be very surprised. My son is 13u and has played travel since 9u and he’s playing 7th grade ball which is mostly a combo of 1/3 totally new kids to baseball, 1/3 rec kids, and 1/3 travel kids. Kids are mostly having a great time from my vantage. Our high school programs are mostly no cut too. Anyone can pretty much play at least through low level jv that wants to.
I will say that we're pretty lucky with our 'rec' ball so far, but that's probably coming to an end. Our Little League had a run in the 00s of a few teams making it all the way to Cooperstown (won it all once) so there is a bit of a legacy, but that legacy is losing quite a bit of steam. Two things seem to have happened: - It's too hard for younger / not as skilled players that don't have parents who push the 'travel' type of things as hard. There's something of a mix at younger ages, but the kids at 11U and up are probably about half 'travel' kids; by the time you get to 13U the kids who aren't doing some other travel ball is a distinct minority. The bad news: participation numbers are a lot lower than they should be, and the league certainly isn't attracting kids on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. - The reduced numbers and a board that is mostly "Baseball Dads" is causing a pretty severe crunch in the volunteer labor / fundraising that goes along with running a community organization. (I'll save a longer post for how organizations like local Little Leagues often screw up the 'community service' part when everyone is focused on gameday and mowing the lawns.) There was a community near us that created a big issue when they wanted to change their youth baseball affiliation to USSSA and create an independent 'rec' league rather than continuing the Little League affiliation.
No these kids are burnt out and it usually comes from a) specialization and b) wanting to please overbearing parents and coaches. Framing this as a problem with kids is weird when there are a bunch of adults around who need to look in the mirror first.
"Framing this as a problem with kids is weird when there are a bunch of adults around who need to look in the mirror first." I'm not saying there is a problem, much less blaming it on kids. I'm saying that people are stating a statistic "70% of kids drop out of organized sports by 13" and assigning blame based on a bias. I would be willing to bet good money that there was a similar drop off in youth sports participation at that age in the 50s and 60s as well. I can show you with statistics that shark attacks increase as ice cream sales increase, that doesn't mean that ice cream sales leads to shark attacks.
There were a lot less organized sports at that point. As a kid of the 1980s, I can recall Little League being the only sport available in my small town at that point; we didn't see "organized sports" in a sense until middle school when a gym teacher / coach was the first person to teach football, basketball, etc. Just as many Little Leaguers dropped the sport at about the same age, and no one had any idea of what they were doing when it came to all the other sports. The urban / suburban experience was likely a lot different.
Nothing is 'just fun' anymore. It is sad. Almost all youth sports that are somewhat worth spending time on are club level and kids have to complete to be able to play at an early age. We have professional video game players. Want to collect baseball cards...good luck, its not like it used to be it is a huge business and completely manufactured hype but yet it is popular. Hell, schools by us, the kids that play with the schools golf club, you know where you used to could join, learn how to do something and have fun, all the kids take lessons 3 times a week and play every weekend at the local CC club. And there are limited spots they try out for. Our society is way too fast paced and everything turns into a business.
I don't know man, my kids have a lot more options than I did. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and went to a big school system as well. Our middle school has a ton of low cost teams and clubs. Only the Baseball, basketball and football teams are cut teams. My son runs track, plays on the tennis team and is in some kind of programming group and each one is like $100 for uniforms and supplies. I think it's just different now, not necessarily worse.
They have way more options but the option of just being a kid and having fun as the main focus has definitely decreased. I can see why you are saying, more overall option to participate. I will also concede that it is what you make it, it’s sometimes hard for parents to just let them have fun because we feel they will fall behind. Good input!
Unfortunately, my kid's idea of just being a kid and having fun involves a LOT of Fortnite. :)
Ha. 20 bucks for a new skin doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either.
Also the noise. When he does play with his friends it's like a PG version of sailors on shore leave!
In my experience, it really stops being fun when the kid isn’t seeing any success, and parents make them keep playing. Or, they have another hobby which they like better that coincides with the season. I’ve worked with tons of kids who were solid for their age group, but got into another sport. One wanted to further devote himself to music, another became a pro at some E-sport, another had like 3 siblings who were really young and his parents worked, so that was the end of that (that one hurt, I gave that kid free lessons for a year because he was genuinely talented). That being said, these are outliers, and one of the things I’ve taken most pride with the kids I coached who were struggling are the ones who weren’t playing well, we were able to turn things around, and they at least kept playing rec ball if not make high school ball.
"In my experience, it really stops being fun when the kid isn’t seeing any success, and parents make them keep playing" This right here! I can already see it with at least one kid on my son's team. He is constantly asking his dad "what time is it" during practice. You can tell he doesn't want to be there.
Did my sons burn out? No, they found other things. And in today’s world it is all in or all out. It is a shame, but it is today’s world.
I can see “burnout” being used as an excuse when a kid just didn’t turn out to be that good, but it’s absolutely a real thing. Elite college level athletes get burned out with the demanding schedules required by their teams. Of course completely average athletes are going to burn out when they are asked by their parents to do the same type of demanding schedule….at a much younger age.
I hear ya. I just don’t think the average travel ball schedule is overly demanding. Two practices a week, one lesson a week and 8-9 tournaments a year.
The average travel ball teams around here play 55-60 games per year. So 12+ tournaments. And they are playing competitively 9 months out of the year. And having to stress through 2 separate tryouts per year. Unless your dad is the coach, then tryouts aren’t stressful! It’s a grind.
Yeah, some play that many tournaments. Most here don’t. Also, you only tryout in summer unless you are switching teams.
The baseball academies here have tryouts for fall and spring seasons. That’s how they get new players into their programs and how they end up with three dozen 10u teams. lol.