Last March Monday

Morning all, we got snow over weekend, none lasted on hard surfaces, but yard has a covering.

60's in the day but looks to be pretty bleh start to April, ready for sun and warmth
 
oh boy....the pollen is starting to show and the trees are smelling like semen.

must be spring in MD
 
ill said:
the trees are smelling like semen.
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Bruce Willis Wtf GIF


The fuck?
 
basement bias said:
The teams that no longer have any in the league had their kids absorbed by teams in other leagues. The league was teams from small towns not far from bigger towns in both states. The bigger towns have enough teams that they just play each other in house. Of the 5 basically remaining, I can see 2 more consolidations just leaving 3 and maybe 3 to 5 teams tops. 5 might be doable, but 3 will just shut it down most likely. Travel ball is about to kill it off here anyway. You'll have to go to the bigger towns to play in house for rec or be on travel. The dang HS & MS programs seem to be pushing travel so the travel teams are the bad guys to cut kids so they never have to do it.
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Dumb and short-sighted as hell. These programs should be supporting the rec leagues as a feeder system.
 
basement bias said:
The dang HS & MS programs seem to be pushing travel so the travel teams are the bad guys to cut kids so they never have to do it.
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Guy Incognito said:
Dumb and short-sighted as hell. These programs should be supporting the rec leagues as a feeder system.
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Hard to say what's the best approach here, but my feeling is some sort of hybrid rec/travel program.

Our district has a travel program that starts with 8U, but there is also a rec league. There is no doubt that having more specialized training and tougher competition develops kids more than what the typical rec league has to offer. On the other hand, I know kids that got cut from the travel team and instead of playing rec, they quit baseball. Two specifically are very good athletes that now play lacrosse. I also know kids who played rec and either made the freshman HS team, or just barely got cut - how much better would those kids be today if they'd have the training/competition from the travel program?

I heard a district in the area has a rec/tournament program, where everyone plays rec, but they also regularly enter tournaments and take the better kids, but not always the same players. I thought that was a reasonable approach.
 
Guy Incognito said:
Dumb and short-sighted as hell. These programs should be supporting the rec leagues as a feeder system.
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Agreed! Why I'm surprised HS coaches aren’t already trying to force the towns to consolidate & run their program. Takes the small towns & big towns politics out. Be a hybrid of rec & rotating travel like Slinky mentioned. My guess is the $ & history some of these towns are holding on enough to prevent it. Unfortunately it costs these schools as most have underperformed at HS.
 
basement bias said:
Agreed! Why I'm surprised HS coaches aren’t already trying to force the towns to consolidate & run their program. Takes the small towns & big towns politics out. Be a hybrid of rec & rotating travel like Slinky mentioned. My guess is the $ & history some of these towns are holding on enough to prevent it. Unfortunately it costs these schools as most have underperformed at HS.
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I do know that the current HS coaching staff here started the district travel program and the year that the first kids to go through the program reached Junior year of HS, they won their division and have been contenders, if not winners, every year since, so there is merit to it.

One stumbling block to watch out for in a travel program is who the coaches will be. One recent age group actually had three dads who all played college baseball on scholarship and the dads were all willing to coach, but they and their talented kids went elsewhere because there was already a head coach entrenched that they didn't see eye-to-eye with. So instead of having three coaches who really knew baseball, they had volunteer dads who were good people and generally good athletes, but none had even played HS baseball.
 
SlinkyRedfoot said:
I do know that the current HS coaching staff here started the district travel program and the year that the first kids to go through the program reached Junior year of HS, they won their division and have been contenders, if not winners, every year since, so there is merit to it.

One stumbling block to watch out for in a travel program is who the coaches will be. One recent age group actually had three dads who all played college baseball on scholarship and the dads were all willing to coach, but they and their talented kids went elsewhere because there was already a head coach entrenched that they didn't see eye-to-eye with. So instead of having three coaches who really knew baseball, they had volunteer dads who were good people and generally good athletes, but none had even played HS baseball.
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It's a double edged sword on the college baseball players vs the good volunteers. Maybe different in baseball, but in other sports I've seen the college studs fail to teach or get through to all the kids. Wrestling program I was an assistant to one and the kids & some of our parents couldn't get what he was trying to teach. I'd try to play translator to both sides as I knew what he was trying to teach as well as understanding their confusion. The big part is the coaches of both kind have to put their egos aside.
 
basement bias said:
The teams that no longer have any in the league had their kids absorbed by teams in other leagues. The league was teams from small towns not far from bigger towns in both states.
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Oh gotcha. It is crappy how it does seem like sports in towns are starting to be a thing of the past. No one wants to play anymore/there just aren't that many kids anymore.

I know there are multiple towns where I live where they don't even have a JV HS basketball team for the women
 
redseat said:
Oh gotcha. It is crappy how it does seem like sports in towns are starting to be a thing of the past. No one wants to play anymore/there just aren't that many kids anymore.

I know there are multiple towns where I live where they don't even have a JV HS basketball team for the women
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Yep, the girls sports seem to definitely have reduced numbers besides wrestling. It's newer here so it's rising for now but will hit the peak soon. Already seeing the girls with more experience dominating everyone else & will turn newer ones away soon. As for the others, these small towns are dying off as most go to the big city or town to live. Others have issues like I put earlier hampering growth.
 
SlinkyRedfoot said:
I do know that the current HS coaching staff here started the district travel program and the year that the first kids to go through the program reached Junior year of HS, they won their division and have been contenders, if not winners, every year since, so there is merit to it.

One stumbling block to watch out for in a travel program is who the coaches will be. One recent age group actually had three dads who all played college baseball on scholarship and the dads were all willing to coach, but they and their talented kids went elsewhere because there was already a head coach entrenched that they didn't see eye-to-eye with. So instead of having three coaches who really knew baseball, they had volunteer dads who were good people and generally good athletes, but none had even played HS baseball.
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This is my problem with the emphasis on travel ball. At some point you start losing kids because if the good ones aren't playing rec, the "rec kids" feel like they don't matter, and you lose a kid at 10 who might have been a good player for you in HS when he hits a growth spurt or he finally starts clicking as an athlete. Add in that you can have teams added on just because someone's dad doesn't want to hand over the reins or somebody else isn't happy that their kid isn't playing shortstop enough and suddenly you've basically got the equivalent of a town Little League playing travel and the competition isn't that much better than "high level" travel because there are too many teams and everyone has like 3 holes in their lineup.
 
 
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