Panther pislA wrote:
rogers park bryan wrote:
denisdman wrote:
But it’s the practice and game experience. You work indoors for 10 weeks to get ready for high school. Without high school you have a gap from late February until June while everyone else is playing.
It’s not like he gets a do over on his teenage years.
Yea, good point.
I guess I've just seen a lot of people kinda putting school ball on the backburner and just focusing on travel.
There is a lower emphasis on High School Ball because the Colleges play during the same season and the coaches cannot get out to scout, and with the advent of gamechanger and the internet, a lot of teams do not pay as many scouts to put actual eyes on prospects. (They usually use volunteer assistants when the actual coach cannot attend. You will see the actual coaches and big-league scouts at the big Perfect Game and Prep Baseball Report Showcases, though.)
In Illinois softball, it is much simpler - College coaches only really follow the Beverly Bandits, and then after that maybe the Illinois Chill, and possibly the new OC Batbuster (Jennie Finch's Team) franchise that just branched out into Illinois as a result of the California guys getting sick of the Bandits collecting players from a 1500 mile radius to go over to nationals and beat the SoCal teams. If you don't play for one of those 3 orgs, it would be very hard to get on a D1 coach's radar [as told to me directly by a coach at a Power 5 D1 school when we did a tour of the campus].
As a by-product, the level of HS competition is inconsistent at best, and sometimes downright laughable.
HOWEVER, the college coaches indeed want to see you to play HS ball, as it is one of the areas that you are forced to swim on your own, without parent involvement, and they want to see that you are able to function socially within a team that chose you, instead of a team you hand-picked where your daddy is right there next to you on the field.
Yea, I know all that, Thro.
One of my players was recruited by the Bandits which is pretty rare as I understand it. She's a freak who was throwing 60mph when she was 10.
The showcase thing is true in softball too though. It just makes sense. Why travel around to 5 games to see 5 kids when the best 200 are all in one tournament?
And yes, the HS level is pretty bad. Shepard plays at our fields. I had two 11 year olds and a 10 year old that were all better than ANY of the freshman pitchers.
One of my girls actually asked me why they throw so slow.
The part about wanting them to play HS ball is a case by case basis though. There are definitely college coaches who would urge to stick with travel/club