Must be a lot of these. Five different people from five different teams posting pictures of their sons "championships" this weekend.

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These tournaments have to be like a swingers paradise for parents, right?

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Ever been staying at a hotel where one of these travel teams is staying? I think the answer is a resounding "yes".

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Everyone is focused on puberty blockers when it is really travel sports that abusing american children.

How will you ever grow as a player if you don't get to test yourself against the team from suburban St. Louis?

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I have no experience with travel baseball, but my kid is part of a travel AAU basketball team. The club he is playing for is well known in my state and draws kids from a diversity of geographic, economic, and racial backgrounds. It's been good for my son to form friendships with kids who are seemingly so different from him, and it's also peen a positive experience for me to interact with some of the parents. While there does tend to be a lot of drinking at the tournaments requiring hotel stays, I haven't witnessed any behavior wilder than that. I think our team is probably an anomaly, though, due to the overall diversity of the group.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this experience. While it was definitely positive socially and athletically, it's also a huge time commitment that undercuts involvement with other extracurricular activities and negatively impacts home life. Now that I have become more "connected" with a variety of coaches and basketball programs in the area, I'm pretty sure that I have discovered easier ways to push my kid's basketball development forward if he wants to continue down this path.

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Yeah a group of these folks invaded a pool/hot tub area where my wife and I were staying. Was pretty funny.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

The pool scene at these tournaments is gross. Lots of fat, drunk guys doing cannonballs into crowded, shallow pools. Younger kids either throwing up or pooping in the water. No thanks.

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Travel sports have always been a way for rich parents to fuck over poor kids, not fuck other rich parents. They saw normal kids being successful in sports and getting scholarships so they created a Bernsteinesque market inequity. Can't just play in your local little league, make the the district all star-team, and go to your high school's summer camp to stay on top. Now you have to spend 5 figures to get a key fob so you get into your team's indoor facility in some industrial park to take bp at 11PM on a Tuesday and spend 3 weekends a month going to Shitville Nebraska for 1 hour drop dead pool games, 75 minute bracket games, and 90 minute title games for tournaments to cram as many teams as possible in for those sweet gate fees. That's if it doesn't drizzle for 1 minute and the host cancels and laughs all the way to the bank.

No youth sports game should be longer than 90 minutes. These 2.5-hour little league marathons are absolutely ridiculous.

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If someone actually enforces one minute from last out to first pitch next inning in softball and baseball games you can mostly get 6 innings in unless no one can find the plate, at least in 12u and 14u. Pretty easy to keep it on time in soccer and basketball. I had a 10u baseball game that took 55 minutes for 2 innings yesterday though. They picked it up and it was "only" 2:15 for 6.

1hr 20min for the final 4 innings isn't too bad.

Better than what you see in and around Wrigley Field.

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Yeah, the tournaments at Wisconsin Dells were gross. Thankfully we moved on to nicer (but more expensive) locales as my son got older and better, but I pretty much agree with KDdidit.

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Yes, the long breaks every half inning are a pet peeve of mine. There's absolutely no reason for them, and shortening them to a minute would, as you say, go a long way towards keeping games a reasonable length.

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