AAU v LL {Rec} No Difference @ Allstar Time(Long)
By: Randy Dykstra"The travel Teams have too much bickering and stealing each others players that it truly demoralizes their Teams" Well, I can't deny that this often happens.... In fact I have a couple teams trying to persuade my son to come play for them...
Every Year there's a new Dad who tries to put together a travel team and will last a year or twos... but they usually have a very difficult time competing for the first couple years (and then they fold) but at least in our area there are only a few Baseball clubs that last year end and year out... However they also have a good turneover.
A kid gets discouraged about losing and they go and tryout for one of the top teams and the top teams get richer... Unless the coaching staff messes up and drives the kids away due to their policies. Which I have also seen.
Now, I also don't claim that one particular travel team has the top 10 kids in a city/county the size of San Diego. In fact there are 3 or 4 other teams that can complete very well with us... And if we were to combine those four teams, the San Diego represenative would be awesome. However the real point is that these top teams can draw the top 1% of talent from a very large pool... Where as LL has a significantly smaller pool.
That's why I said the level of a travel team really comes down to recruiting... but it also depends a lot on coaching and retaining players... The lop levels of Youth sports have lost their innocence and it is really a very competitive arena. Good or bad that's the way it works. In the long run I think it will prepare my son for the rigors of the real world, because he will know that the only thing you can control is your own hard work and determination and desire, and that it doesn't hurt to KNOW influential people also... Gosh sounds like REAL life!
My bottom line for my sons is that they get to develop their skills and the only way to do that is to play with/against players will skills as good or better than their own. Rec ball wasn't providing that for us and so we left for travel ball.. where my sons have to continue to work hard to maintain the level of thier skills and/or improve them. Championships are nice but the final result is the player you develop... And the person he becomes later in life.