Choosing rec over travel?

[TNSoftballDad]

Question for you experienced travel peoples: Do you/your teams make it mandatory that your players cannot play rec/league ball?

We had an interesting situation occur this weekend on our first year team. Long story short, two of our kids are going to miss two tournaments because they're going to be playing rec all-stars. We just found out about it this weekend, even though at least one of the dads of the kids knew this was going to happen when they came to tryouts. What sucks the most about it is that we played our best ball of the year this weekend and finally had some positive momentum going.

Is it fair (for lack of a better word) to make it mandatory to not play league/rec ball if a girl is going to be a member of a travel team? And how would you experienced travel coaches handle this situation?

[txfpcoach]

For an established team it is not out of the ordinary to expect the players to be commited to the travel team and travel team only. This obviously changes once high school enters the picture.

It is the Managers responsibility to make this information clear from the beginning. However it sounds like you might have picked up these players after they were already in Rec and maybe even after they tried out and commited to the Allstars. I f anything is sounds like a lack of communication. Going forward as the team matures you'll need to make your expectations in these type of situations more clear.

[Tucson]

You are right to feel slighted. I would, too.

I guess that you can try to limit your players to travel ball, but how are you going to do that? Did you have a team meeting and lay out the expectations, prior to the season? Did the girls and the parents sign a statement concerning expected attendance? And what are you going to do about the girls that are going to miss your games?

I feei that the only acceptable excuses for missing a game are a death in the family, illness and a wedding that your family has to travel to.

Here in Tucson, we are competing with horseback lessons. It will always be something. If you restrict players from LL, you will need to restrict them from soccer, etc. Good luck.

[jofus]

My DD would probably be on a team that she played one tournament with last year right before LL all-stars, if she hadn't been committed to all-stars. By the time her all-star tournament was over (her team went to state semis), the team had picked up a few more players, and then they carried those over to this year, which didn't leave any room for her. Now a couple of the coaches have told me that they really wish she were playing with them, but so far it hasn't happened.

BTW.....Just a few weeks ago Little League finally rescinded their stupid (IMHO) rule prohibiting all-stars (at 12 and under ages) from playing for any other team during the all-star tournament season. So, now, if the all-stars these 2 girls you talk about is Little League all-stars, they could actually do both, although obviously there may be schedule conflicts.


http://www.littleleague.org/media/tourn ... ins_08.asp

[TNSoftballDad]

It did come as a shock. Our head coach was very unhappy and let them know that pretty plainly. Hindsight being what it is, as txfpcoach pointed out, it is something we should have anticipated and addressed at the start with them. Chalk it up to being a first-year team with first-year travel coaches. We will learn from it and move on. I agree fully that the expectations need to be made very clear and probably be placed in writing so there is no confusion (or faked confusion). We've also had issues with some missing practices...again, going back to what was communicated on the front end regarding expectations.

I guess what I am really looking for advice on is what the best way to balance everything is when it comes to involvement in other things, be it rec league or whatever.

[Dreamseam]

My DD left rec for travel ball as first year 12U and we thought we were done with it but when our local rec league called and invited her to pitch because of a shortage of quality pitchers (14U)
She said yes as long as it did not interfere with her travel schedule.
Her travel coach actually encouraged her to do it for the extra pitching practice.
We just finished with it (and are happy to be done ) because the play level was so low but my kid had fun playing with the girls that she will "most likely" be playing high school ball with.
Now she appreciates her travel team a lot more.
FYI... In our area you cannot play both travel and allstars so that was out of the question before we even signed up.