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Selecting a travel ball organization

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by cwcivicgrl » Tue Jul 30, 2019 3:25 pm

OC Batbusters, Cal A's, & California Cruisers are great organizations, there are more great organizations but those are my top picks. From the looks of what I saw today to it looks like OC Batbusters did some cleaning house with their teams too, which was needed. Getting along with the girls, this is a tricky one and you will hear it a lot. We have been with two teams, we did Allstars as well and what I have learned from the experience is there is always 1 or 2 sometimes even more bullies on the team so you can't focus on that your kid needs to rise above that always, look up a video I just listened to from Sue Enquist she is the Bruins softball coach called the 33% Rule that should help your daughter stay away from the Barfers and stay in the top 1% (every travel ball player should listen to this video).

I agree with most of the posts on this thread. Coaches are great at telling you what you want to hear. Go look the team up on Game Changer and you can see wins, losses, ties. You can also see the team roster to see who plays what position. Go to a few practices maybe even try to come unannounced so you can see how this coach really coaches. There is a fine line when yelling at kids watch out for that, you don't want a coach who may be constantly ejected from games for yelling at the umps or basically makes your kid want to quit. Coaches who use positive encouragement will go along way. Some of the bigger organizations have websites so you can read up on the organization. Do not have your kid stick to one position, I find utility players tend to play a lot more than those who have one position and in high school its very common that your kid will not even play their designated position so its good to get use to that now.

More important than picking a team is picking your hitting/pitching/catching coach make sure it is a reputable coach and the coach works well with your kid. It took me 3 trys to find the right hitting coach and I'm really happy with our selection. Every travel ball coach should require every team member to have a hitting coach, attend fielding, and also attend speed and agility as much as possible.
Fielding lessons, hitting lessons, and speed/agility are a must for a travel ball player (I recommend Sports Training Complex in Anaheim or EM Speed & Power Training for the speed/agility. For fielding my favorites is Sports Training Complex Mike Stith's classes, Briggs Softball Training and Softball Workshop in Anaheim. Jen Schroeder works out of there she is great if your daughter is a catcher and Morgan Stuart runs the fielding lessons and sometimes her classes can be hard to get into) I'm Orange County California based so if your not from around this area hopefully someone else has some good recommendations for you.

Good luck, be VERY strong softball is not for the weak!
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by eclipse09 » Tue Jul 30, 2019 10:21 pm

cwcivicgrl wrote:OC Batbusters, Cal A's, & California Cruisers are great organizations, there are more great organizations but those are my top picks. From the looks of what I saw today to it looks like OC Batbusters did some cleaning house with their teams too, which was needed. Getting along with the girls, this is a tricky one and you will hear it a lot. We have been with two teams, we did Allstars as well and what I have learned from the experience is there is always 1 or 2 sometimes even more bullies on the team so you can't focus on that your kid needs to rise above that always, look up a video I just listened to from Sue Enquist she is the Bruins softball coach called the 33% Rule that should help your daughter stay away from the Barfers and stay in the top 1% (every travel ball player should listen to this video).

I agree with most of the posts on this thread. Coaches are great at telling you what you want to hear. Go look the team up on Game Changer and you can see wins, losses, ties. You can also see the team roster to see who plays what position. Go to a few practices maybe even try to come unannounced so you can see how this coach really coaches. There is a fine line when yelling at kids watch out for that, you don't want a coach who may be constantly ejected from games for yelling at the umps or basically makes your kid want to quit. Coaches who use positive encouragement will go along way. Some of the bigger organizations have websites so you can read up on the organization. Do not have your kid stick to one position, I find utility players tend to play a lot more than those who have one position and in high school its very common that your kid will not even play their designated position so its good to get use to that now.

More important than picking a team is picking your hitting/pitching/catching coach make sure it is a reputable coach and the coach works well with your kid. It took me 3 trys to find the right hitting coach and I'm really happy with our selection. Every travel ball coach should require every team member to have a hitting coach, attend fielding, and also attend speed and agility as much as possible.
Fielding lessons, hitting lessons, and speed/agility are a must for a travel ball player

Good luck, be VERY strong softball is not for the weak!


All good points, but I wanted to send out a warning about lessons. I know you said do lessons as much as possible, but people need to be careful they don't overbook their kid doing lessons, practices, conditioning while still trying to maintain good grades. School is a big part of being a softball player since most opportunities to play in college are at the smaller schools that emphasize grade point average, etc.

My kid did both hitting and pitching lessons, but not fielding or conditioning. Luckily she was on a team that emphasized both fielding and conditioning so the need for additional lessons wasn't necessary.

Now playing for a top org might necessitate the additional work, but make sure your kid can juggle all of that with school work and hopefully still enjoy family and friend time.
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by notthisagain » Wed Jul 31, 2019 7:41 am

Anybody can coach a travel ball team. Not everybody can coach a team well. Watch out for coaches that boast coaching experience but don't have any longevity in one place. Bounce around coaches.
Followed by a trail of drama.
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