Playing for out of state teams

[Capone]

Just read this article.

Just curious, do people think playing for out of state teams is worth the travel costs and helps their daughters get better. Do they practice often or just show up for tournaments?

https://extrainningsoftball.com/the-las ... ine-state/

[eclipse09]

It depends on the situation. Makes sense for players in areas with not a lot of talent at their age, but moving from top team to another top team to win PGF seems like the thing to do these days. I guess Fleet or any other top player will transfer if they don't thing their college can compete for a NCAA title.

[orange socks]

I having been scratching my head on this. I have seen players that were already on high caliber teams go to an out of state team. Meanwhile there is plenty of top 20 National competition in the areas that they live in. Why would you spend that kind of money for travel every weekend? As mentioned above, if a player lives in an area where there is not enough competition, I can understand the NEED to seek better teams.

I have seen some of these players play for a team out of state and end up committing to a college program that is less than 3 hours from their homes. And we all know that they money you spend on travel will never equal the amount of athletic monies they receive...for the most part.

[Backnine]

I guess I could understand it if there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but there is not. Very few full rides and no real pro contracts. I wish there was real pro fastpitch but as of now and for the foreseeable future it doesn't exist. The NPF for a multitude of reasons has not caught on. They need their own TV channel and current management has failed in marketing.

[xyzdude]

I have seen some of these players play for a team out of state and end up committing to a college program that is less than 3 hours from their homes. And we all know that they money you spend on travel will never equal the amount of athletic monies they receive...for the most part

I guess I could understand it if there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but there is not. Very few full rides and no real pro contracts. I wish there was real pro fastpitch but as of now and for the foreseeable future it doesn't exist. The NPF for a multitude of reasons has not caught on. They need their own TV channel and current management has failed in marketing.

We have a handful of players from our area who end up joining teams in different parts of the country for a number of reasons: 1) we have a definite lack of elite level teams 2) Sometimes to get seen by the better local schools, you have to travel or play in another region 3) Some committed players are urged to do this by the college coaches who want to see them play a more difficult schedule or receive a higher level of training.

Some players may just be motivated to want to play at the highest level and win. I guess I don't get some of the movement between highly rated national level teams, but that's how it goes these days I guess.

[dusty]

Here in the DMV (lame regional acronym for Dc/Md/Va) this was going on for tons of players for a long time, even the marginally talented ones, starting around 14u. If anyone remembers the Shamrocks who I believe were the first east coast team to win ASA nationals in the pre-PGF era, they were based in Va but recruited players from all over the east coast and never had more than one team per age group, Had their founder not retired and his successor die tragically they may have evolved into one of these mega-org teams like Ga Impact, FC or BB.

The first mega-org to make inroads into the area was Jersey Intensity and they took quantity and quality players from the area to fill multiple teams in every age group. I remember my dd's travel coach who also coached HS would tell parents who expected starting varsity status for their dd because they showed up to tryouts with Intensity gear that the only reason they made that team was because their check cleared. Intensity managed the multi-state distance issue by dedicating occasional weekends to mega-practices in NJ and running local practices with all HS age groups through a local private instructor who also coached a 16u team for them. That fell apart fairly quickly when this coach took an assistant coaching position at a B10 school.

The NC based Lady Lightning came along after that and started regional teams to have mostly local practices and some org practices/scrimmages but the better players practice with a local team and play tourneys with the PGF team, LL-Corn. Even Corn's teams don't put many, if any, players on SEC, BI2 or PAC12 rosters. They mostly get commitments to low to mid-tier ACC and B10 teams and mid majors. By the time they came around to recruiting my dd, she was already committed to a great P5 academic school with a low tier softball program so we passed.

I don't really keep up with what's going on in the local travel scene anymore so I don't know what's changed in the past two years. I'm just glad I got to keep my dd out of the high expense and aggravation travel programs and into the university she really wanted all along.

[swells9232]

Better than traveling out of state and play in state teams...

[E Train Dad]

For Perspective, So Cal Based, DD playing college ball now. In her travel day's, there were 3-4 players each year on her team from out of state or Nor Cal, that either came into town for friendlies (Didn't play many) or Tourney's, and an occasional practice if it was an all practice weekend. The collective rationale, schedule included all top level competition, thus, seeing top level, pitching, week in and week out. College Coaches typically spent their time out west in So Cal at these top tier events, as the best use of their time and $$$ with the sheer volume of girls to look at in a given weekend. There are many events outside So Cal in the West that draw the coaches, however, for their $$$ and valuable recruiting time, Just my and DD experience a few years outside of the travel world now.