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IUP24
- Jan 2011
- 4387
#1
OT: Youth Sports
The topic of youth sports has popped up here a few times in different threads over the last few months. I was at the gym yesterday watching some of the Midwest Regional for the Little League World Series. Something I heard on the broadcast was just striking to me. They were discussing how the team from Webb City, Missouri was "8-1 over the summer, with seven of those wins coming via the ten-run rule." They are 2 games away from Williamsport and they only played 9 games. That is insane.
I was fortunate to have been a really good baseball player growing up and all through high school. Looking back, there was nothing like the summers in little league growing up. You held out that dream that your team could catch lightning in a bottle and get to Williamsport.
When I played, it may take you around 8 games just to get through your district. These kids are 8-1 and are on the doorstep of the LLWS. That's absolutely wild to me! And the only reason that they are playing that few of games is because there aren't teams to play in the Little League All-Star tournament formats. It is just striking how LL baseball is dying and how community sports are virtually non-existent anymore. When I played, there were 8-9 teams in our District. If you won that, you advanced to the Sectional tournament. Then the Sectional winners advanced to the State tournament. Then the Regional. Then the LLWS. It was a massive mountain to climb that was somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 games to be even close to getting to Williamsport.
We won our district for the first time ever when I was 12 and it was a big deal (at least it seemed like it at the time). We ran into a future major leaguer at 12 years old in our first game of the Sectional tournament (he's still pitching in the big leagues by the way), and our summer ended quickly in 2 games in that tournament. But... It was a reminder of how tough that journey is/is supposed to be.
I started doing some digging last night. There are some states that only have like 6-8 (or fewer) districts anymore because they have so few teams competing in LL baseball. For comparison, Pennsylvania used to have 40 districts (all with 8+ communities putting all-star teams in). Ohio doesn't even have a sectional tournament anymore. A community from Columbus reached the LLWS last year. They played 3-4 games to win their district. Won 4 games in the State tournament, and then reached the regional playing about 7-8 games.
I know the first comment is going to be that these kids are all still playing 70 games a summer, just on travel teams. I get it. But there was always something about LL baseball that just no longer exists. My community doesn't even field an All-Star team anymore and there are only 3 teams in our district left standing. That is sad in my opinion.
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TheBigCat2192
- Aug 2013
- 673
#2
I don’t have any kids of my own but from conversations with friends and old classmates that do I’ve noticed a similar trend in participation. Our local Little League has shrunk quite a bit in terms of number of teams, although I have no idea how many games they play compared to my own time playing. They also ditched a few of the ballfields we used to play on because they don’t have enough teams to need them all. I drive past them semi-regularly and at least three of our old home fields are overgrown and in various states of disrepair.
I grew up in a smaller AA (old system) school district and when I first started playing ball our district actually had two separate youth sports programs due to history/geography. Despite that we had something like three coach pitch (mostly 7&8 year old for those who are unfamiliar with Little League) teams, two kid-pitch minors (9&10 year old) teams, and two kid-pitch majors (11&12 year old) teams plus a few tee ball and softball teams. I recall playing roughly 15-18 regular season games in the two kid-pitch levels and even in the kid-pitch minors our local league organized two post-season tournaments (one strictly for 9-year olds, one for all minors players). We also played regularly in a non-LL midseason tournament with other teams from our league and a few neighbors. I don’t know if they still do the post-season tournament or mid-season tournaments; but between regular season, playing in those tournaments, and a few exhibition games against teams from neighboring counties it wasn’t unusual for a kid to play ~25 games in the summer even if they weren’t old enough for the teams trying for the LLWS. Based on some past posts I believe we’re about the same age so I imagine your experience isn’t too dissimilar.
We talk a lot about the “enrollment cliff” because of how it affects the PASSHE/PSAC schools but slowing population growth/outright population decline is hitting youth sports hard as well. Even setting aside the youth sports money bubble and travel ball either pricing people out and sapping kids our traditional youth sports leagues are hurting and I highly doubt they’ll ever recover.
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IUP24
- Jan 2011
- 4387
#3
My experience is similar. When I was 11-12, we would have 4-5 teams that comprised our local little league, what many would call "in house" or "house league" baseball. We would play all of those teams (which were all the kids you went to school with), and then we had a few neighboring communities that we had in the same "league" with us. In general, we would have somewhere between 8-12 local teams of 11-12 year olds, which resulted in about an 18-25 game schedule, plus the local league's playoffs (maybe an extra 3-4 games). The best kids from the 4-5 teams in our own community was what created the "All-Star" team that competed in the sanctioned Little League tournament. As I mentioned, the community I grew up in no longer even plays Little League baseball. They have a "local" travel team comprised of the best kids that plays Bronco/Pony baseball rules. They will go hours away to play 2-3 games in a weekend. I'm sure it's fun for these kids to play at "The Ripken Experience" in Myrtle Beach or Ocean City, but I wouldn't trade my time hoping and dreaming of getting to Williamsport. That was the ULTIMATE goal for a kid who was 12 years old. It's just not anymore.
It's gotten pretty watered down. To say that you play 10-11 games and then get to Williamsport.... That's sort of laughable. The summer tournament season was supposed to be a grind to get there. It's supposed to be hard.
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IUP24
- Jan 2011
- 4387
#4
When I was in high school, I played Legion baseball in the summer. And that too has just disintegrated. Again, the community I grew up in no longer even has a Legion team (and I lived in a decent sized community). So guys from my high school have to play for the Legion team a few communities over if they wanted to play. In fact, the actual league that our Legion team played in is no more. It merged with another league due to lack of participation. So they both got together and set up one league the same size as they both were before.
Legion baseball was some of the best ball you could play. I played on a travel team too, but Legion was extremely fun, competitive baseball. It was mostly your high school teammates (we had a few guys from a neighboring high school playing for us that didn't have their own Legion team). You were typically playing the same teams you played against during your high school season. It was competitive from that perspective and it was much more fun because you didn't have the pressure of playing higher leverage high school games and dealing with the BS that came from a lot of the coaches you dealt with in high school. Also, you didn't have the oversight of the school district or the high school coaching staffs, and a lot of those games tended to get pretty chippy and players "policed themselves" on the baseball field. It was fun, hard nosed, competitive baseball. Looking back, the three years of Legion ball I played were probably the most fun stretches of baseball I ever played. It's sad how that stuff is just dying - or in many cases, dead.
The state of Pennsylvania also has a very rich tradition and history for American Legion baseball as well.
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IUPbigINDIANS
D2 Hall of Famer
- Sep 2014
- 26111
#5
Originally posted by IUP24View Post
My experience is similar. When I was 11-12, we would have 4-5 teams that comprised our local little league, what many would call "in house" or "house league" baseball. We would play all of those teams (which were all the kids you went to school with), and then we had a few neighboring communities that we had in the same "league" with us. In general, we would have somewhere between 8-12 local teams of 11-12 year olds, which resulted in about an 18-25 game schedule, plus the local league's playoffs (maybe an extra 3-4 games). The best kids from the 4-5 teams in our own community was what created the "All-Star" team that competed in the sanctioned Little League tournament. As I mentioned, the community I grew up in no longer even plays Little League baseball. They have a "local" travel team comprised of the best kids that plays Bronco/Pony baseball rules. They will go hours away to play 2-3 games in a weekend. I'm sure it's fun for these kids to play at "The Ripken Experience" in Myrtle Beach or Ocean City, but I wouldn't trade my time hoping and dreaming of getting to Williamsport. That was the ULTIMATE goal for a kid who was 12 years old. It's just not anymore.
It's gotten pretty watered down. To say that you play 10-11 games and then get to Williamsport.... That's sort of laughable. The summer tournament season was supposed to be a grind to get there. It's supposed to be hard.
Many more options today. Johnny Tarheel needs to 'ball' 12 months a year. He's not playing baseball anymore.
"When I was young" (my favorite expression) if you wanted to play a sport in the Spring, you played baseball. We didn't have lacrosse, spring soccer, year-round hoops, etc. ... and, we sure as hell didn't have all the internet distractions.
It is sad to see all the local Little Leagues fading away to nothing. It used to be the hottest ticket around in many towns.
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IUP24
- Jan 2011
- 4387
#6
Originally posted by IUPbigINDIANSView Post
Many more options today. Johnny Tarheel needs to 'ball' 12 months a year. He's not playing baseball anymore.
"When I was young" (my favorite expression) if you wanted to play a sport in the Spring, you played baseball. We didn't have lacrosse, spring soccer, year-round hoops, etc. ... and, we sure as hell didn't have all the internet distractions.
It is sad to see all the local Little Leagues fading away to nothing. It used to be the hottest ticket around in many towns.
I think the specialization of sports has contributed to some. Lacrosse has certainly grown (and I love that sport), but it's not extremely accessible everywhere. So I'm not sure it's killed baseball. It's a "rich kid's sport" by most metrics. You don't see it in Western PA (or Ohio where I now live) as much as you see it particularly in Long Island, upstate NY, the Philly/DC/Maryland corridor, and the New England region.
I think people in general don't see value in community affiliated sports anymore. "My kid is better than that." Almost none of them are. Even the few that are, just play locally with your classmates too.
To say a team from outside of St. Louis, which is a baseball crazed area of the country, needs 10 games to reach the LLWS... That's a deeper, larger issue altogether. People just don't want to play little league baseball anymore.
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IUP24
- Jan 2011
- 4387
#7
I had this discussion with my dad last night. He was very involved in our LL when I played. He told me that there was always pushes back then to get the locals to "break away" from little league baseball. He said that when I was 10, one group of parents wanted to do the following:
-Have the league set up as it was with the community based teams and a few teams from neighboring areas.
-Pull the best 12 kids from each age group out of that league entirely; meaning they would not play community, "in-house baseball." Instead, those 12 kids would be a "travel team" playing tournaments around the area to "make them better."
-The same 12 kids who were on the travel team then simply became the "All-Star" team that would get slotted into the LL All-Star District Tournament. That was technically legal because all the kids lived in the community and the community was playing little league baseball. However, the kids playing little league baseball were just the front men for those who would ultimately be playing in the LL All-Start tournament.My dad, and others, shot that idea down for a variety of reasons.
I think that story, and that push, can be proven true in a lot of places all around the country. I simply think that there are far less people who share the ideals that my dad and some of the others involved at the time had. The majority is held by those who all think their kid is the next Byrce Harper, and playing against their 5th grade classmate does nothing to help their ascension to pro baseball.
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Fightingscot82
D2Football.com Donor - 2016 2017 2018 2019
- May 2007
- 25158
#8
My son is going into second grade. This summer is the first time he's asked to play a sport and of all, he wants to play football. On the first day of practice, the coaches told us about how there's the fall tackle season, a winter indoor conditioning series, and a spring flag football season. He's 8. The craziest thing is that my 6 year old is doing cheerleading and they have the same thing: fall football cheer, winter indoor competitive cheer, and spring competitive cheer. WHY? Plus the cost. I remember in the 90s it was $100 for the 3 kids in my family to play baseball & softball. We're at roughly $600 for my two kids to do cheer & football and that doesn't count the mandatory fundraisers.
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TheBigCat2192
- Aug 2013
- 673
#9
Originally posted by IUP24View Post
When I was in high school, I played Legion baseball in the summer. And that too has just disintegrated. Again, the community I grew up in no longer even has a Legion team (and I lived in a decent sized community). So guys from my high school have to play for the Legion team a few communities over if they wanted to play. In fact, the actual league that our Legion team played in is no more. It merged with another league due to lack of participation. So they both got together and set up one league the same size as they both were before.
Legion baseball was some of the best ball you could play. I played on a travel team too, but Legion was extremely fun, competitive baseball. It was mostly your high school teammates (we had a few guys from a neighboring high school playing for us that didn't have their own Legion team). You were typically playing the same teams you played against during your high school season. It was competitive from that perspective and it was much more fun because you didn't have the pressure of playing higher leverage high school games and dealing with the BS that came from a lot of the coaches you dealt with in high school. Also, you didn't have the oversight of the school district or the high school coaching staffs, and a lot of those games tended to get pretty chippy and players "policed themselves" on the baseball field. It was fun, hard nosed, competitive baseball. Looking back, the three years of Legion ball I played were probably the most fun stretches of baseball I ever played. It's sad how that stuff is just dying - or in many cases, dead.
The state of Pennsylvania also has a very rich tradition and history for American Legion baseball as well.
Legion ball might be on its last legs too. Our legion program played in two different leagues during my time with it. A decision was made between my sophom*ore and junior summers to try and save some travel costs and change our schedule to play more teams we’d see in HS ball. The move from one league to another eventually helped to kill our post off because we lost all of our old summertime rivalries and guys lost interest. Funny enough, the league we moved to (a brand new league formed by defectors from two neighboring counties) recently decided to drop Legion association and become an independent BBCOR bat league instead of playing with wood bats. The league we moved from decided to follow suit a year later (ending 95 years of Legion affiliation) and merge with the league we had moved to. So moving leagues not only helped kill our program but ended up being pointless in the long run since the two leagues merged into one unholy monster of a tri-county independent league.
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IUP24
- Jan 2011
- 4387
#10
Originally posted by Fightingscot82View Post
My son is going into second grade. This summer is the first time he's asked to play a sport and of all, he wants to play football. On the first day of practice, the coaches told us about how there's the fall tackle season, a winter indoor conditioning series, and a spring flag football season. He's 8. The craziest thing is that my 6 year old is doing cheerleading and they have the same thing: fall football cheer, winter indoor competitive cheer, and spring competitive cheer. WHY? Plus the cost. I remember in the 90s it was $100 for the 3 kids in my family to play baseball & softball. We're at roughly $600 for my two kids to do cheer & football and that doesn't count the mandatory fundraisers.
I'm against specialized athletics at that age. I know there's arguments against it all the way through, but when you reach the right age, I see the value of it to a degree.
That said, 3 seasons of football at 8 years old is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen. That's absolutely ridiculous.
I doubt this will ever catch on, but I read something a year or so ago about the growth of "select" or "travel" football teams at the youth level. So instead of playing for the Smith Township Dragons, you play for Erie Elite Football. A collection of 40 kids comprised from the area with parents who decided to play for an independent football team that plays other non-community affiliated teams. What are we actually doing? The sad part of this is that money is the ultimate driver for the growth of these "off-season" leagues or these elite or select teams that travel around and try to separate themselves from their community.
Take baseball for instance... Most of these teams are all fed out of a baseball instructional program or school somewhere. I can name you dozens in the Pittsburgh area from when I was growing up. So your travel or AAU teams are all based out of a baseball school. Whoever owns that is ultimately making money hand over fist. The one off travel team just created by a couple parents from a local community are out there, but that's not the majority.
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IUP24
- Jan 2011
- 4387
#11
Originally posted by TheBigCat2192View Post
Legion ball might be on its last legs too. Our legion program played in two different leagues during my time with it. A decision was made between my sophom*ore and junior summers to try and save some travel costs and change our schedule to play more teams we’d see in HS ball. The move from one league to another eventually helped to kill our post off because we lost all of our old summertime rivalries and guys lost interest. Funny enough, the league we moved to (a brand new league formed by defectors from two neighboring counties) recently decided to drop Legion association and become an independent BBCOR bat league instead of playing with wood bats. The league we moved from decided to follow suit a year later (ending 95 years of Legion affiliation) and merge with the league we had moved to. So moving leagues not only helped kill our program but ended up being pointless in the long run since the two leagues merged into one unholy monster of a tri-county independent league.
When I think back, I probably misstated things a bit. You are spot on regarding the "old summertime rivalries." We played some teams we played high school ball against, but it was mostly a different crop of teams around the area. I went to a AAA high school (under the old format). We had some absolute battles with a group of guys from a Class A school in our Legion league. Their high school team routinely made run's through the WPIAL playoffs and into PIAA playoffs every year. But that whole rivalry started when we played Colt baseball in the summer after our freshmen year's of high school and lasted through all of our time playing Legion against each other. There was a ton of respect there that all happened due to playing local baseball. We never once played against them in a high school baseball game.
Interestingly, a lot of us ended up becoming friends because we played on a fall baseball team together starting our junior year's of high school. The WPIAL created a non-affiliated fall baseball league so that schools had an organized outlet to allow baseball to get played for non-fall sport athletes. Nearby school districts were able to merge teams if one didn't have enough players to field a team. Those guys came from a small school, so a cluster of them played with us. Was really enjoyable playing with those guys having gone through some real tough games against them too.
All that to say... There's still a ton of value and positives from playing community baseball. It's a shame how it's dying.
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EyeoftheHawk
D2Football.com Donor - 2017 2018 2019 2022 2023
- Aug 2014
- 2826
#12
Originally posted by TheBigCat2192View Post
Legion ball might be on its last legs too. Our legion program played in two different leagues during my time with it. A decision was made between my sophom*ore and junior summers to try and save some travel costs and change our schedule to play more teams we’d see in HS ball. The move from one league to another eventually helped to kill our post off because we lost all of our old summertime rivalries and guys lost interest. Funny enough, the league we moved to (a brand new league formed by defectors from two neighboring counties) recently decided to drop Legion association and become an independent BBCOR bat league instead of playing with wood bats. The league we moved from decided to follow suit a year later (ending 95 years of Legion affiliation) and merge with the league we had moved to. So moving leagues not only helped kill our program but ended up being pointless in the long run since the two leagues merged into one unholy monster of a tri-county independent league.
Great thread and a lot has already been covered but here’s my two cents.
Legion baseball is a shadow of what it once was. I was just at the regional and state tournaments that were in nearby Homer City and there were maybe two good teams. Quality of play was awful. Several teams that were supposed to be in regionals dropped out due to choosing travel ball so the teams that were the 4th, 5th, or 6th best teams in their respective leagues took their spots. That’s partly because of some absurd rules the PA American Legion put in place that eliminate players from tournaments if they play in a travel tournament at the same time. They (a bunch of old out of touch dudes) thought that would force kids to focus on Legion and the opposite happened. Why do you need the rule at all? If a kid can make it to a game, who cares where he played three hours before?
Locally the Marion Center team made the regional but skipped it because they had a few kids pick travel instead. It cost the entire team from being in the regional. The league couldn’t even find a replacement so it was a seven team regional. Most teams are combined areas now. Indiana used to have a half dozen teams alone, but now is just one team and they’re combined with Young Township, which used to have its own great teams. The team finished with a gaudy record this year and thought they were good, but they were beating up on a bunch of teams that were awful all summer and lost to every decent team they played in regionals and states.
I can’t be a hypocrite and hate on travel ball because I’ve coached it, but I will say it’s not putting more kids on D1 teams or in MLB than before travel. Is it getting a kid to D3 or possibly a D2 that maybe wouldn’t have gotten there otherwise? Maybe, but there’s almost no scholarship money for those kids and many don’t play out their eligibility. There are a lot of false promises made and families break their piggy banks and give up their summer weekends for years only to find out the emperor has no clothes in the end.
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TheBigCat2192
- Aug 2013
- 673
#13
Originally posted by EyeoftheHawkView Post
Great thread and a lot has already been covered but here’s my two cents.
Legion baseball is a shadow of what it once was. I was just at the regional and state tournaments that were in nearby Homer City and there were maybe two good teams. Quality of play was awful. Several teams that were supposed to be in regionals dropped out due to choosing travel ball so the teams that were the 4th, 5th, or 6th best teams in their respective leagues took their spots. That’s partly because of some absurd rules the PA American Legion put in place that eliminate players from tournaments if they play in a travel tournament at the same time. They (a bunch of old out of touch dudes) thought that would force kids to focus on Legion and the opposite happened. Why do you need the rule at all? If a kid can make it to a game, who cares where he played three hours before?
Locally the Marion Center team made the regional but skipped it because they had a few kids pick travel instead. It cost the entire team from being in the regional. The league couldn’t even find a replacement so it was a seven team regional. Most teams are combined areas now. Indiana used to have a half dozen teams alone, but now is just one team and they’re combined with Young Township, which used to have its own great teams. The team finished with a gaudy record this year and thought they were good, but they were beating up on a bunch of teams that were awful all summer and lost to every decent team they played in regionals and states.
I can’t be a hypocrite and hate on travel ball because I’ve coached it, but I will say it’s not putting more kids on D1 teams or in MLB than before travel. Is it getting a kid to D3 or possibly a D2 that maybe wouldn’t have gotten there otherwise? Maybe, but there’s almost no scholarship money for those kids and many don’t play out their eligibility. There are a lot of false promises made and families break their piggy banks and give up their summer weekends for years only to find out the emperor has no clothes in the end.
My understanding is that the Legion regular season is only about three weeks to a month now before teams start playing in league playoffs or even regionals. Is that true? I also read online that American Legion changed their rules to make all Legion play wood bat only. Incredibly stupid if true for at least two reasons:
- A single wood bat isn’t as pricey as a metal bat but they’re much more likely to break. A guy with bad luck or bad form may end up racking up 3-4 of them in a season which isn’t chump change.
- Most HS players just aren’t strong enough to have any thump with wood bats. If you’re not regularly hitting for extra bases with metal bats you’re better off spending all summer in the weight room and batting cages than playing in a wood bat league that’s mostly just gonna leave you frustrated as you hit weak flyouts.
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IUPbigINDIANS
D2 Hall of Famer
- Sep 2014
- 26111
#14
Originally posted by EyeoftheHawkView Post
Great thread and a lot has already been covered but here’s my two cents.
Legion baseball is a shadow of what it once was. I was just at the regional and state tournaments that were in nearby Homer City and there were maybe two good teams. Quality of play was awful. Several teams that were supposed to be in regionals dropped out due to choosing travel ball so the teams that were the 4th, 5th, or 6th best teams in their respective leagues took their spots. That’s partly because of some absurd rules the PA American Legion put in place that eliminate players from tournaments if they play in a travel tournament at the same time. They (a bunch of old out of touch dudes) thought that would force kids to focus on Legion and the opposite happened. Why do you need the rule at all? If a kid can make it to a game, who cares where he played three hours before?
Locally the Marion Center team made the regional but skipped it because they had a few kids pick travel instead. It cost the entire team from being in the regional. The league couldn’t even find a replacement so it was a seven team regional. Most teams are combined areas now. Indiana used to have a half dozen teams alone, but now is just one team and they’re combined with Young Township, which used to have its own great teams. The team finished with a gaudy record this year and thought they were good, but they were beating up on a bunch of teams that were awful all summer and lost to every decent team they played in regionals and states.
I can’t be a hypocrite and hate on travel ball because I’ve coached it, but I will say it’s not putting more kids on D1 teams or in MLB than before travel. Is it getting a kid to D3 or possibly a D2 that maybe wouldn’t have gotten there otherwise? Maybe, but there’s almost no scholarship money for those kids and many don’t play out their eligibility. There are a lot of false promises made and families break their piggy banks and give up their summer weekends for years only to find out the emperor has no clothes in the end.
Legion season in the Indiana County area used to be a big show. All the best kids played and the teams were all loaded up. I remember Young Twp. used to routinely be filled up with ringers from Kiski Area and other larger schools.
You're correct. These teams this year would have lost to those teams in very, very ugly fashion.
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Ship69
- Sep 2019
- 3252
#15
Originally posted by TheBigCat2192View Post
My understanding is that the Legion regular season is only about three weeks to a month now before teams start playing in league playoffs or even regionals. Is that true? I also read online that American Legion changed their rules to make all Legion play wood bat only. Incredibly stupid if true for at least two reasons:
- A single wood bat isn’t as pricey as a metal bat but they’re much more likely to break. A guy with bad luck or bad form may end up racking up 3-4 of them in a season which isn’t chump change.
- Most HS players just aren’t strong enough to have any thump with wood bats. If you’re not regularly hitting for extra bases with metal bats you’re better off spending all summer in the weight room and batting cages than playing in a wood bat league that’s mostly just gonna leave you frustrated as you hit weak flyouts.
I'm old enough that to remember that my high school team (I was student manager in 9th and 10th grades) played with wooden bats, and our guys had no trouble pounding out some long hits with them. Of course on our varsity team we had Doug Rader, who later had a fairly long career in MLB with the Astros. I saw him hit some prodigious clouts with a wooden bat. But even some of the guys on our freshman team could drive the ball well. The biggest problem, as you mention, is that wooden bats break. We went through so many of them in 9th grade that I was constantly taping them up, and guys were even bring their own bats from home. And those bats were probably made from better wood than the ones today. The bats that tended to break were the thin-handled styles like the Hank Aaron.
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