The Tribune had an
interesting story Sunday about out-of-season tournaments in travel baseball and
softball. It seems that some area teams
think it’s OK to have nine- and ten-year olds play past midnight while 18u
teams are willing to start a tournament at 11PM on a Saturday and play until 5
AM Sunday.
The coach for one of
the 18u softball teams explained that the idea was to make up for a bunch of
outdoor, fall tournaments that were cancelled due to bad weather. I hate to break it to these folks, but the
top-level—and by that I mean on the level of AAU crazy—teams are likely to go South
and West in search of good weather to play in; if your Illinois team is playing
locally or even regionally in September and October, your organization isn’t
considered to be among the best.
Sorry. As for 10-year olds
playing past midnight, that’s plain stupid on the part of parents and coaches.
Clare’s first travel
team played into the wee hours of the night at a tournament, but that was
before her time. The worst she ever dealt
with was a five-game Saturday in June, when we were out the door by 5:30 AM to be
at the field in beautiful Kankakee at 6:30 AM (both coaches were late) and didn’t
leave for home till 11:30 PM. This was a
college-exposure tournament, even though Clare was fifteen on a 16u team. Let me put it this way. I doubt any coaches hung around to see us
play our last game that night.
A good rule to live by
for parents in travel baseball and softball: scholarships are won in the daylight,
not at night under a dome in February.
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