Congrats!! I assume y'all were the Rookies? I was there with my son as well. The team from NB. We lost the semi game, otherwise would have played y'all. It was a blast but a long drive back yesterday and wasn't fun being back at work today.

brotherbear said:

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Congrats!! I assume y'all were the Rookies? I was there with my son as well. The team from NB. We lost the semi game, otherwise would have played y'all. It was a blast but a long drive back yesterday and wasn't fun being back at work today.

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Yessir.

Saw y'all play. Nice squad but it seemed like y'all just ran out of pitching. I saw y'all hit the ball around a lot.

Yeah they ran out of gas. Was our third game that day. Maybe we will run into y'all at some point. We plan on coming to Houston this fall for a tournament.

Again congrats to your boy. It's an accomplishment to travel that far and earn that ring. I bet that one will mean the most.

brotherbear said:

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Yeah they ran out of gas. Was our third game that day. Maybe we will run into y'all at some point. We plan on coming to Houston this fall for a tournament.

Again congrats to your boy. It's an accomplishment to travel that far and earn that ring. I bet that one will mean the most.

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Congrats to y'all as well. You guys have a good squad. There were some tough teams.

As for the fall, my boy is playing tackle football for the first time this fall. He says he wants to play baseball too but I don't see how that will happen. It's just too much to balance everything and still handle business in school.

Also, the whole team is joining the Dynasty organization this fall up here in Kingwood. The whole team except for one kid came from Dynasty when we started this team last January due to some drama the team left en masse. But the guy who started all the drama was fired from Dynasty after this group left. This fall there's some kids like mine who are taking off the fall to from baseball to play other sports so the support of a big organization is key to keep a core group together. What that means for next spring I don't know.

Yep, select ball is full of drama.

We did both baseball and Extreme Flag last fall. It worked well because there were six kids from baseball and head coach was an assistant with football. So we worked baseball around football. Just one practice a week and one tournament a month. We all thought about tackle this coming fall but will end up doing Extreme one more year. Sounds like tackle is a bigger commitment time wise.

I've said before, I just want my kid to develop and have fun at this point. Have enough success that he loves the game. He's a big kid (about 5'4" 145#) and is gonna be a big man. I'm 6'3" and he's supposed to be 6'5". I want him to develop and have a sound base of fundamentals so that if he does end up 6'5" the physical tools intersects the skills. He loves pitching, hit 64 recently and can throw a legit change-up that runs in on righthanders and drops off the table when he throws it right.

My FIL lives up the road from that complex in Gulf Shores. I always hoped my son would be able to play there, but he never got the chance. Glad you guys got to experience it.

And agree with the above poster.....10U and 12U are the best.

We just finished an epic 9u season. We won two tournaments and lost in the finals three times. I thought the transition from coach pitch would be the hardest year and it was but not for the reasons I thought.

On Sunday our boys who are 9u AAA and our town's older boys who are 10u played in the championship games next to each other so I spent the entire day contrasting the two. Obviously the 10 year olds were a little bigger and faster and all of that, but the biggest difference seemed to be maturity. Our team still has a few boys that cry after striking out or making an error, bottle flip in the dugout, have to run to the bathroom, etc. Our older boys seem to be, for the most part, past that.

The transition to real baseball actually went pretty smooth. Our coach pitch pitcher threw the ball pretty hard so the adjustment to real pitching wasn't that big of a deal.

In our last game yesterday we faced a pitcher in 9u that threw 60mph. We have a pocket radar gun and clocked him several times. He was phenomenal. We scored twice against him and my son, who loves the 65mph cage, pulled him twice. But he was too much to overcome. My son told me in the car that he now knows what its like to face Aroldis Chapman.

We still have District and State(Texas Teenage) coming up in league ball.

Last, small town Select baseball, in conjunction with league ball, is a blast. All of the parents know each other and the boys go to the same couple of Elementary schools. We seem to have for the most part avoided most of the drama that I hear about from the Austin teams.

Good stuff.

It's fun to watch when the kids play to their potential, isn't it?

Also, I forget- are you the dude involved with the Banditos over in central Texas? One of the guys posting on here was but I forget who.

No that's not me.

I did see the Banditos are trying to move into Central Texas. Saw some tryouts for them

agsalaska said:

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No that's not me.

I did see the Banditos are trying to move into Central Texas. Saw some tryouts for them

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I found the guy- it's a poster with "Burnet" in his handle.

Anyway, congrats to y'all. We're shut down for the rest of the summer for playing baseball. The boys have some day camps, including one up at A&M, but as far as practicing and playing tournaments we're done until September. And even then my 10-year old might not be playing baseball this fall because he's playing tackle football for the first time. He says he wants to do both but I'm not sure how to make that work. That's a lot of time.

Youth baseball ends at 12u.

After that it's a bunch of individual kids trying to get noticed so they can get a 1/3 scholarship to a ****ty school and the rest of the team that's only there to pay the bills.

Four Seasons Landscaping said:

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Youth baseball ends at 12u.

After that it's a bunch of individual kids trying to get noticed so they can get a 1/3 scholarship to a ****ty school and the rest of the team that's only there to pay the bills.

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Feels like there's some anger there.

That's cool. Congrats man.

Not anger, there's just a dramatic shift from 12u to 13u, just about anybody who tells you otherwise is playing on a daddy ball team.

The "fun" part of baseball as a kid is over and the grinding to get to the next level is the new priority.

Four Seasons Landscaping said:

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Not anger, there's just a dramatic shift from 12u to 13u, just about anybody who tells you otherwise is playing on a daddy ball team.

The "fun" part of baseball as a kid is over and the grinding to get to the next level is the new priority.

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I gotcha.

And I can see that. That's kind of the second big shift I see. First going from coach-pitch to kid-pitch and then about when kids start really hitting puberty full-bore and lots of kids who were studs from 9-12 start getting passed up because they just matured early and we're physically better or the kids who were really fundamentally skilled but they're gonna top out at 5'6" while the kids who are gonna be bigger start to grow into their bodies.

What about running speed? My boy in pic above has string arm, can hit well and field...plays catcher, 3B and pitcher.

He's below average running....looks like Babe Ruth running. Is there hope that he will get faster as he grows? I'm 6'3" and my wife is 5'7"

Quito said:

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What about running speed? My boy in pic above has string arm, can hit well and field...plays catcher, 3B and pitcher.

He's below average running....looks like Babe Ruth running. Is there hope that he will get faster as he grows? I'm 6'3" and my wife is 5'7"

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Definitely important.

I'm 6'3" the Mrs. is 5'8" and our older one is predicted to be 6'5" while the younger one (he's 6) is slated for 6'4". Anyway, the 10-year old is fast for his size but he's not quick yet. He really has to get going and stretch out of low gear. Before I blew out my knees I could run- at 6'3" 260# I was laser timed at 4.81 in the 40 at the A&M football camp, but from about 10-13 I was slow as hell. It wasn't until I hit puberty and really started to gain the muscle mass that the quickness and speed showed up. I expect it will be the same with my boys and it might be the same with yours, although y'all look to be a bit more slender of frame than me and mine - I played OL at Rice (8 knee surgeries ago) and the Mrs. could have played volleyball at Abilene Christian but chose to just be a student at A&M.

agsalaska said:

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No that's not me.

I did see the Banditos are trying to move into Central Texas. Saw some tryouts for them

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More like trying to move back. I think they were here but maybe had some shake up after one of the coaches got busted with a hooker.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2016/06/30/coach-of-top-select-baseball-team-arrested-in-prostitution-sting-while-overseeing-waco-tournament/

docb said:

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agsalaska said:

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No that's not me.

I did see the Banditos are trying to move into Central Texas. Saw some tryouts for them

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More like trying to move back. I think they were here but maybe had some shake up after one of the coaches got busted with a hooker.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2016/06/30/coach-of-top-select-baseball-team-arrested-in-prostitution-sting-while-overseeing-waco-tournament/

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Not just "a coach" but "THE COACH." DeLeon founded the Banditos and I think he's always been based in their main HQ in Tomball.

Wow. I remember that story but it was long before my son started.

Serious question, does somebody on the team have a connection to the news station? That's really cool a kid got highlighted like that, news hardly ever pays attention until they get to Waco and play on ESPN/LHN.

That video was awesome. I would like that dad. They were sitting over the right field fence on the back of their trucks pounding down beers.


Our small town teams play well in the league and in select tournaments. But the league stuff is by far the most fun for everyone involved. Every kid twelve and under, at least in smaller towns, miss out if they don't play league. I dont care who they are.



We spent tonight watching our other town's teams play in District, and we don't even play until tomorrow. Big week coming up for my 9 year old.

That's pretty freaking awesome.

Quick question for the tourney parents here. Who are y'all using for uniforms, just someone local or does anyone have a recommendation. Our team is out of Tyler.

Several manufacturers have travelling reps. Richardson, comes to mind 1st as we used them for hats 1 yr. But there is bound to be a sporting goods store in Tyler that has a catalog of some of the options. Might check the HS program & see who they use.

AggieGunslinger said:

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Quick question for the tourney parents here. Who are y'all using for uniforms, just someone local or does anyone have a recommendation. Our team is out of Tyler.

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We used a local shop and they were OK but a friend's 12U team went through this Triton company and I don't know what they spent but their uniforms are really slick.

https://www.teamtriton.com/custom-baseball-jerseys.html

You can see pics on the teams IG feed: https://www.instagram.com/kingwoodexpressbaseball/

TC thanks for the recommendation, in 5 years of getting baseball uniforms and all-star uniforms plus 3 years of soccer uniforms I have never had a single order be on time or correct the first time with our local shop.

In previous years I used ShirtandLogos.com out of Wisconsin for slowpitch softball teams and had great success but we are looking for a more classic style of uni for this 11u team.