2022 Youth & HS baseball check in (softball too)

59,480 Views | 531 Replies | Last: 1 yr ago by aggielax48
Jbob04
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We play one of y'all's Belton teams tonight on 8u. Belton Hooks
agsalaska
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It sure if this picture does it justice, but there are about 150-160 people on this field alone. Love it.




agsalaska
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Jbob04 said:

We play one of y'all's Belton teams tonight on 8u. Belton Hooks


Those boys are players.

Good luck and have fun. My son spent most of the day taking about their run in 8u State. If they are not having the time of their lives someone is doing something wrong.
Bassmaster
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BurnetAggie99 said:

We won today the 10U Majors PG Invitational National Championship out in Sanford FL with our Banditos 10U Majors.
Awesome, congrats! We know a couple of kids on that team.

Don't take this the wrong way, because I don't ask to take anything away from that accomplishment. Just a point of discussion and something I always wonder when I see it. I noticed that there are several kids playing below their grade level on that team. I understand the rules allow it. My question is what is the typical age where those kids make the jump back to their grade level? I get that they compete at a national level and it is probably pretty common in those circles. I know one of the kids who used to play on the 2029 Scorpions major team in the past, so I was surprised to see him on your roster. That Scorpions team doesn't compete on a national level, but a high level nonetheless. Kid was a stud for that particular team, he was always a handful for us when we would play them.
Quito
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I'm always curious about this as well. My son is Dec 2011 birthday and played 10U major this year. Majority of our team are May - Aug birthdays. We played sone teams that were really big…Millard NE pretty much every kid was bigger than our biggest kid.

Seems gane is all about size fir 10U-15U.
Lonestar_Ag09
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My son is always the smallest on his team, and usually the smallest on the field...doesn't help that he plays "up" our league the age is determined by May 1st...his birthday is May 15...I never intended to play him up but his first season was a fall season and they didn't offer 5u so I played him in 6u and didn't feel the need to move him down the following Spring

Edit to add, I too look at the kids on his teams and other teams and wonder if they're playing down somehow. Most that I have found are just gifted size wise and have really late birthdays so they maximize their age.
Quito
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Is a May birthday playing with his grade level considered "playing up", or is May birthday playing with grade below him considered playing "down"

For instance, we have 2 Mat birthdays that played on our 10U team. One was in 5th grade and one in 4th grade.
Lonestar_Ag09
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I would say it depends on what the 10u age cut off date is...The two leagues we have played on the date was always May 1, but it seems a lot of travel stuff is Aug 1
Quito
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I believe USSSA and PG is May 1, but schools in Kansas and most other states is Sept 1.

I believe LL is Aug 1. I theorize that folks don't play LL because they use Aug 1.
Lonestar_Ag09
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Quito said:

I believe USSSA and PG is May 1, but schools in Kansas and most other states is Sept 1.

I believe LL is Aug 1. I theorize that folks don't play LL because they use Aug 1.
Doesn't LL combine multiple age groups anyways though?
Quito
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Not sure. I live in Kansas City and there's pretty much no LL up here.

I grew up in Dallas and remember playing LL and our team was good every other year.
3B Paul 97
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My son is May 15th, but he plays "up" to stay with his grade (14u now going to 15U in the Fall). While he is always the smallest on the team, he hold his own and it pushes him to be better. Always a personal choice for folks.

These are the kids he will be competing against to make a high school team, so perfect he see how he stacks up.
Lonestar_Ag09
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3B Paul 97 said:

My son is May 15th, but he plays "up" to stay with his grade (14u now going to 15U in the Fall). While he is always the smallest on the team, he hold his own and it pushes him to be better. Always a personal choice for folks.

These are the kids he will be competing against to make a high school team, so perfect he see how he stacks up.
Agreed, the 4 oldest on our team are a grade ahead but nothing extreme. We do have one kid playing way up on our team to play with his brother. He came out to practices a few times a couple years ago and I saw him throwing on the side with his dad (better than multiple of my players) so the next practice we had a few out and I offered him to field grounders with us. At the end of the season I told his dad if he was interested he could play up and the parents loved the idea. He is small like my son obviously but he has better fundamentals than his brother even who is the oldest of the team.
Bassmaster
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Technically, playing an age above where you are eligible to play is playing up, but I just look at the grade level. If you are playing above your grade, you are playing up, if you are playing below your grade, you are playing down. When I see kids playing down a grade level, my assumption used to be that they are summer birthdays and their parents started them in school as soon as they turned five. I came to learn that that is very naive and that "grade exceptions" are a thing in select baseball. Grade exceptions exist for valid reasons, but they are taken advantage of all the time, which is sad.

As far as little league goes, they go by 9/1. That is not why people don't play it though, people don't play it because their rules are terrible.
TarponChaser
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PG & USSSA age cut off is April 30/May 1. PONY and LL are August 31/September 1.

PG used to be more liberal with "grade exceptions" where if a kid was 11U by age but in 4th grade they could play down to 10U. I know there was a team in Houston, the Brewers that when they were in 10U majors a couple years ago had like 9 of 11 on their roster who were 11U by age but down in 4th grade so they played 10U and were really good.

PG changed that a year or so ago. Now a team can only have like 3 grade exceptions and they cannot be born before January 1st. Take my previous 10U example- it used to be that you could have been born anywhere in the 11U age group and still play 10U if you were in 4th grade. With the change, if you were 11U by age and in 4th you could only play 10U if born 1/1 or later. It gets confusing without visual aids.

Both of my boys are summer birthdays.

My older boy is headed into 7th but doesn't turn 12 until next week on 7/21. So he's one of the youngest kids in his grade. Perhaps we should have held him back but we didn't and it's too late now. He's a straight-A student and pretty responsible if a bit naive and innocent compared to many of his classmates. But he's also pretty huge, even among kids in his grade who are a year older- he's almost 5'7" and about 140#. He played age level until this spring where we made the decision to skip 11U and jump from 10U to 12U to play on grade level. And it was the right call, even if he struggled at times this year. In terms of hitting he definitely struggled when facing more mature kids who were throwing 74-78 consistently from 50'. But he'll be better off in the long run and when they go to the bigger field in 13U things slow down. And facing bigger, more mature kids made him a better pitcher- instead of being able to blow his fastball (he's hitting 67 right now and consistently 63-65) past kids he had to learn to locate better, change speeds, and develop a curveball. He hasn't hit puberty yet but it's coming and his velocity will ramp up more as will his power. And I went on Google Earth and measured the nuke he hit in Omaha a couple weeks ago and it was damn near 300' as an 11-year old. That's insane to me.

He could play down on age level and be dominant but I'd rather him be middle of the pack now and have to work his ass off to earn PT because it will pay dividends when he's in HS and hopefully grows to the 6'4"-6'5" that the doctors predict.

There are 2 kids on his current team who are headed into 8th grade and have birthdays in May that just turned 13. There is one other summer birthday who was held back but most are right in the average birthdays for the class year.

Same deal for our younger son. He'll be 8 on 8/25 but will be in 3rd grade. He was actually 4 for his first couple weeks of kindergarten. He probably would have benefited more from being held back but he's doing really well in school and is a big kid. Not as big as our older one was at the same age and is predicted to be 6'3" but is more naturally athletic than his big brother.

He's playing age-level baseball right now but we'll do the same to put him on grade level when he's older. Probably skip 11U to go from 10U to 12U when it gets here.
TarponChaser
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<Broken up into 2 posts because they're long>

Something I've noticed is that the parents get less crazy as the kids get older. When they're little every parent seems to think their kid is the next Mike Trout and is gonna get signed because of all their 10U rings. By 12/13U a sense of reality starts to kick in and they're just hoping to make the HS team.

When kids start hitting puberty in 12U there's a whole lot of kids who mature early and basically top out by 14. Others keep growing and working and top out later. Going to bigger fields and maturing at different times really equalizes things.

Frankly, you see it a lot with these teams who are almost exclusively Mexican kids. They're typically studs young but mature early and by 13/14U are passed up because they top out at 5'8". Some do keep growing but it's a pretty ubiquitous observation.

I say we're playing the long game. Because while I want my boys to have enough success that they have fun and see rewards for their hard work so that they keep doing that hard work we're not worried about rings these days. The goal is to be an athlete, work hard, love the game (other games too), and keep growing so that when they're 16-17, have hit puberty (and grown), and are on the big field that their work ethic and development in mindset and fundamentals intersect with being big, strong, fast athletes. If things go right, with their projected size they're both going to be "first off the bus" kind of guys with the older one definitely having the potential to throw in the 90's in HS.

In fact, my older one got 2nd in a tournament a few weeks ago. On the drive home I could tell he was kind of pissed off so I asked him what was wrong. He told me he was mad they lost. I mentioned that they still got a ring and he replied "I don't care about the rings, I just want to win." I was pretty proud of that mentality.

Overall, I want them to control what they can control- attitude, effort, and intensity. I also want them to understand that failure is inevitable. Especially in baseball where the best hitters in the game fail 7 out of 10 times. And they will make mistakes but if they give their absolute best in what they can control then they have the physical tools that they will be able to succeed enough to forget about their mistakes and failures.

IMHO, focus on those things and your boys and mine will be successful not just in sports but in life.
BurnetAggie99
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Bassmaster said:

BurnetAggie99 said:

We won today the 10U Majors PG Invitational National Championship out in Sanford FL with our Banditos 10U Majors.
Awesome, congrats! We know a couple of kids on that team.

Don't take this the wrong way, because I don't ask to take anything away from that accomplishment. Just a point of discussion and something I always wonder when I see it. I noticed that there are several kids playing below their grade level on that team. I understand the rules allow it. My question is what is the typical age where those kids make the jump back to their grade level? I get that they compete at a national level and it is probably pretty common in those circles. I know one of the kids who used to play on the 2029 Scorpions major team in the past, so I was surprised to see him on your roster. That Scorpions team doesn't compete on a national level, but a high level nonetheless. Kid was a stud for that particular team, he was always a handful for us when we would play them.
Typically our kids play their respective grade level. We do in some cases like for certain national tournaments like this one add kids that have late birthdays that can play down on case by case deal.
Lonestar_Ag09
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So when ya really need it, ignore the ones who brought ya and bring in the ringer
Jbob04
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That Belton hooks 8u team is the real deal. We fought them hard and made them work for it but they had some serious talent on there. They should win state I would think based off what I've seen so far in the tournament.
agsalaska
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We, for mostly better but occasionally for worse, take our baseball very seriously.

Our best tball team lost to Temple last night 10-1 in 4 innings. In tball. 4 innings. 10-1.




Our second best team, the Rebels, play Temple tomorrow night at Crossroads. The Rebels are our other legacy team with half those boys the younger brothers of our 10u AAA and 13u majors team. My son was a Rebel.

Im guessing there will be 400 people there. It's going to be totally F'ing awesome.

Go all of the six year olds!!!



On a side note, I coach a fall ball team and two of my fall ball boys are significant players on this Rebels team. And four other boys on that team have older brothers on my son's Select team. And, AND!!, I have coached boys and brothers on the Temple team.

I am going to watch as a proud coach/parent tomorrow. Cannot wait. It will be a highlight of the summer.
Jbob04
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That's good stuff. We have a 6u team in that tball tournament as well. They won their first game and are playing tonight.
agsalaska
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3B Paul 97
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TarponChaser said:

<Broken up into 2 posts because they're long>

Something I've noticed is that the parents get less crazy as the kids get older. When they're little every parent seems to think their kid is the next Mike Trout and is gonna get signed because of all their 10U rings. By 12/13U a sense of reality starts to kick in and they're just hoping to make the HS team.

When kids start hitting puberty in 12U there's a whole lot of kids who mature early and basically top out by 14. Others keep growing and working and top out later. Going to bigger fields and maturing at different times really equalizes things.

Frankly, you see it a lot with these teams who are almost exclusively Mexican kids. They're typically studs young but mature early and by 13/14U are passed up because they top out at 5'8". Some do keep growing but it's a pretty ubiquitous observation.

I say we're playing the long game. Because while I want my boys to have enough success that they have fun and see rewards for their hard work so that they keep doing that hard work we're not worried about rings these days. The goal is to be an athlete, work hard, love the game (other games too), and keep growing so that when they're 16-17, have hit puberty (and grown), and are on the big field that their work ethic and development in mindset and fundamentals intersect with being big, strong, fast athletes. If things go right, with their projected size they're both going to be "first off the bus" kind of guys with the older one definitely having the potential to throw in the 90's in HS.

In fact, my older one got 2nd in a tournament a few weeks ago. On the drive home I could tell he was kind of pissed off so I asked him what was wrong. He told me he was mad they lost. I mentioned that they still got a ring and he replied "I don't care about the rings, I just want to win." I was pretty proud of that mentality.

Overall, I want them to control what they can control- attitude, effort, and intensity. I also want them to understand that failure is inevitable. Especially in baseball where the best hitters in the game fail 7 out of 10 times. And they will make mistakes but if they give their absolute best in what they can control then they have the physical tools that they will be able to succeed enough to forget about their mistakes and failures.

IMHO, focus on those things and your boys and mine will be successful not just in sports but in life.

I agree with you. My son being the smallest has made him figure out how to succeed by having a better baseball IQ and fundamentals than his teammates. He is 4'11" and 80# playing 14u (fingers crossed puberty show up as starts high school in the fall) moving to 15u in the Fall. As he starts growing/filling out I think he can start getting past some of the guys getting by on early growth/size. He continues to start at SS on a AAA team by having a great glove, footwork and quick/accurate release. Coach has tried the other guys with bigger arms, but continues to fall back to the most consistent performer. I just hope he stays motivated and sticks when if he doesn't make the team freshman year.
Lonestar_Ag09
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One thing I'll give my son credit for is that he has a great arm. I'm pretty sure his arm is what got him on his ALl Star team. One two different occasions I heard the coach talking about his throwing and also heard his wife mention "oh yea I remember my husband mentioning the little one with the cannon for an arm"

I've never considered his arm overly strong while it was the strongest on our league team. But it does stand out at times. He actually got in trouble a few times for throwing all the way to the bases from the outfield instead of using the cut off…who was out of position. I taught him long ago throw it on a line to the base, if the cutoff is out of position that defeats the purpose anyways.
TarponChaser
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To be clear though, my soon-to-be-12-year old is pushing 5'7" and weighs about 140. At the beginning of the season he was about 5'5" and basically tied for 2nd tallest on the team behind the 5'10" kid who had already hit puberty. Then since about May, two of the taller kids turned 13 and got a growth spurt so they're now taller than him.

One of his coaches played small school college ball as a pitcher but hit 92 at about 5'9"-5'10" and that coach has 2 boys. The oldest just finished his freshman year of HS and is a really good ballplayer but is only about 5'5" right now. He might hit 5'7" but he knows his game- plays outstanding defense, slaps base hits, and runs like the wind.
agsalaska
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It's crazy what puberty does to the growth of these kids.

My daughter grew 4 inches in 14 months, then another inch in 6 months. She is 13 and went from 5'3 to 5'8 in the last 20 months. Weighs 140 pounds and has no body fat at all. Funny thing is she almost completely forgot how to run. She is suddenly as clumsy as a great dane puppy. Fortunately she plays goalie at a pretty high level and scares the **** out of the other team's forwards. She can make saves that most goalies won't even try for.

My 10 soon to be 11 year old son on the other hand has only grown about an inch/inch and a half in the same time frame and has gone from being one of the bigger kids to one of the shorter kids on his team. Hoping puberty will shoot him upwards.
aggielax48
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Circling back to the velocity discussion. I noticed that Perfect Game list class averages for stats like fast ball velocity. They list 61 mph for the 2028 class, which is generally 12U players. Since these stats are being generated at the select level and probably only at more top class events, 55 mph doesn't sound too far off. I actually would have thought the class average to be a bit higher.
TarponChaser
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FWIW- I've got to remember to start a new thread next month for fall ball as kids progress to the next age level beginning in August even if they don't really start playing again until September.
Quito
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Seems July is tough month of transition from team to team. Lots of drama, politics, hurt feelings, and pride.

We've stayed away from this in large, but clearly know it exists. It's really a shame these kids get out in middle of this.

From all I can tell, it's best to pick your team like you pick your church…where the best preacher (coach) is.
agsalaska
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Quito said:

Seems July is tough month of transition from team to team. Lots of drama, politics, hurt feelings, and pride.

We've stayed away from this in large, but clearly know it exists. It's really a shame these kids get out in middle of this.

From all I can tell, it's best to pick your team like you pick your church…where the best preacher (coach) is.
Looks like we were successful once again in keeping our team together. We had ten and lost two. One is an elite soccer player that is committing himself to soccer. He is the captain on a nationally ranked team. The other boy is stepping down to our friends' team which is AA. Good luck to both of them

We picked up three, two that were tired of driving all the way to Austin for practice and one that was a rec league kid that hammers the baseball. One of them is in my son's class, and has played rec or pickup with the other two.

So we have 11, six of whom have been together since t-ball, one since coach pitch, one at the start of 9u, and now these three.

Not having tryouts does limit us a little bit, but it also allows us to pick and choose parents which is just as if not more important than choosing kids. We are invite only for a reason.

Looking forward to 11u.
Quito
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" Not having tryouts does limit us a little bit, but it also allows us to pick and choose parents which is just as if not more important than choosing kids. We are invite only for a reason."

Parents/families are more important than I previously thought. We brought on 3 kids last year. They knew each other and all came from another team. They didn't have same commitment and were more into partying than baseball. The Moms had multiple drinks before and during almost every game….one even got thrown out of a game by yelling at umpires too much. It was an awful look and created a big divide on the team.

Thankfully this worked it's way out and they self eliminated at the end of the year. Kids were decent players, but we will be much better off moving forward.
agsalaska
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Parents are crucial. We have a certain culture as a team and want to maintain that. But parents who have kids that play for us have to understand that your kid is going to learn the outfield and have to compete to see the field. They will also sit the bench some if we plan on pitching them a lot.

Some parents don't like that. They want their son playing a certain position all the time or not sitting or whatever. That's fine just not for us.

We also have a very, very, very low tolerance for umpire abuse. Zero tolerance really. That right there eliminates a bunch of parents.

We also understand it's a game. Short story. My son played for the older team a couple of weeks ago in USSSA. Another 10u kid went with them and this boys parents approached me about joining us. Watched him play six games and he made the play of the day to get the last out to make the final. But, BUT, he made a crucial error in the final that cost us maybe the game, though we ended up losing by 5.

Anyway the dad was so upset with his son that instead of coming out to the field for the ring ceremony he went and sat in the car. That is ridiculous on a lot of levels. My son has made an error in a final before that cost us a game, and it was nothing but hugs and support from all the coaches and parents. In the end we decided not to invite him. Tough call but ..
BurnetAggie99
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agsalaska said:

Parents are crucial. We have a certain culture as a team and want to maintain that. But parents who have kids that play for us have to understand that your kid is going to learn the outfield and have to compete to see the field. They will also sit the bench some if we plan on pitching them a lot.

Some parents don't like that. They want their son playing a certain position all the time or not sitting or whatever. That's fine just not for us.

We also have a very, very, very low tolerance for umpire abuse. Zero tolerance really. That right there eliminates a bunch of parents.

We also understand it's a game. Short story. My son played for the older team a couple of weeks ago in USSSA. Another 10u kid went with them and this boys parents approached me about joining us. Watched him play six games and he made the play of the day to get the last out to make the final. But, BUT, he made a crucial error in the final that cost us maybe the game, though we ended up losing by 5.

Anyway the dad was so upset with his son that instead of coming out to the field for the ring ceremony he went and sat in the car. That is ridiculous on a lot of levels. My son has made an error in a final before that cost us a game, and it was nothing but hugs and support from all the coaches and parents. In the end we decided not to invite him. Tough call but ..
Good stuff and alot true insight that sometimes players and parents don't understand. One thing we do extra with the Banditos is we make both the players & parents sign each season a Code of Conduct agreement. So when some of the things happen like you listed we have that signed agreement.
TarponChaser
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My older son's coaches had to cut a kid at the end of the season when really they cut the parents. It's a shame too because he's a good kid and a good player but he's got really fcked up parents.

I won't get into all the stuff away from the team but at tournaments the parents would get completely bombed. The last tournament he was in for us the coaches were positioning him (he was our #1 CF) and the parents were constantly screaming for him to line up somewhere different. The coaches repeatedly had to tell them to be quiet but they kept doing it and their behavior was ongoing for a couple seasons. The coaches gave them this season to reform and they just didn't do it so they cut the parents and unfortunately the kid with them.
BurnetAggie99
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TarponChaser said:

My older son's coaches had to cut a kid at the end of the season when really they cut the parents. It's a shame too because he's a good kid and a good player but he's got really fcked up parents.

I won't get into all the stuff away from the team but at tournaments the parents would get completely bombed. The last tournament he was in for us the coaches were positioning him (he was our #1 CF) and the parents were constantly screaming for him to line up somewhere different. The coaches repeatedly had to tell them to be quiet but they kept doing it and their behavior was ongoing for a couple seasons. The coaches gave them this season to reform and they just didn't do it so they cut the parents and unfortunately the kid with them.
This happens all the time and it's a shame cause it's not on the player. We had it happen many times in my 15 plus years as Head Baseball Operations Bandito Director. This is why like I mentioned we started about 8 years ago having the players & parents sign a Code of Conduct agreement which is done for each season.
 
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