What rules Houston now? 10u and below

Cru said:

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What rules Houston now? 10u and below

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PG rules Houston from at least 14U down.

There's a good amount of V-Tool and PBR for HS summer ball though and those get a lot of scouts.

For reference my experience is 8u-12u AA and AAA with a pinch of majors

I am going to sound a bit like a broken record, but my biggest complaint about PG is player safety. And PG would tell you that's on the coaches and there is some truth to that. But PG is the one that sets it up. There is absolutely no way to safely play out an 18-20 team tournament in two days with one declared 'winner'. It is just not possible. And the problem is everyone knows that yet they do it anyway.

No ten year old should play four games in one day. Period.
No twelve year old should play til ten at night, come back for an eight am game, then sit til 2:30 and play again.
They do a decent job with limiting pitches. But they don't have any involvement on what the player does before or after. That is on the coaches sure, but the pressure to do that is often from the schedule.

They should never have more then 8 teams in a Sunday bracket and the breaks should be one game max. \
They should make at least 11 players a requirement to play.

They dont do any of that because of parents. Not kids. Kids, as in 7-12 year olds, don't care about brackets. They just want to play. You know I had a boy who as late as 10u, maybe even 11u, that would ask me if they won or not. His uncle played in Omaha and MLB and the kid is a phenomenal player.

Last, the response from a PG defender would be scheduling issues, umpire issues, field availabilty, etc will not allow them to do those things. So the answer, instead of limiting entries, building more fields, hiring more umpires(different conversation alltogether) is to sacrifice player safety. Makes sense.

This is really last- I get that coaches and orgs can navigate those waters safely(for the most part) and a lot of them do. But good organizations don't structurally allow for dangerous conditions in the first place. PG does. I'm guessing USSSA does in some places as well but we have played in probably 30 USSSA events in five seasons and I have never seen more than 8 in our brackets.

If I was operating a tournament with 20 teams I would divide it into two ten team brackets completely seperate from each other(got to buy more rings) on Saturday. . Run two ten team tournaments side by side.

Let the top 8 in each bracket play for separate championships. Let the bottom two in each bracket make a four team consolation bracket. That way you avoid any situation where you have two even three game breaks and never play four games. Combine that with an 11 or 12 player requirement and a LOT of the problems with PG would be fixed.

Not a PG defender but in the Houston area quite literally all the good teams play PG. Allegedly, the top guy in the area, Darren Larson, who was the USSSA director before PG hired him away in the fall of 2020 put the arm on all the top orgs and basically told them that if they didn't bail on USSSA and follow to the PG tournaments he was running he would make sure their HS-age teams wouldn't get invites to the various showcase tournaments. He also reportedly comped the tourney fees for a handful of the top teams for a while to get them to come over and have the teams chasing them follow.

USSSA tournaments here before the PG takeover were run the same way because it was the same director and same team of people. The only reason the USSSA tournaments here now are better run in terms of what you're talking about is because they have less interest from teams. The biggest thing that USSSA has here now is their Sunday DH league in the fall but that only goes to 13U. V-Tool has a Sunday DH league in the fall too but they only had 6 14U teams.

I wish V-Tool would get better interest from good teams here. They have the best grass fields in Houston that aren't at a HS or college campus (both UH and Rice are turf now), best trained umpires, and the Rothwood facility has the best concessions. Plus, they don't charge a gate fee or care if you bring in coolers. And the V-Tool tournament design is 2 games Saturday, 2 games Sunday, and then the top two teams play for the championship. You get a 4 game guarantee (vs. 3 with PG or USSSA) and the game times are set 100% in advance.

PG generally does a good job in setting up multiple brackets if there are more than 10 teams in a tournament. However, they consistently jack with locations. Like you could sign up for a tournament at Baseball USA and get sent to Sealy to play or sign up at Premier and get sent to the RAC which is out in Waller. I will say though that as my oldest has moved up to the big-boy field the fields and mounds have gotten better. Both Premier and BBUSA host a lot of HS tournaments and showcases plus Premier will have a summer collegiate league and those groups won't tolerate **** fields/mounds.

You won't find more than 8 in USSSA brackets in Houston either...because that's about how many teams play USSSA. I wish it wasn't that way, but any decent team is playing PG in Houston.

Bassmaster said:

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You won't find more than 8 in USSSA brackets in Houston either...because that's about how many teams play USSSA. I wish it wasn't that way, but any decent team is playing PG in Houston.

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And from what I've usually seen, if there's more than 8-10 teams signed up PG will usually have multiple brackets and if they need to have 10-12 teams in one bracket they'll give the top few seeds a bye. With 10 it will usually be 1 & 2 with a bye and with 12 it's 1-4 seeds.

There is a lot to complain about with PG, but how they do their brackets is not one of them IMO. We've been in tournaments with 4 separate brackets before in the larger tournaments.

Also, PG has done a great job marketing itself. Everywhere I go, I see kids wearing PG hats, shirts, hoodies, etc. I don't know why the brand is so popular, but it is. I've literally never seen a kid wearing any USSSA, VTool, etc. gear.

That May all be true in Houston but not in Austin. We had two different 14 team brackets last year.

The Waco area and CS still get AAA level competition in USSSA. And Houston has scrapyards which also gets AAA teams.

Franklin is where it's at anyway.

Again this is younger age groups.

I feel like this is getting off the rails, my fault, and I want to get back to the season and the kids' successes. . I don't want to turn this into a ***** session about Select baseball which is where I was taking it. Like I said we have a lot of fun playing PG as well when we do it. I think Jbob got our point.

I am moving on from that.

We have field cleanup this coming Sunday. Hopefully now that our boys are 12 there will be more rake pushing and less grabass going on. We will see. It's not in too bad of shape but getting those weeds out of the dirt is tedious.

Texas Premier League, in Franklin, is optimal. DH on Saturday/ Sunday and then go home. Schedules are all predetermined, Normally out, on Sunday, by no later than 6:00. No waiting for a Sunday Championship game to start at 8:00...... after playing 3 games

The last several years (no experience from summer of 2023) V-Tool was really good for HS aged kids.

Chris98 said:

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Texas Premier League, in Franklin, is optimal. DH on Saturday/ Sunday and then go home. Schedules are all predetermined, Normally out, on Sunday, by no later than 6:00. No waiting for a Sunday Championship game to start at 8:00...... after playing 3 games

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That's how V-Tool runs their tournaments for 14U and younger. I don't know how they do their HS tournaments.

And I can't find a single HS-age tournament in Texas this summer for USSSA. It could be user error though in using their search function which works about as well as the one on this site.

For HS age kids PG is competing with V-Tool and PBR (Prep Baseball Report). There's a ton of teams at the HS ages and once you hit 15U there's no more AA, AAA, Major- you just play whoever shows up.

1st tourney tomorrow!

PhatMack19 said:

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1st tourney tomorrow!

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Good luck.

Neither of my boys' teams play until the weekend of 2/24-25.

agsalaska said:

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For reference my experience is 8u-12u AA and AAA with a pinch of majors

I am going to sound a bit like a broken record, but my biggest complaint about PG is player safety. And PG would tell you that's on the coaches and there is some truth to that. But PG is the one that sets it up. There is absolutely no way to safely play out an 18-20 team tournament in two days with one declared 'winner'. It is just not possible. And the problem is everyone knows that yet they do it anyway.

No ten year old should play four games in one day. Period.
No twelve year old should play til ten at night, come back for an eight am game, then sit til 2:30 and play again.
They do a decent job with limiting pitches. But they don't have any involvement on what the player does before or after. That is on the coaches sure, but the pressure to do that is often from the schedule.

They should never have more then 8 teams in a Sunday bracket and the breaks should be one game max. \
They should make at least 11 players a requirement to play.

They dont do any of that because of parents. Not kids. Kids, as in 7-12 year olds, don't care about brackets. They just want to play. You know I had a boy who as late as 10u, maybe even 11u, that would ask me if they won or not. His uncle played in Omaha and MLB and the kid is a phenomenal player.

Last, the response from a PG defender would be scheduling issues, umpire issues, field availabilty, etc will not allow them to do those things. So the answer, instead of limiting entries, building more fields, hiring more umpires(different conversation alltogether) is to sacrifice player safety. Makes sense.

This is really last- I get that coaches and orgs can navigate those waters safely(for the most part) and a lot of them do. But good organizations don't structurally allow for dangerous conditions in the first place. PG does. I'm guessing USSSA does in some places as well but we have played in probably 30 USSSA events in five seasons and I have never seen more than 8 in our brackets.

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Nels used to run massive USSSA tournaments under Walk-Off. You might be a year or two behind to have really experienced this, before he moved to PG. Anyway, PG does a much better job protecting these kids than USSSA ever did.

The 7 and 1/2 inning (or maybe it was 6 and 1/2?) pitching rule can really eat up 9u and 10u pitchers. You could pull up GC and see pitchers who were legal to throw, but well over 100+ pitches for the weekend. Again, it's on the coaches, but USSSA allows these coaches to really ride their best pitchers.

I am glad to hear your son is doing better.

USSSA is 8 innings per weekend. Younger kids can easily throw 40-50 pitches an inning.

PG is 100 pitches for the younger kids with a 75(or 85) max daily limit. PG has much stricter pitching rules.

Our first tourney is this weekend. We just started practice last week, so I will take it slow the first few tourneys. I only carry 10 players, but they all will pitch this weekend. I doubt I will throw anyone more than 40-50 pitches.

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I am glad to hear your son is doing better.

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Appreciate that. He takes a big step forward in his rehab today adding longer throws.

I do remember the switch. It affected Austin too but we were still coach pitch so it didn't really matter yet. I think it happened when we were 8u, maybe even 7u.

Saturday was rough. It was wet and I guess my kids are scared of water. We played about as bad as we possibly could getting outscored 22- 2, and got the last seed.

Sunday was a new day. Played really good baseball getting to the championship against a team that beat us 14-1 the day before. We led most of the game. One of the best hitters in Houston came up with 1st base open. Right when I said I'm going to walk him, my pitcher threw a pitch that he hit about 280' for a 3 run bomb. We lost 5-4. I need to be quicker next time.

A lot to work on and build on. Should be a fun season.

Welp, following a stellar weekend behind the plate, pitching a few gem-innings during pool play, and seeing the ball at the plate better than ever, my 11U son complained of elbow pain last night at practice. Kudos to our coaches for shutting him down immediately. He 'only' threw 36 pitches in his limited pitching, but caught the remainder of the tourney.

What is the consensus on length of time for a "throwing hiatus?"

C.C. Bay Ag said:

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Welp, following a stellar weekend behind the plate, pitching a few gem-innings during pool play, and seeing the ball at the plate better than ever, my 11U son complained of elbow pain last night at practice. Kudos to our coaches for shutting him down immediately. He 'only' threw 36 pitches in his limited pitching, but caught the remainder of the tourney.

What is the consensus on length of time for a "throwing hiatus?"

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I don't think there's a consensus but if he's got elbow pain I'd get him to an ortho ASAP to get some imaging done. Hopefully it's nothing more than a little inflammation but don't mess around with arm pain. It's one thing if the kid is sore in the biceps, triceps, and lats because that's usually related to fatigue and just takes a couple days of rest to workout the soreness (think of it like having dead legs after lifting heavy weights) but if it's in the elbow or shoulder then that's usually something else.

C.C. Bay Ag said:

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Welp, following a stellar weekend behind the plate, pitching a few gem-innings during pool play, and seeing the ball at the plate better than ever, my 11U son complained of elbow pain last night at practice. Kudos to our coaches for shutting him down immediately. He 'only' threw 36 pitches in his limited pitching, but caught the remainder of the tourney.

What is the consensus on length of time for a "throwing hiatus?"

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He needs to see a children ortho immediately. Before he does anything. Period. Full stop. No question.

Elbows should not hurt. That is not normal and not something they 'work through' like, say, tendinitis or sore muscles.

If he has little league elbow he is possibly done for the season. My son missed seven months and is still recovering and will only play one game a day this season. It is a very serious injury that if not treated properly will have lasting consequences. In fact we had a sophomore at our high school quit baseball alltogether during tryouts because he was 'tired of his elbow hurting.' He was going to make Varsity and possibly start in the OF.


I would not give your coach too many kudos. Throwing 36 pitches and catching the rest, assuming you played four games, is insane. No 11 year old child should be subject to that much pressure on their arms. The MLB considers two throws from the catcher to be the equivalent to one pitch. So do the math. If I was you I would have a serious, one way conversation with your coach.

I have a thread on here about my son's journey and recovery with little league elbow. He was 11 when it happened. I highly suggest you read this.

https://texags.com/forums/53/topics/3440211/replies/66939373

Please let us know how he is. I am on somewhat of a mission in life right now to prevent these types of injuries.

It was "only" three total games this weekend, but, yes, I agree with the sentiment. They sat him one game on Sunday.

Looking to move from 8u Rec to 8u travel softball. What's the best way to make this happen for those more experienced? Go to a bunch of tryouts & open practices?

Fair.

Anyway if the pain s in his elbow specifically he really needs to see an orthopedic doctor. If it is little league elbow and he catches it early enough and treats it properly he may be able to come back this season. But he will not catch or pitch.

Hopefully it is not. It is actually fairly easy to diagnose if you know what to look for. My doctor told me what it was over the phone before I even brought him in..

Trust me, you want to get ahead of it.

Farmer1906 said:

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Looking to move from 8u Rec to 8u travel softball. What's the best way to make this happen for those more experienced? Go to a bunch of tryouts & open practices?

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I can't say for sure about softball but that's probably a good idea. Check out different teams/orgs to see what is a fit.

Also, with all the **** you hear about how crazy travel baseball can get it's about 100x worse with softball from what I can see knowing folks who have daughters who play.

One of stranger things I've seen on the youth fields.

14U kid down about 4 runs in last inning of final game. They finally pull their ace with 2 outs and two men on. The reliever looked pretty good warming up, About half way through the warm-up, a foul ball from another field files over and hits him in the head!

He was hit pretty hard so couldn't pitch. The next kid they brought threw maybe one strike in during his warm ups. They still ended up winning by 1, but the foul ball knocking out the relief pitcher during warm ups was a new one for me.

Panama Red said:

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One of stranger things I've seen on the youth fields.

14U kid down about 4 runs in last inning of final game. They finally pull their ace with 2 outs and two men on. The reliever looked pretty good warming up, About half way through the warm-up, a foul ball from another field files over and hits him in the head!

He was hit pretty hard so couldn't pitch. The next kid they brought threw maybe one strike in during his warm ups. They still ended up winning by 1, but the foul ball knocking out the relief pitcher during warm ups was a new one for me.

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That's pretty wild. I've never seen that myself. But, with the way a lot of fields are laid out I think it's more surprising that it doesn't happen more often. Not necessarily hitting a kid in the head, just getting hit period whether it's a coach or player.

TarponChaser said:

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Panama Red said:

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One of stranger things I've seen on the youth fields.

14U kid down about 4 runs in last inning of final game. They finally pull their ace with 2 outs and two men on. The reliever looked pretty good warming up, About half way through the warm-up, a foul ball from another field files over and hits him in the head!

He was hit pretty hard so couldn't pitch. The next kid they brought threw maybe one strike in during his warm ups. They still ended up winning by 1, but the foul ball knocking out the relief pitcher during warm ups was a new one for me.

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That's pretty wild. I've never seen that myself. But, with the way a lot of fields are laid out I think it's more surprising that it doesn't happen more often. Not necessarily hitting a kid in the head, just getting hit period whether it's a coach or player.

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A year or so ago, something similar happened to the team my son played on. We were at Field of Dreams in Dripping Springs, which is very tight and zero awnings. The game just started and our lead off hitter was just getting into the box when he caught a foul ball (from another field) off his hand/fingers. He had to leave the game because he couldn't regrip the bat with how swollen his hand was.

Ha. Tarpon and I actually met in person there last year. That is hands down without a doubt the worst place to get stuck at. Cannot stand going to Dripping Springs.

agsalaska said:

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Ha. Tarpon and I actually met in person there last year. That is hands down without a doubt the worst place to get stuck at. Cannot stand going to Dripping Springs.

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The drive sucks and the complex isn't the most fun for the adults. However, there are two great things: First, I have never seen a tournament rained out at FOD and the turf, fields, netting, etc. are very well maintained. Second, it never is a bad thing when you can eat at Hill Country Pizzeria. This is the best burger I have experienced:

BACON SUPREME CHEESEBURGER
Two slices of American cheese and 4 strips of crispy bacon with bacon aioli, jalapeno jelly, red onion, pickles, tomato, and mixed lettuce.

Nothing is ever going to change the miserable drive, but there are a few things they could do to make the complex a little better. They should remove the rocks and lay complete sidewalks inside the complex. Then all they need to do is add some type of canopy around the fields and it would be a much better experience.

It's probably different depending on where you are based, but we did this last summer in the Houston area. Find the Facebook group for your area. Open practices will be posted. Go to as many as you can until you find someplace that feels right. You might go to a tournament or two and watch the teams you are considering play. This information is always on Facebook, or in GameChanger. There are some really good coaches in the 8U division, and then …. If you are in Houston, I'd be happy to discuss.

Yea it's the drive that gets me. By the time I'm there I'm already pissed off.

Not to mention the actual limestone outfield walls. Can't believe they can get insurance with that.

C.C. Bay Ag said:

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Welp, following a stellar weekend behind the plate, pitching a few gem-innings during pool play, and seeing the ball at the plate better than ever, my 11U son complained of elbow pain last night at practice. Kudos to our coaches for shutting him down immediately. He 'only' threw 36 pitches in his limited pitching, but caught the remainder of the tourney.

What is the consensus on length of time for a "throwing hiatus?"

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How is your son?