Coaching and Youth Sports

Hardest hit he’s taken. After a shot and teams get chippy when they are down. Left Memphis vs CBHS and Collierville total goals 23-5.
Collierville campus one of the nicest public HS campuses I’ve seen. Sprawling campus. 500k scoreboard on a new football field. Indoor practice facility, arena, soccer, baseball, softball and utility field.

 

That'ss one you get to remind him about the rest of his life.

 

First baseball practice tonight, he got drafted by the retired high school baseball coach that is borderline crazy. We practice 6 days a week until the season starts and he's openly said he doesn't care if one or two kids quit.

They're 9 and 10

 

six days a week at 9/10 yr old? Seems crazy to me.

 

A very competitive travel ball organization I presume? Otherwise that is the most intense Babe Ruth/Cal Ripken Rec Little League I've ever ever heard of.

HS was the only time I can ever remember actually practicing 6 days a week leading up to a season. Loved baseball to death, but lord I use to hate the entire month of February because that meant you were outside in the freezing cold 6 days a week until the sun set practicing baseball. Few things are worse than playing baseball in the cold.

 

i know a guy who does this. it's dumb. there is absolute diminishing returns going into negative very quickly. in other news my first two baseball games have been rained out this spring.

 

Not feeling it at that age. Kids got enough to deal with. Ruining a sport for them at that age sucks. Didn’t use to happen as often.

 

Groves is this travel ball? Since you said your son was drafted I'm assuming this is some type of rec league and not travel.

If it is travel, that's just part of the deal. If it's a rec league though, maybe things have changed but that seems insane to me. I can't imagine parents accepting that if the rest of the league is practicing 1 or 2 times per week.

 

Nope

 

It's rec league, he's a retired high school baseball coach. He's been doing it 20 years, he's very serious. My son threw two kids out against his team last year

 

I went 3 day a week preseason and sometimes thought it was too much. Geez.

 

6 days a week for rec 9/10 year old is wild. At least they will get plenty of hacks in

 

I kind of get it, it's the first year of kid pitch for a lot of them but damn. Rain got us today

 

I gotcha. Sounds fun though. Worst places you could be at than a baseball field with your kid and his buds. First year of kid pitch is a fun rite of passage along the youth baseball journey. Once everyone gets over the mental hurdle of overcoming any fear of stepping into the batters box and getting hit by the pitcher, the games starts to become really fun.

 

Man first year kid pitch can be a long season. Seems most our games kids batted twice and 80% were walks.

 

same and that is with 10 and 11 year olds.

 

It's all about having kids on your team that can actually throw strikes consistently during the first year or two of kid pitch. By 11u/12u it's game on. I played within the Middle TN Travel circuit my entire childhood all the way through HS for a big WilCo school. HS was certainly fun and memorable. But HS first and foremost was incredibly serious and demanded lot of work of and dedication. Was a year round commitment. Obviously any competitor wants to win everything naturally, however winning truly mattered in HS. Wilco public HS district is no joke for baseball. My team had to worry about trying to get folks like Mookie Betts, Tony Kemp and Bryan Reynolds out while attempting to hit off of future CY Young winners and SEC All Americans like Robbie Ray and Bryan Reynolds.

The 111u/12u travel summers though were heaven on Earth for a kid who loved baseball and was fairly decent at the sport like I was. Everyone could hit homers and knew how to play the game of baseball by that point. 9u/10u is all about learning how to play actual baseball and serves as a fork in the road for many kids with the sport. Those who make it to the 11u/12u travel grind are the ones who go on to take baseball seriously and typically will go on to play through HS at the very least.

 

Thoughts on the team that plays there aside, when a professional team says they are interested in hosting the state football championships and the people in charge of awarding it automatically approve another city, it's a laughable state of affairs.

 

T$$AA

They make a pretty a lot of money selling the hosting site for the championships

 

my boys are pretty much year round baseball now. I've always advocated playing different sports, but even at 10 you feel they are being left behind if they don't play in the summer and fall. I don't do it because they are going to go further than HS ball, but I want them to have a positive experience and unless you are uniquely talented the year round kids will smoke you if you just show up in the spring. Thankfully my kids like baseball more than other sports anyway.