Learn About Travel Baseball

Clubhouse Gas Casey: We talked a little bit over the winner and now as we get in to baseball about the travel ball phenomenon. Today we explore it with the travel ball coach. He’s been coaching for a long time. We’re going to talk about what are some of the positives of travel baseball so stay tune to Clubhouse Gas. We’re fortunate to be joined by Rich Novak who is the owner of the Sports— but also Travel baseball coach now what for 5 years. Rich: That’s correct we’re about to start our 5th season. Casey: What about talk about some of the benefits, you know there’s a lot that goes in to plan, travel baseball, you know there’s an investment on the parent’s part, there’s a time of investment on the kids part. How does it pay off for a kid to play Travel Baseball? Rich: Travel Baseball is typically the highest level of baseball around. In Roswell for example, we’ve got 3 levels, we’ve got the red league which is the back bone of the program a select league for kids 9 through 12 and then travel ball which Roswell starts at age 10 another park start earlier. Now if a Roswell starts at age 10. Travel Baseball is really for the kid that is more competitive, can play at the higher level and wants to get better and wants to play more. Doesn’t want to play 15 to 20 games a year, doesn’t you know they want to play 40/50 maybe even more 60 games a year. Those are the kids that when they stick with it as they keep playing travel baseball is because they like the game, because it’s commitment for the kids, there’s no question about it as I said but those are the kids that are most likely and I’m not going to say always, most likely they’re going to be more ready when it comes to going out for their high school team because they’ll have consistently played at a higher level as prior to entering into high school. Casey: Now how do you guys do it, you said you have 3 different divisions are there evaluation process for all the kids and then they’re divided based on their skill level or is it a separate registration for each individual thing? Rich: It’s a separate registration for each individual program where parents and kids are deciding where they want to play, where they are most comfortable playing so for example my Travel Baseball team each year we’ve had an open tryout. This past year we had 24 kids signed up we made a decision years past we’ve kept anywhere form 11 to 13 this year we kept 16 hits. People who want to play Travel Ball, they sign up they tryout. If they make the team great, if they don’t make the team then they have a decision to make to why want to drop down and play a direct league. Do they want to tryout for a travel team elsewhere are one of the things that I have been pretty good at doing is helping parents that want to still play travel baseball signed up with other teams in the area that may still be looking for kids after our tryout is done. Casey: Now, is there a governing body over is there a certain league that you guys play with as far as you travel ball or is it just kind of go find somebody to play and get in the tournament? Rich: Well there is some of both, our team plays in Northwest Baseball and Stan Louis who’s based in Cherokee is the guy that really runs Northwest Baseball and he does a tremendous job and he simply does it for the love of the kids and the love of the game. In our age group at 14 on this year, we’re going to have close to 30 teams. Some of the other age groups have less. Our Travel teams can decide at what level they want to play. You can play at the major level the triple A level or the double A level just depending on how much you want to play and how competitive your travel ball team is going to be. Casey: Now do you find that your kids play in other leagues while you’re playing travel ball? Rich: No, one of the things that we say to our kids is that if you’re going to play travel ball in our team and my team is by no means you need here is that you’re going to play for our team and that’s pretty much it. Now we have some kids who attend a private school on a team and they play for that private school as well but our team tends to be the priority when it comes to where there’s a conflict. However, I don’t want to ever be the bad guy. I always want kids to be able to play with their friends too and so we’ve never really had an issue working through this conflict. Casey: How did you deal with rest and pitching are you able to keep up with what’s going on, on both teams? Rich: Absolutely, we absolutely keep up with golf, with what’s going on at both teams and that really comes from information that we get from the parents. I’m asking the parents, it’s not just pitching because we have some kids who catch that are also pitchers and I don’t want a kid catching a game on a Wednesday pitching a game on a Thursday. And last thing I need to do, you know most travel coaches are going fall on is we don’t the coach the greatest 13, 14-year-olds of all time. Casey: Right. Rich: We want our kids able to play for years to come. Casey: So I’m a dad I’ve got a 13-year-old kid who I think is special and has got a lot of ability and I can’t decide if I wanted to play travel ball or if I’m just going to put him in a normal reg league team. What’s your sales pitch to me to convince me to you know what that kid in order to maximize his potential needs to play travel ball? Rich: Correct, what I’m going to tell you what I think most travel coaches are going to tell you because I’m going to speak for everybody but the guys I know that I have been coaching with for years what I think most travel coaches are going to say to you is this. Is that at a certain age, if you want you’re child to advance, not just competitively but from a skills perspective and those skills are going to come from coaching, those skills are going to come from practice time with better players and gain time against better teams. If you want your kid to advance and you’re kid wants to advance then you need to step up and play travel baseball because you need to see that more competitive level of baseball otherwise other kids will simply move by and where you’re going to see that is in not necessarily in fielding and throwing but in pitching and in hitting. So if you’re just playing reg league and you’ve never seen a kid who can throw a cut fastball, that just runs at your hip and breaks in to the middle of the play and he goes out for his high school tryout and he sees that and bails. The high school coach is going to say, “Well does he have the kind of skills to play for me or not when a kid who has seen that before and understands pitch count, situations, who’s on, how many outs knows how to keep his weight back and react to that kind of pitch that individual is just going to have more of a step up because their going to have experience. Casey: And doing my research about Travel Ball, I found a couple where parents talking about the closeness the family that becomes that team. Rich: Correct. Casey: Or the parents being together all the time, the kids being together all the time do you see that in your case. Rich: Well there’s no question about it. I have had this group of kids, special group of kids since age 10 which is when we started and of the 16 kids in our team now 6 of them were with us back when we started 5 years ago. Most of the kids on the team this year were on the team last year and most were on the year before, and yeah the parents get very close. You know we go out after games together. We eat together, we drink together because you’re going to be with each other at the ball field for the better part of 6 months. Casey: Well Rich thank you so much we really appreciate it Buddy, good luck for the season. Rich: Thank you. Casey: That’s going to do it for us today we’ll see you right back here for another edition of Clubhouse Gas.