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Zigzag3141
24 Posts |
 Posted - 02/22/2018 : 11:22:58
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We have rising 6th graders on our 11u team a few our players have tried out (and made) their Middle School teams.
For the players I've heard from on our team, it seems like it seems like the Middle school plays a condensed season of only 9 games in March. Also, looks like the middle school team plays just regular 'open' travel events (not in a league restricted to school teams only).
What do you guys know about Middle school baseball teams?
If high schools play only other high schools, why don't middle school do the same? Realize that most high schools have a team and play games in district, whereas most Middle schools do not have teams. There must be some means to get middle school teams playing together however.
Do you think it would be possible to form a middle-school-only baseball league in North GA?
I'm still not entirely sure how the middle school teams work, so please welcome any input here: Do school teams need to be coached by a teacher/PE Coach? Do the kids get PE credit for this in middle school?
What have been your general experience with middle school teams? Seems like an opportunity to have younger kids exposed to a higher level of play but maybe not as much advantage for older kids over their reg summer travel teams?
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CaCO3Girl
1989 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2018 : 13:20:15
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What do I know about middle school teams:
1. Age 10-13 has the greatest risk of arm injury. This is doubled when a kid pitches for both travel and MS team. I've seen at least 10 kids go down with elbow issues due to that.
2. Many counties don't bother with middle school teams, but if they do they are called feeder programs and are usually run by a dad.
3. Never heard of a decent middle school team. They really truly have nothing to do with the high school team, and the travel ball season has way better training and games.
4. Diamond size and weight of bat could vary. I've heard of middle school teams playing on 60x90 fields and swinging BBCOR. It can be a bad thing if on Wednesday a kids got that then on Saturday they are on 50x70 field then back again. |
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ultimatesports10
135 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2018 : 13:24:22
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So my sons team has two middle school teams.
Team A - 8th grade + several 7th graders that play more of an inline Region schedule that follow the high school region.
Team B - 6th grade that play only two to three other schools and last year played them like three time each.
Both are like 9-10 game schedules. The A team does play in the NAML league which does have a championship at end of season for I think the top four teams.
It does seem to be a bit lesser on the compition bar, however there are try-outs and there are cuts.....
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Hurricane
351 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2018 : 15:51:28
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| I am not a fan of Middle School teams but I was not a fan of Basketball or Football Middle School or Junior Programs either but then started to think they were onto something. 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders playing with the same group they will play HS basketball and football with. I know some move and transfer but it was a pretty good program I thought. Not sure teams have the field space to do it in baseball but maybe a rec park would let them use their facility. What would probably happen is most Travel Teams would not start until around the state playoffs or a few weeks before that. I guess coaching would be an issue unless you got the HS coaches involved but they have enough on their plate as it is. I remember the association penalizing teams if players were playing out of their zone or district just like the HS's do. Might get the players and parents excited about the HS programs. Heck they even did tournaments for basketball and football, played the championship games for basketball at Cobb Civic center that was pretty cool, even did allstars for standout players. I believe they did football similar. |
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SuperStar
257 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2018 : 16:23:24
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| It always seemed like you didn't hear of many players doing middle school ball. It was out there for many schools, but not many participated or at least it seemed that way. Maybe because the season is so short and not many games. There is so much baseball now to choose from compared to 25 years ago, that it all coincides with the other baseball seasons. |
Edited by - SuperStar on 02/22/2018 17:10:03 |
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morrsco
55 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2018 : 08:15:20
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Middle School Baseball falls into two separate categories. Private School and Public School.
Private Schools play in regional leagues together. The same coaches are normally involved in both the high school and middle school teams. Practices are 3-4 days a week on the school's one baseball field (60x90). Teams normally play 12-16 games in a season. If the team qualifies, they can also play in a end of year tournament held by the private school associations. Usually the teams will have a mix of legit travel ball kids and rec players.
Public Schools normally don't play in a league. These teams scrimmages against other middle schools (both public and private) and play in ordinary travel ball tournaments. The High School coach may appoint an assistant coach or a dad to run the feeder team. The competitiveness of these teams can vary widely depending on how long the feeder team has been around and how involved the high school coaches are. I believe the majority of these teams play a limited amount of tournaments. Practices are usually held at the high school on either the baseball or softball field. The popularity of public school feeder teams comes and goes over the years. |
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baseball713
60 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2018 : 15:52:59
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| Our private school has a middle school team for 6th to 8th grader. They participate in the Metro 10 league. They practice on the softball field and have their own coach so no conflict with JV and V baseball. They play on 54 x 80 field, swings -5, only plays Tue and Thu and practices from 3:30 to 5 PM every weekday they are not playing. So not a lot of conflict with travel ball. Just be very careful if your son pitches for both middle school and travel team. I told my 7th grader to tell his middle school coach that he doesn't pitch. |
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SamQuick
75 Posts |
Posted - 02/25/2018 : 11:25:16
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We are fortunate in the other northern corner of the state to have middle school baseball. My son's school team is part of the overall program. They have two teams of middle school players: All of the 8th graders (11) are playing a HS C-team schedule. The 7th graders play other true middle school teams from our region. In each case, players can be pulled down from higher level teams for more work or to shore up a roster spot. All this is done to aid development of the program and culture.
Insofar as the comment about playing school and travel...our players are restricted: the coach has a rule that if he hears about one of the players pitching for a travel team during the season, they are off the team. As 6 of our travel players are on one or the other team, this has effectively killed our travel until April.
The middle school schedule of practice and games runs from mid-January until the end of March. One sure benefit of MS ball is the practice time...since it is every day after school for 2-3 hours. At least in our case it does since we are blessed with coaches. |
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CaCO3Girl
1989 Posts |
Posted - 02/25/2018 : 20:20:41
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quote:
Originally posted by SamQuick
We are fortunate in the other northern corner of the state to have middle school baseball. My son's school team is part of the overall program. They have two teams of middle school players: All of the 8th graders (11) are playing a HS C-team schedule. The 7th graders play other true middle school teams from our region. In each case, players can be pulled down from higher level teams for more work or to shore up a roster spot. All this is done to aid development of the program and culture.
Insofar as the comment about playing school and travel...our players are restricted: the coach has a rule that if he hears about one of the players pitching for a travel team during the season, they are off the team. As 6 of our travel players are on one or the other team, this has effectively killed our travel until April.
The middle school schedule of practice and games runs from mid-January until the end of March. One sure benefit of MS ball is the practice time...since it is every day after school for 2-3 hours. At least in our case it does since we are blessed with coaches.
I don’t get this. Everyone has to make their own decisions but unless you are seeing a better quality of playing on your middle school team I would skip it in favor of travel ball. Technically High School baseball trumps travel ball but no 15u and up travel ball starts until HS is over for that reason. |
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SamQuick
75 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2018 : 01:48:14
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quote:
Originally posted by CaCO3Girl
quote:
Originally posted by SamQuick
We are fortunate in the other northern corner of the state to have middle school baseball. My son's school team is part of the overall program. They have two teams of middle school players: All of the 8th graders (11) are playing a HS C-team schedule. The 7th graders play other true middle school teams from our region. In each case, players can be pulled down from higher level teams for more work or to shore up a roster spot. All this is done to aid development of the program and culture.
Insofar as the comment about playing school and travel...our players are restricted: the coach has a rule that if he hears about one of the players pitching for a travel team during the season, they are off the team. As 6 of our travel players are on one or the other team, this has effectively killed our travel until April.
The middle school schedule of practice and games runs from mid-January until the end of March. One sure benefit of MS ball is the practice time...since it is every day after school for 2-3 hours. At least in our case it does since we are blessed with coaches.
I don’t get this. Everyone has to make their own decisions but unless you are seeing a better quality of playing on your middle school team I would skip it in favor of travel ball. Technically High School baseball trumps travel ball but no 15u and up travel ball starts until HS is over for that reason.
It's not all about who you play...even though, as 8th graders playing HS sub varsity, these kids have a pretty tough 13 games (Buford, Archer, Oconee, etc.) There is a lot to be said for being "in the program." It is also a benefit to be able to practice inside and out under the direction of our coaches. I imagine that our situation here is probably very different than most other middle school programs - we have a real baseball guy.
We will miss 2 or 3 tournaments in March depending on the weather and start traveling the first weekend in April. Until then, we have 6 kids here, 2 on another MS team, 1 on a different one, 1 on a fourth, and 2 that are stuck in Oconee which has no MS ball. Every one of these guys are having fun with their school friends, making their bones in their school programs and getting good work in. When all is said and done, we will still go to 10-12 tournaments.
In further response to the OP, we moved here before my kid got to 6th grade. The team he was on there (Sequoyah in Cherokee) did not have a true MS team - they had a feeder system - basically a travel team with certain rules, support, and oversight from the local HS. One of the kids on our travel team here is in a school where the football coach also coaches baseball. I get mixed reports from that situation. Many places are handled differently. If your kid goes to a school where baseball is a priority, the MS will reflect that.
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Edited by - SamQuick on 02/26/2018 08:17:53 |
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SuperStar
257 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2018 : 09:31:04
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| I think depending on what area your kid lives in, decides what middle school or travel ball team he will play on. If you have many competitive travel ball teams in your area, then I see no need to play middle school ball. And I definitely would not "double dip" at this young age with their arms developing. But, if you don't, then certainly I could see playing for middle school. There is plenty of time to play "school ball" when they get to high school. Most folks go to where the competitive travel ball is at if their area does not have it. |
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CaCO3Girl
1989 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2018 : 12:31:07
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quote:
Originally posted by SamQuick
quote:
Originally posted by CaCO3Girl
quote:
Originally posted by SamQuick
We are fortunate in the other northern corner of the state to have middle school baseball. My son's school team is part of the overall program. They have two teams of middle school players: All of the 8th graders (11) are playing a HS C-team schedule. The 7th graders play other true middle school teams from our region. In each case, players can be pulled down from higher level teams for more work or to shore up a roster spot. All this is done to aid development of the program and culture.
Insofar as the comment about playing school and travel...our players are restricted: the coach has a rule that if he hears about one of the players pitching for a travel team during the season, they are off the team. As 6 of our travel players are on one or the other team, this has effectively killed our travel until April.
The middle school schedule of practice and games runs from mid-January until the end of March. One sure benefit of MS ball is the practice time...since it is every day after school for 2-3 hours. At least in our case it does since we are blessed with coaches.
I don’t get this. Everyone has to make their own decisions but unless you are seeing a better quality of playing on your middle school team I would skip it in favor of travel ball. Technically High School baseball trumps travel ball but no 15u and up travel ball starts until HS is over for that reason.
It's not all about who you play...even though, as 8th graders playing HS sub varsity, these kids have a pretty tough 13 games (Buford, Archer, Oconee, etc.) There is a lot to be said for being "in the program." It is also a benefit to be able to practice inside and out under the direction of our coaches. I imagine that our situation here is probably very different than most other middle school programs - we have a real baseball guy.
We will miss 2 or 3 tournaments in March depending on the weather and start traveling the first weekend in April. Until then, we have 6 kids here, 2 on another MS team, 1 on a different one, 1 on a fourth, and 2 that are stuck in Oconee which has no MS ball. Every one of these guys are having fun with their school friends, making their bones in their school programs and getting good work in. When all is said and done, we will still go to 10-12 tournaments.
In further response to the OP, we moved here before my kid got to 6th grade. The team he was on there (Sequoyah in Cherokee) did not have a true MS team - they had a feeder system - basically a travel team with certain rules, support, and oversight from the local HS. One of the kids on our travel team here is in a school where the football coach also coaches baseball. I get mixed reports from that situation. Many places are handled differently. If your kid goes to a school where baseball is a priority, the MS will reflect that.
Sam, as nice as I can say this, you drank the kool-aid. If it’s a real program it doesn’t matter if you play on the feeder team, take lessons with the coach, play at the facility the coach coaches at...those are all borderline myths that apply to the bottom of the barrel. It’s possible if the last spot on the high school team is between a kid that played middle school ball and one that didn’t, then the nod will go to the middle school player, but he isn’t likely to play. But if your kid can play ball it won’t matter come high school if he was on the middle school team, it only matters if he can ball. |
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SamQuick
75 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2018 : 20:56:22
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quote:
Originally posted by CaCO3Girl
Sam, as nice as I can say this, you drank the kool-aid. If it’s a real program it doesn’t matter if you play on the feeder team, take lessons with the coach, play at the facility the coach coaches at...those are all borderline myths that apply to the bottom of the barrel. It’s possible if the last spot on the high school team is between a kid that played middle school ball and one that didn’t, then the nod will go to the middle school player, but he isn’t likely to play. But if your kid can play ball it won’t matter come high school if he was on the middle school team, it only matters if he can ball.
I'm going to say this as nice as I can in an effort to pass the moderator: I don't know how you form your opinion based on anything I wrote. Did you actually read it?
<cut, snip, cut)
I am not sure why you wanted to turn this thread where the OP asked about general observations into a "nice as I can be"attack...but, thanks. You worry about your child, this one is mine. |
Edited by - SamQuick on 02/28/2018 22:15:45 |
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CaCO3Girl
1989 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2018 : 09:16:06
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| It got past the moderator because Stan knows it’s true. Playing for middle school has no bearing on high school. Sometimes playing both middle school and travel ball can hurt a kid so they can’t play high school. |
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Hurricane
351 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2018 : 11:05:30
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I do know we had a player that played for a pretty good HS in cobb that the head Varsity coach almost demanded the kids play on the MS team. If you did not play in 7th or 8th but chose travel, a good bit would not make JV because of it. Same coach also lost a Varsity player that was draftable because he didn't want him going to his pitching coach during the HS season, they had him all messed up. Kid left the HS, Senior year.
Kid is doing fine now at a D-1 School. |
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turntwo
955 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2018 : 11:11:56
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quote:
Originally posted by SamQuick
quote:
Originally posted by CaCO3Girl
Sam, as nice as I can say this, you drank the kool-aid. If it’s a real program it doesn’t matter if you play on the feeder team, take lessons with the coach, play at the facility the coach coaches at...those are all borderline myths that apply to the bottom of the barrel. It’s possible if the last spot on the high school team is between a kid that played middle school ball and one that didn’t, then the nod will go to the middle school player, but he isn’t likely to play. But if your kid can play ball it won’t matter come high school if he was on the middle school team, it only matters if he can ball.
I'm going to say this as nice as I can in an effort to pass the moderator: I don't know how you form your opinion based on anything I wrote. Did you actually read it?
<cut, snip, cut)
I am not sure why you wanted to turn this thread where the OP asked about general observations into a "nice as I can be"attack...but, thanks. You worry about your child, this one is mine.
My response didn't make it past moderator... Let's just say, that some think they are omniscient.
On the other hand, like EVERYTHING in life, trying to paint with too broad of a brush, never works. What's ones' experience may not be another persons. Neither 100% right or wrong. Just different. But EVERYONE sure has an opinion. |
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SamQuick
75 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2018 : 02:06:22
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quote:
Originally posted by CaCO3Girl
It got past the moderator because Stan knows it’s true. Playing for middle school has no bearing on high school. Sometimes playing both middle school and travel ball can hurt a kid so they can’t play high school.
Your drivel got past the mod because you weren't overtly offensive. That is what moderators do. They aren't guardians of truth and error. Mine made it past the moderator because I censored myself.
I clearly said that they are not playing travel and school ball. I also clearly implied that none of the kids on my child's travel team who are playing for their respective school teams are worried about making a high school team....even though 9 of them will be going to high schools with teams currently in the top ten of their respective classifications in last week's GA dugout preview. The kids like to have fun with different friends sometimes.
"When baseball is no longer fun, it is no longer a game." Joe DiMaggio |
Edited by - SamQuick on 03/07/2018 09:34:34 |
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CaCO3Girl
1989 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2018 : 07:23:19
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quote:
Originally posted by SamQuick
quote:
Originally posted by CaCO3Girl
It got past the moderator because Stan knows it’s true. Playing for middle school has no bearing on high school. Sometimes playing both middle school and travel ball can hurt a kid so they can’t play high school.
Your drivel got past the mod because you weren't overtly offensive. That is what moderators do. They aren't guardians of truth and error. Mine made it past the moderator because I censored myself.
I clearly said that they are not playing travel and school ball. I also clearly implied that none of the kids on my child's travel team who are playing for their respective school teams are worried about making a high school team....even though 9 of them will be going to high schools with teams currently in the top ten of their respective classifications in last week's GA dugout preview. The kids like to have fun with different friends sometimes.
"When baseball is no longer fun, it is no longer a game." Joe DiMaggio
"When you come to a fork in the road, TAKE IT!" - Yogi Berra |
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Middle School teams
