YouTube video by Alex Swenson analyzing pros and cons of travel (travel ball) baseball for youth players pursuing college recruiting. Covers issues including limited college-coach exposure at tournaments, costs/time/travel, variable coaching quality and overuse risks, plus positives like game experience, higher competition, and potential networking when organizations have connections; concludes with alternative recruiting strategies (camps, showcases, targeted school outreach).
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We're going to be talking about travel ball today. Is it a waste of time or is it worth it? The bad and the good. There's definitely some pain points in travel ball that you'll probably hear me explain and you'll probably relate to. Like, oh, man. And there are some good things about travel ball you just got to see. Is it worth those things? Are you maximizing travel ball for what you're doing it for? We're going to talk about that. And if you. Alex, you're new to my channel. My name is Alex Swinson. I'm a former Division I college baseball coach, scout and recruiter. And now what I do is help baseball players and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and put them in the best possible position to play at the next level. So if you have any questions, please comment down below. And if you get anything from this video, please like down below and subscribe to my channel whether you're watching on YouTube or you're on the podcast as well. Before we get into today, let's take a look at our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Element, which I am pumped about because I've been using them the past two years. Absolutely love them. It's good timing as well because we are in the dead of summer, which means you or your son or your daughter or all of you are sweating a lot at games, at practices, working out. And the main electrolyte loss when we sweat a lot is sodium. We can actually lose up to 7 grams daily. And if we do not replace our electrolytes or sodium, we can have muscle cramps, we can have fatigue, and we can lose performance, which obviously we do not want when we are on the field or we are working out. This is where Element comes in to prevent poor performance, to prevent fatigue, to prevent muscle cramping, all of that stuff. So what is Element? Element is a tasty electrolyte drink with, with everything you need and nothing that you don't. Super, super healthy here. But dozens of professional teams are using it now. Dozens of athletes are on subscriptions as well. And today got a special offer. So try Element today, risk free with a no questions asked refund policy and a special offer. If you use the link down below in the description, you can claim a free element sample pack, eight flavors when you order. So try it today. All right, let's talk about the cons, the bad of travel ball. Now, are there good organizations out there? Are there good coaches out there? Absolutely. All right. The problem is travel ball has gotten so big, and there are so many travel ball organizations and teams out there and organizations themselves have gotten so big with so many players, which I'm going to talk about here in a minute. And then all of that floods down to tournaments, where these tournaments are massive and huge and has hundreds of teams. And it makes it really difficult for the athlete and the parents to go through this college recruiting process and get the correct exposure. And it actually makes it really, really hard for the college coach as well, because there are so many teams and there are so many games. All right, this is where it comes to my number one con. It is not the best way to get exposure through this college recruiting process. College coaches miss 90% of travel ball games. All right? And the thing is, you're. You probably know this if you're going through it right now, our travel. Our college coaches at your games are super recognizable. Right. They have a hat on or a bucket hat on, a briefcase or a backpack, and they're writing notes down. A radar gun. That's a college scout. Okay. Are they at your games? For the most of us, okay. They're not at our games. For the majority of them, maybe every. Every blue moon, they're there. Okay. And are there some organizations that do a relatively good job with college coaches getting there? Yes. Okay. But the problem with this is you don't know who's going to show up. You don't know which college coaches are going to be there, which college coaches are not going to be there. It's really, really difficult. So that is my number one con. Number two is the time is the cost and is the travel. Is that worth it for you? Especially for going through this for recruiting purposes. And we're trying to maximize the exposure, which most travel ball organizations don't do a good job with exposure, because again, just how big the industry has gotten now, is it worth the time and the money and the cost? You have to answer that. All right. And then there's coaching travel ball for a lot of these organizations. Again, not all, because there's good coaches out there, lost coaching. It's just throwing players out on the field. And they got to figure it out. These players are still young and have a lot of to learn. So there's bad coaching. All right? This is a con. Bad coaching and bad development. And you're going to know if you are in an organization or on a team that has good coaching or bad coaching, but that has become a major con. Talking to these college coaches, what I do on a weekly basis, getting players they're like, these players are not getting coached. We actually have to teach them when they get to college, like the super fundamentals that they should know when they get to school. Okay. Also, connections a con. A lot of travel organizations actually don't have any connections. Are there some out there? Yes, absolutely. There are some organizations out there. But if you don't have any connections, it's really, really. It's already super hard to get college coaches out to watch you play. And if you don't have any, nobody's going to be out there playing time. All right. Some of these organizations, some of the teams have way too many players. So you're not getting a lot of playing time or the reverse. Especially for pitchers. You're throwing way too much. I've actually have a guy in my program that I'm helping with and working way through with his organization because he's throwing way too much. He's going to certain camps that college coaches want to see him at and he's just. He's throwing too much where he's not going to be able to throw. So you got to keep your eye on how much you're throwing because we do need to protect the arm. And then the organization that just briefly mentioned this is the conversation of how big they have gotten in the sense of teams. And you really just become a number. And as far as playing time and how many kids are actually on the team, you want something to where it's a healthy balance of the players where everybody can play, but it's not so many that a lot of players are sitting or not playing much. All right, that is the cons. Let's get into the good. So there is good with travel ball. Okay. I know I just crushed travel ball right there of the bad, but there is definitely good. All right. The number one is you're playing games. Okay? You are playing games. We do need to play the game to get better, and it's way better. This is a good thing that there are good college or good travel ball coaches out there. And hopefully you're on a team with a good coach that actually develops you and works on your skills in the game and the IQ of the game. The there is definitely good ones out there and I hope that you can find one. It's just becoming harder and harder. All right. The competition. Competition for travel ball is typically better. All right. It's typically better. Again, it's starting to become a little bit more difficult because of how many travel ball organizations there are. But you have elite teams. All right. The top teams. That's good competition there. So that is good development. If you have a good coach, you can develop at the high school level that age you. And if you don't have a good coach, you have to be a really good self awareness, self evaluator of yourself of how to improve. And that can be hard. That can be hard as we go through this development. But there is good development out there. And then connections. You can have travel balls that have good connections and that can hopefully get college coaches out to watch you play. But those, that is kind of a list of the bad and the good. And if you are relating way, way more to the bad, all right, and you're getting way, way more of the bad, you need to think about, is it worth it? Is it worth all the time and the money and the energy going through this? And there's better ways to go through this college recruiting process. Whether you have somebody help me like me or going to camps, going to showcases, finding schools that are recruiting your position, all right? Having an open mind of all the schools and all the levels, that is really, really important. And if you have any questions, please reach out to me or comment down below and I'll see you in the next video. Take care.
