Hey UNC fan in KY..
- Thread starter IUfanBorden
- Start date
Had a team today from Bowling Green. Coach asked me before the game---" Can my pitcher wear a red glove"? I laughed. Tells me about a tournament they were in where they made his kid tale it off. I was lile, "ummmm, do you post on Rivals". He's like, "what"? So I told him my story.
Oh, and let him know that YES, your lid can wear a red glove.
I’m sure that was the same team. My son filled in last weekend for a team a lot of his friends play on. They’re always short on kids, so he plays a few tournaments a year with them.
Our regular team in based out of Nashville.
How’d they do this weekend?
They were in semi-finals. I only work 3 games a day. All morning games. Played well. Great coaches.
Ya they are. We’ve been thinking about joining them full time but for some reason half their team isn’t committed enough for us. Like I said, they’re always a few players short.
They have some talent, the really tall kid that plays 1st & their shortstop are really good. The shortstop is a really good pitcher.
Their SS threw yesterday. I was in the field. Jas a devastating curveball. Stout kid. First baseman [Stinson] is solid. Tall as **** though. Good team.
Edit: Had to add . Their 3rd baseman made some really nice plays as well.
Last edited:
Kid on 3rd, was he the one with the red glove? If so, he’s a fill in player. Really good kid. He played in the LLWS two years ago.
That's him. Made a helluva play. 2nd and 3rd, 2 outs. Makes a diving snag to his left. Saved 2 runs. Big play as score was 9 -4.
What are you planning on doing in clarksville this weekend? My son is a freshman there and it's where both my wife and I grew up. It's been 22 years, but I went to a small Christian school named Graceland a few miles from there.
I remember Graceland; It's Christian Academy now. Very familiar with Clarksville. I live about 25 minutes from there. No tournament this weekend. Think next one is Sept 8-9.
Sorry, I've heard you reference what you do, and I'm guessing you're a official, but not sure what sport?
Lmao....I've seen Borden in your name countless times, but never put it together with the city. Way over my head type moment lol
I officiate baseball and basketball. Some football.
Lol at the Borden, thingy. Played Clarksville all the time in HS.
@uncfan in ky
About to begin the travel adventure. Drew the short straw, so I'm going to be head coach of my son's 9u team. Any words of wisdom?
About to begin the travel adventure. Drew the short straw, so I'm going to be head coach of my son's 9u team. Any words of wisdom?
Find a good group of FAMILIES & have fun. At 9u, fundamentals are the most important thing. Not sure how serious you want to be as far as tournaments or the talent level of your team.
You want the tournaments hard enough to challenge your team but if you put them in over their head & they get beat real bad every tournament, kids will loose interest.
When my son 1st started playing ball. His coach had a parent meeting & said he’s never seen a college or MLB scout at a 9u tournament, so don’t take it like there’s one in stands.
Fundamentals, Fundamentals, Fundamentals, I cant stress it enough.
Have fun, the years will fly by.
No water breaks during practice.
For atleast the first week of practice don't allow them to use gloves while you hit ground balls at them. This will teach them to not be scared of the ball when they actually do have a glove on.
Needs to be atleast 15 minutes of sprints before and after every practice.
Make the players do 20 push-ups for every pop up they hit during batting practice.
No school allowed on gamedays.
No school for atleast 2 days before tournaments.
Do everything you can to make the worst player quit.
Since your the coach your son MUST be the pitcher and he MUST bat 3rd.
Also, don't be afraid to yell at the kids for making mistakes. You're there to teach them that there are winners and losers in life and that your job is to teach them to be winners.
And finally, ignore everything @uncfan in ky just said.
I will say I used to hit grounds to my son while he wore an oven mit. Teaches them to have soft hands fielding grounders.
And I agree with the running of sprints, especially for pitchers. Best way to prevent arm injuries is to have them run after they pitch & the next day. It gets the blood flowing & helps send nutrients throughout the body.
Do many little leaguers have arm injuries from pitching? I thought those came later on after they develop into men because of poor mechanics and being overused while too young. But I really don’t know.
Some do. Some will get what they call “little league elbow”. That is where the tendon in the elbow gets sore, right where the growth plate is. Little league does a great job with pitch counts.
Most travel tournaments use “innings pitched” for pitching limits for kids. My problem with that method, not ever inning is the same. You can have a 5 pitch inning or a 30 pitch innings & they both count as 1 inning pitched.
Pitch counts are the best way to go.
Travel baseball is pretty unavoidable at this point if you get your kid into little league, isn't it? There's still gotta be local leagues that only play seasonal baseball, right?
Little league & travel ball are totally separate. The reason most get into travel ball is for the competition. Little league can be really watered down & the better players tend to dominate the league.
If you live in a pretty big metro area, like say Dallas-Fort Worth, you can get away without having to actually travel much, right? Like they probably tend to have a lot more going on in the area than other smaller cities?
Not necessarily. We’ve played in big Perfect Game events in Georgia & Florida. There were teams from huge cities. Detroit, Seattle, Chicago,etc... once you get into the “elite” level of travel ball, which is Perfect Game, it gets real serious. We’ve even played teams from Cuba, Mexico & Canada.
What age group is that and how much baseball are those kids normally playing in a year?
Did the Cuban teams have 19 year olds posing as 12 year olds there?
Yep. The rec association in our town has seasonal league ball, but also puts together one travel team. While my kid could have made it, there is already a clique that kind of puts their kids first. So, we said fuggit, lets start our own. Ironic part is the rec league has tryouts, but I didn't have to, so I got to handpick my kids. It gave me a jump on the rec league team, as their tryouts haven't even happened yet. Sucks to do to em, but I wasn't going to wait until after their tryouts and take their scraps. F all that noise.
Anyway, the rec travel team played like 80 games last year at 8u and it pissed a lot of folks off. We are playing around 40. Everyone plays. Everyone bats. We'll only buckle down when it gets to bracket play. Double headers and pool play will give all the kids an opportunity at all positions they're interested in, which are ~75% of the games.
Everyone was pissed, even the assistant coaches. Said all they did was play and develop bad habits due to the lack of practice. This year there is a new coach, and they are cutting back to around 40, but it was too late. The word was out. I used it against em like K and Self and Cal used the scandal to tear down UNC during the recruiting period. Respect.
We started the elite travel ball last year for 13u. He played High School Ball last year so our season didn’t start till after Memorial Day weekend. We’ve probably had 8 tournaments since Memorial Day weekend.
That's not so bad. I swam competitively growing up so we had swim meets all over the state + surrounding states + eventually nationals once I got good enough in late high school. Probably swam in 2 national meets a year, 4 others outside of the state and then around 10-12 in state. This is excluding high school. I didn't get serious about it until I was like 14 though. I couldn't imagine playing in as many games as @829305 is talking about at an age that young.
Families are key, I agree. We have one mom that is questionable, but her son is a great kid, so we'll see. Also added dad as assistant to deal with her as needed. They're divorced, so better him than me.
Totally agree about the scout comment. Everyone needs to relax. Let kids be kids.
We played in that many games from 9u to 12u. It slows down some when they get older. He made the high school team as a 7th grader last year, so playing high school ball really stopped the traveling.
One of my son’s best friends is an outstanding ball player. Really good kid also.
His mom is a total bitch, she will only let him play SS or pitch. He’s a year younger than my son & in the last 5 years he’s been on 4 different teams.
They’re both in the 8th grade now & she’s talking about switching schools because in our high school he 100% will not play SS.
Holy shit. That's awesome! My 6-year old is a little baller, and he played up in baseball and basketball and crushed it. Such a good feeling as a dad, not gonna lie. My 8-year old is starting to come around, but he's nothing like his lil bro. All about having the want-to at that age. Tough thing to teach.
Thank you. He works his ass off. My dad is retired & played D1 baseball. He spends countless hours with him.
He was actually MVP of the freshman team. Started JV & got in some varsity games last year.
J-Bands do wonders building strength without lifting weights. He wears those things out.
Anything is better than the last one! He was more worried about people thinking that he was cool then anything else. Don't get me wrong, they haven't had much talent there in many years, so I'm not talking about wins and losses. But, when you see your daughter and her friends make the same basic mistakes like always going to the corners while trying to beat the press....its frustrating! Lol literally, for almost 2 whole seasons, instead of getting the ball towards the middle, or reversing the 2nd pass before they got trapped, he had the ball go towards the baseline BEFORE they crossed half court. So, they were constantly running into a 4 vs 1 when you include the sideline, half court line and a double team.
That's a hard enough situation for an experienced good player, but for someone who struggles with basic fundamentals, it's an embarrassing turnover just waiting to happen. Also, lol, if you're ever doing a game I'm at, I'll tell you about a very odd encounter that I had with him the first time we met in the bathroom of all places. Nothing crazy, but a very very odd comment that isn't expected between 2 men....especially when you don't know them lol.
I could see a ton of improvement. To be honest, I wouldn't work their games. It was just bad. Then a buddy of mine got the AD job. I already worked boys games, so he was like....Cmon, work some girls. So I did. First year. Was rough. But last year, there was a ton of improvement. We worked the game vs North Harrison. Clarksville was missing by far their best player; torn ACL. Had They had her, it wouldve been much closer. I mean NH still pounds them. But it would've been much more competitve.
I've got two games there this year as well.
I'm usually using the app and cant see pictures very well,but lm on website and finally saw your picture. If that's you, I think I remember you doing some of her games. It's been 2 years now, but if I remember correctly, you always did a very good job. I was hoping that you weren't a different one because I didn't care for him. Not so much that he was bad, but he's a big guy and he refused to actually run up and down the court. So, it always gave the impression that when a team pushed the ball up even remotely fast, he was making every call from out of position when he was the baseline ref.
