Some of us are in our 3rd year of travel ball, and some who have older kids may have even seen more seasons than that. I would like to share my personal perspective on being a travel baseball parent. Feel free to consider or ignore them as you will.
First, the best part about travel baseball in my opinion is the kids. I never cease to be amazed at how fond I grow of working with the boys throughout the season. By and large, these kids are hyper-responsible overachievers. They are likely to be very successful in life. Getting to know them is an absolute joy.
The next best part is working with the coaches and getting to know the other parents on the team. By and large, the parents of our kids are a great bunch of folks.
For some who may not have given much thought to their role as a parent in travel baseball, I would offer the following observations, in no particular order. These are lessons I learned over the years, sometimes because of mistakes I was making, personally. As I said before, feel free to consider or ignore as you will.
1. The most important thing to remember about our experience in travel baseball is that baseball is a game. Games are supposed to be fun. If it isn't fun, then there's no reason to be doing it. Baseball is, intrinsically, a very fun game. However, a huge component of whether our boys end the season thinking, "That was great! I can't wait to do it again!" or, "I'm not sure I really like baseball" is our behavior as adults.
2. Travel baseball is a very serious endeavor. However, our expectations should be realistic. We have a phenomenal coach and assistant coach on our team. The boys are in great hands. They are learning things that kids on other travel teams won't be exposed to until High School. So, baseball is "fun", but not in the sense that it is clowning around. It is fun in the sense of learning and improving a set of skills that allows you to continuously improve your mastery of the game.
There are those who believe that travel baseball should lead to a college scholarship, or who knows, maybe being drafted in the MLB draft. I will simply offer that my goal in having my son play is to get him to the level where he will be able to make his Freshman team in High School.
Anything beyond that will not come as a result of travel baseball. The kids who play beyond High School are a mix of exceptional talent and an off-season workout program that would put a Spartan to shame. That will, in my opinion, either come from a burning desire within the boy, or it won't. There is nothing that a coach, or even to a large degree a parent, can do to alter that equation.
Either your kid is wearing out his tee in the basement all Winter or he isn't. No amount of nagging is going to put a fire in the belly of a kid who doesn't have it. Instead, it is more likely to simply cause resentment. Kids can get burned out on baseball, and I've seen it start to happen as early as U10 ball.
That having been said, I think High School ball is a realistic goal for all of our boys. Even so, High School baseball is only something I am hoping for because I believe it will be fun for my boy. So, to come full circle to point #1, if High School baseball isn't fun, there's nothing about it, intrinsically, that makes it a must-do activity. If kids would rather play golf or lacrosse, join glee club, learn Spanish, whatever, that's absolutely fine, too.
Although I think most of us are on the same page here, I am making this point to emphasize that this is a game. Whether we chose to believe it or not, a scholarship is not on the line for most of our boys. In fact, if one of our boys ended up getting a scholarship to a Division I school, that would be one more than I would expect from any travel team.
The stakes in travel baseball are very, very low. There is very little potential upside beyond training our boys to be competent High School players. There is very little potential downside beyond teaching our boys to dislike baseball. Whether our boys learn to dislike baseball will depend, again, largely on our conduct as parents.
3. Your boy's enjoyment of the game will be influenced by your conduct as a parent, moreso than any other factor. In some extreme cases, a coach can be so awful that he can ruin the experience for the team. Coaches that bad are an exception. (And unfortunately, in the past, this team may have seen this exact scenario.)
However, the conduct of a parent can have a lasting impact on a child's impression of this experience. Unwittingly, we have the power to make this a real drag.
There is only one thing a parent can do to enhance this experience. I will elaborate more on that later. However, other than that, a parent has virtually no ability to enhance this experience for their kids. Seriously. Let that sink in for a moment. Other than one exception, there is nothing you can do to make travel baseball a better experience.
There are, however, many, many things you can do to make this experience worse.
4. A kid should have one coach. Perhaps the craziest thing I see from parents is that they will attempt to coach their kids at gametime. They'll be giving advice on how to approach the next pitch. They will give advice on technique. They are competing with the coach for the kid's attention. Meanwhile, the kid is waiting, trying to swing a cylindrical stick in an elliptical arc to try and hit a sphere that is moving at them in speeds in excess of 50 miles per hour.
If you want to be part of the coaching process, please, please come assist at practices. We can always use more adult involvement. However, at gametime, despite all our urges as parents, the best thing we can do is simply say nothing and let our kids have an at-bat.
Adults are seldom able to function if they have several people shouting directions at them while they attempt to do a difficult task. 10 year olds are no better at it. The more voices a kid is hearing, the more likely they will have a bad AB.
If a kid needs guidance, coach Tre is right at 3rd base to tell them whatever they need to hear. If coach Tre doesn't catch it, coach Art is at 1st base and can do the same thing.
I mean no disrespect to any parent, but the only advice I give a kid going to bat is either simply "see the ball" or "tune everything else out." If I could, I'd give them earplugs that tune out the sounds of everybody in the stands, including their own parents.
Trust me when I say this: you extremely unlikely to help your kid's AB. More often, the more voices a kid is having to listen to, the worse their AB is going to turn out. I say this even if a parent is giving guidance that is perfectly correct.
When a kid is batting, the only things I'll say are, "you're fine" and "see the ball". When a kid is pitching, the only things I'll say are, "just throw" or "you and the glove" or other general words of encouragement to that effect. Anything technique-wise that needs to be said? I leave that to the coaches. I'm just trying to make encouraging background noise.
After a kid makes a bad play, all too often a parent's first reaction is to criticize the kid's performance. Our boys know when they make a mistake. Let the coach handle it. If the kid needs to be spoken to, the coach is very good at that. However, we also have to accept that our kids will make a mistake once in a while.
So, how should a parent act at gametime? A long time ago, I heard that the only thing a kid needs from a parent at gametime is an encouraging smile. Of course, cheer for the team. Get excited. Heck, if things go wrong, an emotional interjection comes out now and then.
Am I perfect at this, myself? No, not at all. I'm as far as it gets from being a perfect person. However, the better I am at doing this, the more my son enjoys the game.
At gametime, leave the coaching to the coaches. Enjoy the game. It'll allow your kids to enjoy it as well.
5. What a parent can do to help their kid. There is a great deal a parent can do to help a kid play better baseball. What they can do is work with them at home, in their spare time. I refuse to push my son into practicing during his downtime, but I will ask if he feels like throwing the ball in the front yard. I'll ask if he wants to go to the cages for some extra BP. Sometimes he says yes. Sometimes no. However, mastery of a skill comes with repetition. If the only baseball your kids are playing is at our practices and games, they will get the dead minimum development in baseball that a travel ball player can get.
So, if you want to help your boy be a better player, help them work on it outside of team practices and games. That yields real dividends. Shouting pointers to them during the game does not.
6. A final note on baseball. Personally, I believe that kids play best when they're relaxed and focused. They can't be relaxed if they know that they're going to be chewed out on the way home.
As I said before, we want them to be prepared for High School baseball. If you watch baseball at High School and higher levels, the coaches are largely silent. The players are left to their own thoughts throughout the game. Parents are not shouting advice.
Our boys are a boisterous and energetic lot and we all enjoy the enthusiasm they bring at gametime. They are one of the loudest teams in the league. However, that's just establishing a general mood. They're not getting into each other's heads. They're just keeping each other enthused.
That's what we should be doing as parents. Stay out of their heads at gametime. The only thing we should be communicating with our words, actions and facial expressions, is that we're proud of them, we know they're doing the best they can, and that we're just there to watch them have fun.
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