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Expensive?
by Dave
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The question I most often field is how much SHOULD a travel team cost? The answer is easy. A travel team should cost you anywhere between nothing and $13,000 per year. Got it? Now that should give you something to work with in terms of evaluating how much you are willing to pay. The real answer, of course, is it depends on what you are getting for your money.
To go over costs, let's start with basics and move on from there. First of all, every kid playing fastpitch needs insurance. That costs around ten bucks a head. Then she'll be needing at least one uniform, probably two, and probably several additional pieces because things wear out, rip, and break.
Uniforms can be a dicey subject. Obviously, you pay more for nicer ones. The uniform does not make the team but, you know how these things are. Kids like top of the line everything. Thankfully, organizations are usually smarter than that and find the middle ground.
I recall recently observing a team called the Ohio Slammers. The Slammers won Pony Nationals in 2006, placed, I believe, third in 2007, and placed fifth at ASA Nationals in 2007. I remember walking up to a field where they were scheduled to play in an early round of a tournament. I thought maybe I had gone to the wrong field because the team looked like a rec program. They were wearing silk-screened t-shirts like you usually see on recreational players' backs. Later in that tournament, I saw them again, but this time they had on their real uniforms! Those were a nice looking, fancier assortment than what they had shown in preliminary rounds. I thought that was a cute trick!
Uniforms, including sliders, pads, under armour, team sweatshirts, etc. usually run you about $150 per set. You can get a basic uniform for 50 bucks but that is basic and excludes all the little extras everyone else on the team is going to buy. $150-$200 is a good general estimate for a single uniform plus extra "stuff." If there are two uniforms, plan on paying $250-$300. The batting helmet, which hopefully your team requires each kid to purchase separately, will run you another 50 bucks or thereabouts.
Tournaments cost anywhere from $175 for one-day to $500 for two. If you've got 12 kids on the roster, figure out how many tournaments the team will play, multiply by $400 and divide by 12 to get a rough estimate of individual tourney costs. Ten tournaments (including a couple one day round robins and a bunch of two day things) should be around $3,500 - $4,500. That figures out to somehwere less than $400 per kid.
If your team runs scrimmages, the cost can go up as it is customary to pay umpires to officiate these. One ump will cost you anywhere between $25 and $40 per game. Usually it is a good idea to preapre kids for tournaments by conducting double or triple headers with multiple teams. Teams generally split the cost of umps. A Saturday triple header will cost the team no less than $40 plus the price of a few new balls. Good teams will run scrimmages almost every weekend they aren't scheduled to play tournaments, sometimes both days. If your outdoor schedule runs April to July and you play 9-10 tourneys, that leaves about a half dozen weekends open for scrimmaging. That could add several hundred dollars to the team's costs.
To sum up to this point, if your team has one uniform and plays 8 - 10 tournaments plus a few scrimmages, you're looking at $600 as a starting point unless you do some fundraising. But that excludes a bunch of other considerations such as indoor workouts, fees for using town fields, clinics run by professionals, travel, meals, etc., etc., etc. plus EQUIPMENT.
If your team is going to practice, they'll be needing some balls! They might also need a few training aids. You can get a dozen balls for $50 but trust me, they'll wear out pretty fast. I think you need a minimum of two dozen balls - I went through 4 dozen last year though some are still usable. Then again, I also had several dozen "junk" balls from years past which I used for soft-toss hitting practice. I also went through a couple dozen whiffle balls of varying types and sizes. Then there were the two batting tees, the hit-n-stik, the pop-up net, bags and buckets to hold balls and equipment, etc. If the team is a young one, chances are 50-50 somebody will own catching equipment. Batting helmets will probably be purchased by individual team members but if you have just a set of helmets for general team use (not advisable with lice climbing through school childrens' scalps), that's going to cost a few more bucks.
As you can see, the cost of basics gets pretty high. Sometimes some of this equipment comes out of the coaches cache. I collect softball junk and my garage is full of catching gear, training aids, buckets of balls and associated equipment I purchased with my own money. However, it is unrealistic to expect coaches to go into their own pockets and get everything a team can possibly need. There is nothing more frustrating than volunteering a ton of your personal time to conduct practices and then discover that the organization gives teams nothing in terms of equipment. You can't practice without equipment and somebody has to pay for it.
One of the most significant costs incurred by a team can be that for indoor workout facilities. Add to that the costs of any coaches brought in and the thing can get pricey rather quickly. If your travel team has volunter coaches with all their own equipment who happen to be absolute experts and have access to a university's facilities for free, great. Most of us don't have those luxuries.
Indoor facilities can cost anywhere from $50 to $250 or more per hour, depending on a number of variables including the quality of the facilities. If your team rents out a single hitting tube once per week, the cost will be pretty low but you can figure on your kid getting maybe 50 swings in each 2 hour session. That does not represent a good winter workout plan.
A place which contains a full 5,000 square foot artificial turf area in which to conduct throwing and infielding drills is going to cost you on the higher end of the scale. If they've also got pitching machines in multiple stalls as well as other equipment, well then you're moving towards the $250. If they also provide coaching of softball mechanics and / or speed agility training, that can get costly but you and your daughter do derive significant benefit.
A typical indoor schedule is going to be at least 2 hours per week. That's a bit light. Some teams actually conduct something like a total of 12 hours per week of total offensive and defensive drilling plus speed / agility training. Usually teams put together a combination package of full field drilling, batting cage time, and some sort of speed / agility work. If you take, for example, a package of two hours per week of full field drills at $150 per hour for the space, two hours of batting cage rentals (1 cage at $50 per hour), plus two hours of speed agility in a small space (say $100 for two hours), what you are left with is a cost of $500 per week for the team which divides out to about $50 per roster member per week.
Many teams in colder climates try to "back-load" their indoor workouts to have more and more of them as April approaches. &nmbsp; Teams which are together in the fall usually conduct outdoor workouts through the end of their fall ball season sometime in late October / early November. Then they'll give families off in December for the winter holidays and pick back up in January. January through the end of March gives you 3 solid months which we'll estimate at 12 weeks. So your cost of a reasonably good indoor program could be right around $600 per team member. You can pay less but you'll get less. You can pay more but hopefully the benefits will be tremendous.
Some teams which aim higher, do not give a break and begin indoor workouts as soon as fall ball is over. That can add another 4 - 6 weeks or $200-$300. Extremely aggressive organizations do a lot of winter workouts. They also sometimes bring in professional coaches to work skills with the kids. That can add significantly to the cost. Some teams require that roster members attend several clinics during the cold months. Clinics do not generally cost a lot but if you add 2, 3 or more to your schedule, the overall cost climbs pretty quickly. Some few teams bring in the experts from these clinics and run their own clinics in the rented facilities.
There are plenty of teams out there which have some sort of arrangement under which they can use school or other facilities on the cheap or even free of charge. I know of one team which has an arrangement to use a large high school gymnasium for free. Another one pays to use a smaller middle school gym but the cost is pretty low. Both school gyms come as is, with no equipment, no configuration and the team must use softee balls lest something critical be broken. If they want to run some sort of hitting drills, they have to bring nets and lots of softees. This space is OK for throwing and pretty good for speed / agility but players do not get to face live pitching or really get the feel for other aspects of the game like fielding real groundballs.
Another team I know rents out an entire facility which comes with the top-notch coach who owns it. They get about two hours during an off-peak time on the cheap. They do this every week for about 26 weeks of the year. It is no more expensive for parents than keeping their kids in all year clinics and the benefit is about the same.
Yet another team I know has access to a facility in which there are three stalls with pitching machines, screens, pitching mats for pitchers, and a space for running speed / agility or full infield at the same time kids are pitching or hitting. Live balls are used rather than softees. In general, the team gets as good a workout indoors during winter as it might outdoors during the summer months. The facility is owned by the head of the organization who earns his living from renting out the space so there is some cost associated with its usage. They practice twice a week through almost half the year,
Still, yet another team has weekend access to a large warehouse in which they keep all sorts of equipment and conduct drills for the entire organization. The owner of the space is involved with the organization and allows it to use the space free of charge. This is great but there can be drawbacks as the space is used the rest of the week to run a business and coaches have to be especially careful to make sure their kids stay focused and don't leave messes behind.
If you're reading this very carefully, you might be wondering where I got my initial range of between "nothing and $13,000 per year." Let me explain the "nothing" price first. Some few teams are fully sponsored. They have some sort of sugar daddy who wants to support the sport by funding a highly competitive team. These sorts of teams are generally top of the line and are intended for older kids playing at the showcase level. As you can imagine, free is a pretty good price. It draws people out of the woodwork. The competition to make teams of this sort is fierce. It is not the place one would look to play if, for example, one were inexperienced enough to ask questions like "how much should I expect a travel team to cost."
There are a few teams out there which are not showcase level but which are fully funded. Those circumtsances usually involve some extremely benevolent and wealthy person who also happens to have a relative on the team. Let's say you, the run of the mill fastpitch travel parent, were to hit the mega-millions lottery when the prize was up at the higher end of the scale. What would you do? Wouldn't you transform the wonderful team your relative was on into a "fully-funded" one?
Some teams at even young age levels earn sponsorships from softball equipment makers or obtain partial sponsorships from local businesses via the hard work of parents within the organization. That can defray a significant portion of the overall cost structure. Again, spots on these teams are limited and the competition to make them can be more fierce than unfunded programs. Usually what you see are teams with only minimal funding, say for those pop-up awnings. Usually teams require parents and kids to do some sort of fundraising. That's where all those folks standing with cans outside your grocery store come from.
Now, let me say just a brief bit about the teams which run on the high end of the spectrum spanning to $13,000. When we speak of team which cost more than say $1,500, we are talking about higher level teams, usually ASA Gold and showcase ones. These teams have excellent (and matching) equipment, Have full ensembles of team-related clothing, matching travel bags, run the very best sorts of indoor programs, travel out-of-state somewhat frequently, often via airplane, and do much more than simply play a bunch of tournaments. Some ASA Gold teams visit 5 or 6 showcase tournaments from September to January, then hit 5 or more additional ones in the summer, play tournaments at the ASA Hall of Fame, etc., etc. These teams' tournaments span the full country and involve competition at the highest levels. Most of us do not even aspire to that sort of thing. You should never expect an average travel team to cost anwyhere over $1,500 unless they bring in Howard Kobata every weekend to run practice.
That pretty much covers what I wanted to say about travel team costs. But I also want to leave you with an anecdote.
I recall a conversation I had with a parent who was considering leaving one team to join another. The new team cost $1,500, the old one just $400. He couldn't begin to understand the discrepancy. "That's almost 4 times the cost. Are they four times better?"
I pointed out to this fellow that the new team plays more and better tournaments. The old team plays 8 mostly B or rec/all-star tournaments within a half hour's drive from his home. The new team plays a dozen tournaments, travels out of state twice and plays all A tournaments. They wouldn't even consider a B tournament unless they play up an age group and use the thing as a scrimmage to prepare the kids for something else.
I also pointed out that the old team would put together a scrimmage only when they were hit in the face with one in which parents would serve as umpires on some second or third rate field, using their practice balls. The new team scrimmages almost every weekend date on which they do not have a tournament, using ASA umps and brand new balls every time. It is difficult to distinguish between their scrimmages and actual tournament games.
The old team has a half dozen beat up balls for practicing because the coach or a parent went out and bought them. Aside from that, the team has nothing. The new team carries around a trailer filled with three sets of catching equipment, several buckets filled with dozens of balls of all types, a few hit-n-stiks, another device used for batting drills, multiple pop-up nets, several portable awnings, a few composite bats for team members to use, and so on and so forth.
The old team conducts 4 or 5 indoor workouts at a small (40 by 40) local elementary school gym sometime in February. Ocassionally one of the coaches calls around to parents to see if anyone wants to go in with his kid to split a cage rental and do some hitting. They usually try to get on a field, without a permit, in March, if the weather is decent. The new team basically has its own outstanding, configured indoor space filled with equipment from November through March, conducts clinics with college level trainers, runs practices for the team at least twice a week, has a "captive" outdoor place with multiple fields a few nights each week from spring to fall, and typically creates better softball players than the old team.
So, in closing, basically you get what you pay for!Labels: coaching, indoor, parenting, practice, youth tournament teams
Permanent Link: Expensive?
 
Madness
by Dave
Monday, October 15, 2007
I spent the last 3 days, when I wasn't at my kids' tournaments and practices, walking the grounds of one of the top fastpitch recruiting showcase tournaments in the country, the Team New Jersey (TNJ) Fall Tournament. I had a great time. Hats off to the snack bar and field manicuring volunteer teams which did a wonderful job. There were lots of great softball games and many noteworthy fastpitch people walking the grounds. I don't know where to begin but let me just jump right in.
Rayburn F. Hesse, the author of Spy Softball, was, as usual, in attendance. He scooted around the grounds on a golfcart and reported on the most important games. To the uninitiated, Spy Softball is the most important single web resource for fastpitch enthusiasts.
It struck me that just being there was somewhat difficult for RFH. According to his posts on Spy, his health hasn't been all that great recently. He's having difficulty typing due to neuropathy for which he's been taking experimental drugs which leave him "flat on his back" most of the time. The weather wasn't particularly conducive to an easy time of it. On Friday it poured several inches of rain and then the winds came up rather fiercly. I was pretty wiped out by all the "fresh air." I admire RFH's sense of duty to the fastpitch community just for being there, let alone for the reports he filed on the tourney.
Also in attendance was one Cat Osterman, starring in her new role as assistant coach for Depaul University. I can only imagine what sort of coup d'etat it was for Depaul to sign her on. She will be a tremendous boon to their softball program, not to mention the Big East generally.
I was pleased to see Cat there mostly because that meant I didn't have to watch over my own kids. At one point my wife asked me, "where are the kids?" I replied, "I don't have any idea but all you need to do is figure out where Cat is and they will not be far behind." They were busy stalking number 8 and if I needed to locate them, all I had to do was look for the biggest crowd - the one following Cat. They wouldn't be far behind her or the crowd "watching her." I almost felt obligated to offer up money to Cat for being, in effect, a baby-sitter. I know my kids would not get in the way of Cat doing her job but her presence allowed me to focus on watching games far more than I might otherwise have been able to!
At one point, a girl's father approached Cat and asked if he could snap a picture of her with his daughter. Cat declined and observed that she was concerned about possibly violating NCAA recruitment rules. The father understood and backed away. I wondered to myself how difficult it must be for Cat to just do her job. She is arguably the biggest celebrity at these things. And every little travel player, there were many in attendance, recognizes her on sight. I can understand how difficult it must be for her trying to appease these kids while remaining focused on the important job at hand.
I happen to know that the kid whose father asked for the picture was not yet in high school. I wanted to clarify for anyone interested that a kid is not yet a prospective student athlete until they enter high school. You shouldn't get into any trouble by taking a picture with a non-prospective student athlete.
As a general matter, the NFCA tells us that the moment a kid begins her 9th grade year of school, she becomes a "prospective student athlete. All rules regarding recruiting go into effect at this time. You may visit an institution at your own expense as often as you wish, and all contacts with a coach must be on the college campus. The athlete can call the coach, but the coach cannot return the phone call, email, instant message, text message or encourage contact of any kind prior to the athlete's junior year." As of September 1 of the junior year, college coaches can send recruiting letters, emails, etc. and information about the athletic program. "Coaches may not call prospects, however, until after July 1 (following the junior year) for Division I and June 15 for Division II."
Of course, this does not mean that one should suddenly become interested in college recruitment when one becomes a junior while ignoring it beforehand. As Spy often points out, college coaches line up their prospects before that. Most big time college scholarships are "verballed" long before the official recruiting period begins. For example, I know of one local girl who verbally committed to attend a Division I school on a softball scholarship during the summer following her sophomore year. She'd been in front of college coaches via showcase tournaments for several years, knew exactly where she wanted to go, was extremely proactive with the coach for that school, and worked very hard (softball and communication-wise) to obtain the verbal commitment.
At the TNJ tournament this weekend, I did see several eighth graders playing in the showcase. There were probably much more than double that amount who were freshman and quadruple or more than that who were sophomores. These girls are, for the most part, a breed apart. With few exceptions, the younger kids are incredible and incredibly focused athletes. At this level of play, you'd have to be. If you've never seen a bona fide college showcase, I suggest in the strongest terms possible you go. This is the rough equivalent of college ball, definitely stronger than high school ball.
Prior to this weekend, I had never been to the TNJ fall tournament. I've been going to the "Summer Classic" for several years. That usually involves a stronger field than the fall tournament. Apparently that is changing due to NCAA recruiting calendar changes which make a few dates in October much more important than they used to be. This year's fall field included the Gold Coast Hurricanes (FL), San Diego Renegades, Texas Storm, Virginia Shamrocks, and Washington Lady Hawks, and Carolina Lady Blues all of which finished in the top 25 at Gold Nationals this past summer. Teams which attended the 2007 "Summer Classic" but which were missing from the fall tournament include the OC Batbusters, who finished second at nationals, as well as other notable teams including: Corona Angels (CA), NY/NJ Beach Girls Gold and perhaps a few others I have missed. But my point is the fall tournament is much better than it was a year ago.
I heard that far more college coaches were in attendance this year too. I believe there were more the past several summers than I observed this fall but the number of coaches who were there this weekend was nothing to shake a composite stick at. Prior to the tournament, I was told that this was likely to happen because the NFCA and NCASA had agreed to a fall recruiting calendar in which almost two dozen showcases are sqeezed into four weekends. And that is something I want to talk about a bit more.
As someone who has never gone through college recruiting, I was a little shocked to learn what it's like. When I was a high school athlete, some college coaches would show up at our swimming meets and clock kids during there races. The coaches were either unannounced or our team coach did not bother to tell us they were there. After the meets were over, sometimes my coach would introduce a college coach to the seniors. I recall learning that I was offered a full ride
to a four year school in this manner. I never saw the coach. My coach simply told me he had been there and was interested in offering me a full ride. All I had to do was tell my coach that I was interested and that would be that. I turned it down because I was as stupid as I was young. A similar thing happened to my brother and he accepted it.
At the TNJ tournament, we had numerous conversations with the parents of prospective student athletes and others experienced in the recruitment process. That was rather enlightening. Apparently many of these young girls get rather nervous when they are participating in showcases. We heard story after story of insomnia which rivaled that of Al Pacino in his leading role in the movie with that name. Pacino's daughter by the way is attending UCLA on a softball scholarship! There were other stories of girls vomitting from nerves on the morning of games. Apparently the stress associated with the pursuit of a college scholarship is maximum throttle.
Lot's of parents talked about alternatives to athletic scholarships. I suppose after the ordeal they'd been through, that is a comforting discussion. Many parents from lesser, local teams who were granted this audience before college coaches as a somewhat political gesture, worried whether any coaches would come and watch their games. Some certainly did. But these parents also worried that their child might do something good when nobody was watching and then make a mistake when college coaches just happened to be in the area. They were an extremely nervous, stressed out lot. I knew I was the lucky one, just sitting there without any such concerns while watching good softball!
I suspect the games I watched, which were plenty good, were not quite as good as those played at ASA Gold Nationals. Most of these teams seemed rather young. Most of them formed up recently and will get to the top of their games next year. The athletes are top notch but the girls are not necessarily used to each other. The crop of 2007 senior girls and the still-18U-qualified college kids who join these teams specifically for summer ASA competitive tournaments (as opposed to showcases) are also busy working on schoolwork and working out with their college teams.
I was rather surprised to see numerous homeruns hit. Like I said, I've seen this level before but I've never seen so many kids go yard. In 3 days, I think I observed more than a dozen games and saw at least that many dingers, probably more. I would guess one was about 300 feet. I saw three homers in one game. I was left wondering whether this was a statement regarding the quality of pitching or hitting. I suspect it might be both.
These tournaments are, obviously, pitched from the college distance of 43 feet. This can be a problem for the early summer tournaments which come just after high school season (usually pitched at 40 feet). Lots of girls have trouble making the adjustment and you would expect to see walks followed by long balls then. But, since this tournament comes after a long summer of pitching at 43 feet, you would expect to see better pitching. I think youth had something to do with the number of homeruns but I am absolutely certain that several of the pitchers I saw in these games had been in showcases many times before. The best conclusion I can reach is that hitting technique is beginning to improve to the point that it is changing games. I thought I noticed more hitting in youth games this past summer but now I'm beginning to believe softball hitting is on the rise.
In any event, I got to thinking about the average girl who participated in this tournament this past weekend. They are your average kid trying to balance nascent social lives with school and softball. The worked hard this past summer to improve their games and play out their team's busy tournament schedule. Immediately upon conclusion of that, usually at some out-of-town major tournament, nationals of some sort for most, they colled their heals for less than a week, after which they began attending some very stressful tryouts. Then, they learned they made some team and began practicing. For the very best of these teams, practice means a 10 hour day, sometimes longer than that. Then all of a sudden school starts up. For freshman, sophomores and even juniors, the early part of the school year is intense. After a cold start, for many, in September, October heats up as marking periods grades are made and broken.
When a girl partricipates in showcase tournaments, she has to miss some school. Many of these things, like the TNJ fall tournament, are 3 day affairs with games beginning Friday morning. That means many girls have to miss school Thursday so they can get into hotel rooms by evening, get a reasonably good sleep (if that's possible) and get up before the sun Friday morning to pull on their socks. When they have to do that in consecutive weeks, that means they miss four out of ten school days. This compressed recruitng window period means girls may have to miss forty percent of their school days in the critical month of October. They have to do this in an environment in which they simply must maintain their grades because grades are just as important as softball skills when it comes to scholarships. That's incredible stress!
I wrote this piece for a couple reasons. First off, I'd like you, the softball fan, to be exposed to the world of showcase tournaments. Secondly, I want you to understand a little bit about college athletic recruiting. I want you to gain an appreciation for the tremendous effort which is required of these girls. Hear this again - many of these girls cannot sleep and end up vomitting on the mornings of games because they are completely stressed out. Most of all, I am writing to complain about this new, compressed recruiting schedule because I think it makes an almost impossible task into one in which the rewards may not be worth the cost. Your average high school student cannot be expected to maintain her historical grade point average through this grind in which she misses 40% of class time as an eighth grader, freshman, or sophomore. This does a dissservice to the notion of scholar athlete we hold so near and dear. We are creating a situation in which are kids are going to crack. We simply must rethink this.Labels: college
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