
League Structure with Separate Rec and Travel
#1
Posted 13 July 2017 - 03:14 PM
The rec league, which consists of 12 teams from 5 communities, has really deteriorated the last few years. The competition was poor at all levels this year. As a result, the competitive teams want to move to full travel while remaining under the town league umbrella.
The board of directors for our community teams has challenged us to find a way for that to work while still being able to offer quality, competitive baseball to all of the other kids in the town that want to play but are not on the competitive team. Does anyone know of examples where communities have done this and how they structured it or how they transitioned?
I have some ideas how, but not a complete solution. I am hoping there are examples of how to handle this situation. If we cannot find an answer or compromise, we will lose many kids to established travel teams.
Thanks in advance.
#4
Posted 13 July 2017 - 09:19 PM
You can develop a travel program with interested players and play on Sunday (maybe Saturday too) against similar travel teams from surrounding leagues (Inter-League).
NY District 4 has such a program:
http://littleleaguenyd4.leag1.com
Click on "2017 Travel Baseball Program Outline"
#5
Posted 14 July 2017 - 07:14 PM
Thanks for all the replies. Sorry for the confusion, but having the kids on two teams is what we are trying to avoid. We did that last year. Travel kids played on Fridays and Sundays, rec or in house played Monday-Thursday and Saturday. We did effectively draft, but not completely. We wanted to create balanced teams, so we evenly distributed the travel kids.
Now that the season is over, the travel kids want to go full travel and move away from the rec program due to the deteriorating competition and the challenge with being on two teams. The travel kids being on two teams hurt both the rec and travel kids.
What I am looking for is an example of a league that offers full time travel (without in-house/rec) and how they transitioned to that while still maintaining a quality rec program. That seems to be what the community is driving towards and we want to keep as many kids in the community program as possible.
Thanks again!
#6
Posted 15 July 2017 - 01:43 AM
Instead of dual rostering why not just run two programs?
Rec plays on Mon-Wed-Fri and Travel plays on Tue-Thu-Sat (and Sunday if a weekend tournament).
Have try-outs for the Travel Teams and those that don't make it play Rec.
#8
Posted 15 July 2017 - 12:33 PM
#9
Posted 17 July 2017 - 12:43 PM
Sounds like this is an independent town/city league?
Instead of dual rostering why not just run two programs?
Rec plays on Mon-Wed-Fri and Travel plays on Tue-Thu-Sat (and Sunday if a weekend tournament).
Have try-outs for the Travel Teams and those that don't make it play Rec.
I am not sure if we are officially chartered under Little League or not. Over the past 5+ years, we have slowly evolved from a completely independent town league, to a town league that was a member of a multi-town league as kids defected to travel, to a town that offered in-house travel provided you played on an in-house team.
I had the same idea you did. I think we have have to offer two programs. Our board is a little reluctant, rightfully so. The kids and parents that would be on the travel team(s) make up 90% of the coaches. Not only would the quality of play suffer in rec, but finding coaches for the teams may be a bigger issue.
Thanks for all the insight!!!!!
#10
Posted 17 July 2017 - 03:57 PM
If you can run two programs with interleague schedules, as Lou suggests, your kids can still play rec ball and travel ball. It really 'kills' a rec baseball program when all the most dedicated coaches and kids leave to play travel, so anything you can do to help integrate the two would be great.
An alternative schedule would be to dedicate every other spring weekend to travel ball, and alternate weekends between travel and rec ball. That way rec ball still plays on many weekends.
#12
Posted 26 July 2017 - 03:44 AM
I know of a league that only schedules Tee-Ball and Machine/Coach pitch games on Saturdays.
That allows their "independent" Travel Teams to play in Tournaments on the weekends.
We haven't scheduled Majors games on Sundays for years to allow for travel ball play. These are teams not affiliated with the league.
The problem is travel play is now anytime weekdays and weekends.
Reply to this topic

0 user(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users