Coach and parents as we get ready for the spring season with baseball just around the corner the topic of conversation came up the other day how important are elite teams/travel teams.

I'm going to you my personal opinion but back by several articles recently by experts for smarter myself. I only drawn my experience as 34 coach, raising and coaching to boys, and now am coaching my grandson.

The answer is almost 99.9% it's not worth the time or money to try to get into big time competition before at least 16 or 17 years old. It's my hard and fast believe kids need to play and enjoy and that play is a social activity with their friends. Teams and people are far better off when they surround themselves with a good set of friends and continue to play together up through the ranks. There is no parent or coach in the world that can create a scholarship player or were shipped thinking they can produce a Pro player.

What we can do is produce a player that enjoys the game do it right is for had it and is successful at the local level. Want to use a high school then you start to stand out that's when coaches and scouts will notice him or you in turn start to market. But you never get them there and you wasted a lot of time and money and worse a lot of anguish for both the player and yourself.

Be honest with yourself if you can't excel at the local level than what makes you think he's going to excel outside of that area. Kids are no different way from home at one time or the other think that we have to get outside of our area to get you competition, is the furthest thing from the truth. Processing and coaching you're an expert coach if you're 50 miles from home and that's the way coaches feel about things that are going to play, they sometimes have no respect for the local teams but because they're playing some team from another state or another city they think the must be good when in reality there exactly like your kids.

In closing give your kids a good experience, to send to play the game right, enjoy the game and do it because they want to do it not because you want. You can't produce a kid that's going to get your money back it just won't happen. What you are going to do is produce a life experience for your family and your children/player that they will remember forever then if you are the one in thousand goes on to scholarships and professional to say thank you and support them just as you have.

Coach Arnald Swift, parent, coach for 50 years