What did (8) U say?

Starting travel ball too early...

We had the pleasure of spending a few days in Clearwater Florida for the TaxAct Clearwater Invitational this past week. I have to say. I had never been to Clearwater before, but it was awesome. The beaches are amazing. The sand is almost white. Great places to eat and visit. Not to mention, we got to see some great softball with some of the top Division 1 teams in the country competing.

While we were watching one game in particular, a dad and one of his daughters were sitting next to us behind the backstop. Of course, my wife can’t help herself and proceeds to engage the dad in conversation. The usual topics were covered like where are they from, do the girls play softball, if yes….then where do they play. Do they want to play in college? What’s their favorite school? Favorite player? And then the topic of travel ball comes up. The older daughter plays 14U travel. First year 14’s. The younger daughter is 10 and also plays on a travel team. So of course, this was interesting, so my wife asks if she still plays rec ball and dad says no.

At this point, the dad proceeds to say that whatever travel ball organization they are playing for, they have a team in every year. So 10U, 11U, 12U….etc. He says they like to keep the grad years together. Now admittedly, I haven’t really heard of this before outside of soccer and maybe a few other youth sports. And almost all softball tournaments are based on even years like 12U, 14U etc. Even in Rec Ball ASA Districts, State and Nationals are only offered in even age brackets. He then offers this little nugget of information……the org also has 8U travel. EIGHT YEAR OLD Girls playing travel softball. So now, I can’t help myself and I say, “that’s really way too early to start travel ball” to which he responds, “well you might think so but they have to keep up with the others.”.

The others??? What others?? Are you kidding me? The kid in the outfield picking daisies?

At this point, I have deemed the dad to be a bit of a loon and generally stopped engaging in the conversation. My wife picks up the hint and the dad and his daughter go back to just watching the game. But now I’m sitting here thinking to myself, how is this even possible? Who in their right mind thinks girls need to play travel ball at 8 years old?