[Atocep]

Out of curiosity, what age group?

I've gone through it all as my son came up through the local rec T-ball league into Pony, into select, and then into national level travel ball. I went from parent/assistant coach to coaching, to coaching and being the vice president of our Pony League, to coaching a select team, to saying "screw it" it's time for someone else to coach my kid. This is my son's senior year and this summer will be my 5th summer as a parent only. I've been asked multiple times about a return to coaching and I have absolutely zero interest in ever doing so.

By far the worst age group, from my experience is the 8-10 range. For 90% of these parents there's no convincing them that their kid isn't the next best thing because X select team offered their child a spot. What they don't realize is that select team needs someone that's going to pay their player fee without challenging the core talent for playing time. The biggest parent red flag in this age group is parents that bring their mitt out to the first practice and are throwing with their kid before that first practice. Make mental note of these parents. There's more than a 90% chance they're going to be a pain in the ass.

10-12 is much of the same, but not as bad. This is the age group where those that are good enough have moved on to select and those pain in the ass parents that can afford it have been sold on taking the 13th roster spot on a select team and become someone else's problem.

Your average select program is still a nightmare with many of the same issues. It wasn't until my son was on a nationally ranked travel team that most of the politics and BS was gone. The kids are hand selected with no tryout and everyone is good enough to play and therefore everyone plays. I believe last year's team had 1 problem parent and they're not back this year. At that level it doesn't matter how good your kid is, if you rock the boat too much they'll find someone else.

In all, I think I've seen just about everything there is to see. I've seen the disorganized board that I volunteered to join, I've seen the shady coaches, I've seen the teams that try to stack rosters and then take those players to select, I've seen the nightmare parents.

We moved into a relatively exclusive upper-middle class neighborhood when my son was in the 8th grade and I watched him get cut from the 8th grade team because he was an outsider. High school has been a bit better, but not much. He hit nearly .600 with a couple of homers and averaged over an extra base hit per game as a sophomore on JV and didn't get a Varsity AB for a team that was struggle to score runs. Last year as a Junior he started the year hitting cleanup and got a hit in each of the first 5 games before being benched for no reason until the last week of the regular season. As it stands he has about 30 varsity plate appearances but because of his time on the nationally ranked travel team he's been fortunate enough to receive a scholarship to continue playing in college.

Youth sports sucks at all levels. The youngest levels are the worst, but anyone that tells you that politics don't exist at the high school level because those coaches are paid to win and can be fired are full of shit.