Bloomington Normal Girls Softball Association

Local and travel teams. The travel teams have become a political phenomenon for local talent. Highly competitive, expensive, and the teams are largely aggregated of each school’s players. For example, the 16U and 18U elite teams seem to be a NCHS exclusive, and no matter how good other players are, they will not make the elite teams without NCHS affiliation. For example, they have a scoring system to rank players’ try-​outs (home to first run, batting, fielding) and according to that score, a player will be elite or not. I personally had one of the highest scores back in the day that I went out for elite, but was denied elite team. When I asked the elite coach (also the NCHS coach) why I was not placed on elite, he stated it was because they needed talent on the lower team. He subsequently pulled his NCHS catcher to play for the elite team even though she had a score that ranged out of the top required % for elite players. Completely upsets the scoring system and undermines the whole idea that the best are the best. Unfortunately, there is not much choice between levels to avoid the politics as local teams play for recreational activity — maybe a couple games a week, many girls never show up, and there are rarely practices. At the other end are the travel teams where you practice 3 days a week (year-​round) and play at least 5 days a week in the summer. (We regularly had 90+ game summers where all we did was eat, breathe and play softball.) Good for exposure and development, though. We consistently played world tournaments, and I had Division I solicitations my sophomore year based on the work I did with travel teams. Nonetheless, the politics are overwhelming, and the parents have become worse than anything else. I’d recommend looking at rural teams before playing BNGSA, but at least doing BNGSA if nothing else is available and you and/​or your child is serious about the game. Ask a past parent about real costs, though, as the traveling costs (hotels, gas, time) plus equipment costs plus inside and outside training costs became more than a year of college tuition each season. 2 stars for talent development, but minus 3 stars for so much pressure and politics that kids burn out real fast.