View Full Version : Experience with USSSA Tournaments?
I was wondering if any of you have had any experience w/ USSSA
Baseball and their tournaments. The local LL has been approached
about having their fields used and honestly nobody on the board has
had any experience w/ them or even heard of them.
This is an area where there are no travel teams or select teams, just
a small/mid-sized city where LL is the only game in town. The BOD is looking
into starting our own city wide tourny for teams from the immediate
surrounding area - usually consisting of all-star teams from pretty small
markets areas - number wise.
Anyhow, I was wondering what the pros of allowing USSSA to host the
tournament would be verses just doing it on our own. The word is that they
will be coming into the area regardless of the boards decision.
Can anyone offer any opinions or advice? Thanks, alpo.
hitnpeas
12-19-2008, 08:48 AM
I was wondering if any of you have had any experience w/ USSSA
Baseball and their tournaments. The local LL has been approached
about having their fields used and honestly nobody on the board has
had any experience w/ them or even heard of them.
This is an area where there are no travel teams or select teams, just
a small/mid-sized city where LL is the only game in town. The BOD is looking
into starting our own city wide tourny for teams from the immediate
surrounding area - usually consisting of all-star teams from pretty small
markets areas - number wise.
Anyhow, I was wondering what the pros of allowing USSSA to host the
tournament would be verses just doing it on our own. The word is that they
will be coming into the area regardless of the boards decision.
Can anyone offer any opinions or advice? Thanks, alpo.
I can't speak on USSSA Baseball but USSSA Softball tournies are ran very well. Go to www.USSSA.com and do a search for your state and location. There will be contact information for a regional director that should be able to answer your questions. Good luck....
Skipper_George
12-19-2008, 09:48 AM
I was wondering if any of you have had any experience w/ USSSA
Baseball and their tournaments. The local LL has been approached
about having their fields used and honestly nobody on the board has
had any experience w/ them or even heard of them.
This is an area where there are no travel teams or select teams, just
a small/mid-sized city where LL is the only game in town. The BOD is looking
into starting our own city wide tourny for teams from the immediate
surrounding area - usually consisting of all-star teams from pretty small
markets areas - number wise.
Anyhow, I was wondering what the pros of allowing USSSA to host the
tournament would be verses just doing it on our own. The word is that they
will be coming into the area regardless of the boards decision.
Can anyone offer any opinions or advice? Thanks, alpo.
We do allot of USSSA tournaments. I like how they seperate the age groups by skill level, Major, AAA, AA. This helps teams be competitive at their level.
Sometimes they might not get enough teams to seperate them, but they do a good job of trying.
We do allot of USSSA tournaments. I like how they seperate the age groups by skill level, Major, AAA, AA. This helps teams be competitive at their level.
Sometimes they might not get enough teams to seperate them, but they do a good job of trying.
Excellent. That is one of the issues I was concerned with. Thanks.
mudvnine
12-19-2008, 10:09 AM
I was wondering if any of you have had any experience w/ USSSA
Baseball and their tournaments. The local LL has been approached
about having their fields used and honestly nobody on the board has
had any experience w/ them or even heard of them.
This is an area where there are no travel teams or select teams, just
a small/mid-sized city where LL is the only game in town. The BOD is looking
into starting our own city wide tourny for teams from the immediate
surrounding area - usually consisting of all-star teams from pretty small
markets areas - number wise.
Anyhow, I was wondering what the pros of allowing USSSA to host the
tournament would be verses just doing it on our own. The word is that they
will be coming into the area regardless of the boards decision.
Can anyone offer any opinions or advice? Thanks, alpo.
alpo, USSSA is a very well run organization in our area (So Cal) and as Skipper George says, they do try to level the competition as best as possible by using the various divisions.
Now, I do know that they are willing to "pay to play", in that they rent numerous fields in our area. They are very connected with Big League Dreams fields around here and BLD charges $75/hr. to rent their fields. BLDs runs the snack stands, but I don't know if there is any kind of split with USSSA.
So what I'm getting at, is that if your league has some control over the fields (not the local city) and you can charge a fee for their use, you may want to really consider coming to an agreement with "U-Trip" as a fundraiser for your league; collecting field fees and snack stand revenues; some even charge gate fees.
Since you state that "they will be coming into the area regardless of the boards decision", you may want to work in conjunction, rather then battle them.
You could run your own tournaments, but unless you have someone with some experience in doing so, you may find it MUCH easier to join forces with USSSA.
Good luck, let us know what happens,
Mud
Yep, I don't think getting into a battle is going to help anyone out in the end. Thanks for
the advice. I'll bring all of this up at the meeting.
Rufus67
12-20-2008, 10:31 AM
Please accept this as what it is, one person's experience. We switched from Dizzy Dean to USSSA last year for both travel and recreational program. I coached a 11U recreational team and assistant coached an A all-star team in the summer.
In our area, North-Metro Atlanta, USSSA is just getting started. As such the organization was very bad in terms of tournaments. Our all-star sub-state and state had very few participants and if you played sub-state you qualified for state. Our 9 year-old's all-star team ended up losing sub-state but got invited to state. Not the "gold", but the "silver". We were glad he would have a chance to play more, but when we showed up to the field we found out we were in the 10U "silver". That's the year the kids start leading off, having balks called, stealing home, etc. My son's team hadn't practiced any of it and got slaughtered. What fun!
Our 11 year-old team qualified for state but didn't win a game. Season over, right? We found out we "qualified" for the World Series Regional in Charlotte (mainly because they didn't have enough teams). We decide to go, register, then they cancel a week before the tournament (without informing us - we had to contact them when the brackets weren't posted). They offer us a chance to play 12U all-stars in Charlotte or 11U AA (travel) in Knoxville. We're frustrated because the kids want to play and travel arrangements were made so we go to Charlotte (figuring rec-league at 12 is better than travel at 11). We show up and find out 2 of the teams are not A all-stars but Major travel teams playing for USSSA points. Again, not a good situation with predictable results.
I know that these associations have to get their start somewhere, but USSSA can't seem to "stick to its guns" from an tournament standpoint (e.g., 9U all-stars slotted with 10U, 12U major travel teams playing in an A all-star Regional). We're looking at co-registering as a park with USSSA (required by our rec department) and Dizzy Dean (park would foot this) just so we could have a decent all-star experience.
Like I said, this is only my experience and your mileage may vary.
I was wondering if any of you have had any experience w/ USSSA
Baseball and their tournaments. The local LL has been approached
about having their fields used and honestly nobody on the board has
had any experience w/ them or even heard of them.
This is an area where there are no travel teams or select teams, just
a small/mid-sized city where LL is the only game in town. The BOD is looking
into starting our own city wide tourny for teams from the immediate
surrounding area - usually consisting of all-star teams from pretty small
markets areas - number wise.
Anyhow, I was wondering what the pros of allowing USSSA to host the
tournament would be verses just doing it on our own. The word is that they
will be coming into the area regardless of the boards decision.
Can anyone offer any opinions or advice? Thanks, alpo.
I don't know what area you are in but IMO USSSA tournaments are well ran and do a fairly decent job of seperating levels of play. It also, has a lot to do with the tournament director but in the USSSA tourneys I have participated in have been very good.
IMO letting them use the fields would be a benefit as it would bring a bigger intrest in tournament play. I'm in California and we have different options as well, Super Series, Triple Crown, AAU, Perfect Game etc.. Some are better dependent on what you want out of the tournaments ex. Perfect Game holds more of a showcase type of tournament which will get your players more exposure.
Guess what I'm saying is you couldn't go wrong with USSSA coming to your area.
HYP
hitnpeas
12-21-2008, 07:22 AM
Curious if you guys run into a problem with "Sandbagging" in baseball? It is a huge problem with slowpitch softball as teams will enter E or D when truely they should be playing in higher divsions. Why compete with teams your level when you can slaughter teams in the weaker divisions and get a world berth.... :shrug: Hopefully they police the baseball leagues better than they do softball. Good luck!!
TG Coach
12-21-2008, 02:23 PM
The name (USSSA) on the product means nothing. Your experience will be no better or worse than the quality of the people associated with the program at the local level.
Curious if you guys run into a problem with "Sandbagging" in baseball? It is a huge problem with slowpitch softball as teams will enter E or D when truely they should be playing in higher divsions. Why compete with teams your level when you can slaughter teams in the weaker divisions and get a world berth.... :shrug: Hopefully they police the baseball leagues better than they do softball. Good luck!!
Yes, there is some sandbagging but for the most part the directors are pretty good about stopping it. They'll move them into a higher division based on their records against same division and higher division teams.
The name (USSSA) on the product means nothing. Your experience will be no better or worse than the quality of the people associated with the program at the local level.
Agree, the directors have everything to do with how well the tournament runs.
The name (USSSA) on the product means nothing. Your experience will be no better or worse than the quality of the people associated with the program at the local level.
Agree...some directors overbook and you end up on second level fields with ridiculous schedules....on the other hand, some tournaments are run great.
Thanks for the input. I'll pass this along to the BOD. Hopefully they/we can make an educated decision. I'm looking forward to a possible tournament, but one that is primarily
used as a vehicle for gaining "points" toward future tournaments doesn't sound like a positive experience overall. Thanks again for the replies.