Both my sons played travel soccer, and the younger one switched to travel baseball around 10. Neither are in their sport anymore, but I think they both got a lot out of it. The older boy took a trip to Italy/Switzerland with his team, which was a bit of a life changing experience for him, and the older one is 16 now, and has a good chance of playing college golf. So much of what he learned about becoming a good athlete for 3 years has helped him become a very good golfer.
I don't know how it is set up there, but soccer clubs/academies are all run by paid coaches, and travel ball was a mix of paid coach models and parent coached ones. I am not a fan of parent coached competitive youth sports, especially as they get a bit older. Having paid coaches that love the sport and care about development over winning some 12 year old championship is a much better environment IMO.
We did have to get used to scheduling our vacations around tournaments and other things. But we'd always get a schedule well in advance, and we had a 6 week off season in the summer. It didn't really affect social activities much.
It only works if the kid really wants to do it and starts to develop a true love for the sport. My baseball kid ended up being pitcher only by the end, and while he loved pitching, he didn't love spending an entire weekend on a baseball field just to pitch one game. He was a good little leaguer before switching to baseball at 10, and I was a bit shocked how far behind he was in a lot of baseball areas. He had good pitching mechanics which got him on the team, but he was way far behind in hitting mechanics, infield transitions and other things. Also without base stealing in little league, he had no idea how to keep runners on base as a pitcher and infielder.
|