This baseball stuff has been part of my life for as long as I can remember but the travel ball world really came to light for my family not with the boys but our daughter, Taylor.
LEFT OUT
I can vividly remember having an aha moment during the 10-year old Little League State Tournament. Taylor was playing for the North Laurel (NL) Little League team in the state tournament in Prestonsburg, KY when I realized that EVERY player on the roster had been asked to play on a local travel team EXCEPT Taylor.
Now this was not by accident. It wasn’t like people didn’t know who I was or who she was. I grew up in London, I played at NL and was an above average player in both basketball and baseball. So what gives? Great question and I don’t really have an answer. It’s not like the team had a tryout and they simply said “she’s not good enough right now”. That I could have accepted. This team had been selected by the coach and a couple of the dad’s on the team. I knew every single parent on the team and they ALL knew me. This felt a little more personal to me. I’m sure it didn’t help that Taylor was an undersized kiddo when she was little and although her mechanics were always pretty good, physically she was behind the other girls at that age.
Tryouts and Getting Cut From a Team
From that day on Taylor and the boys tried out for travel teams and all of them have had to endure the disappointment of not making a team. Kip even got cut from a team that he played on the year before. It stung every time that it happened but at least it was up front, honest, and at the end of the day, I can accept that.
That summer was the Genesis (great book in the Bible, you should read it) for the Allen’s road down this path of creating a travel ball program in rural Eastern Kentucky. Even if I didn’t know it at the time.
As Paul Harvey Used to Say “And Now the Rest of the Story”
As for Taylor, she played softball through middle school and was on some really good middle school softball teams, but she found her sport in Cross Country. Most girls are finished growing by the time they are 14 but not Taylor. She grew 6 inches after she got to High School and she now stands around 5’9″. Her future wasn’t in Softball and that’s perfectly fine with us. Taylor became a 2-Time All State Cross Country Runner and …………….I think things worked out for her.
Key Takeaways
- Getting cut from a team is not the end of the world.
- Not every kid is destined to play baseball or softball. Play other sports!
- Growth comes at different ages for every kid. (This will be a reoccurring theme).