Youth Sports: Choose the Wrong Baseball Winter Workout Facility and Watch Players Disappear.

If you choose the wrong baseball winter workout facility, be prepared to watch your players disappear. While this website focuses on baseball, the topic of this post applies to all youth sports.

The Problem

It’s that time of year again when advertisements for winter workout programs hit with all the subtlety of a post New Year’s Day diet promotional campaign: “sign up now,” “register now,” and “join now!”

If you are a team manager or a league administrator, you need to sit up and pay attention because winter workout programs can be a trap for the unwary.

There are winter workout programs out there where players are actively recruited to play for other teams or other programs. Yes, coaches from other teams or leagues hang-out at the batting cages or the indoor facilities and actively try to recruit players for their programs or teams next season.

What’s even worse is that there are for-profit winter workout programs that actively solicit for their own private, for-profit teams for the coming season.

The Solution

The best solution to avoid this trap is to create your own winter workout program for players on the team or in the league. If the environment is controlled, there cannot be any solicitation of players.

The second best solution is to talk to the program managers in your area and see if there is any non-solicitation policy for their particular program. If a program has such a policy, check their references or ask around to see if they are true to their word.

You could also try and develop such a policy for the team or the league’s players. You could try and reach an arrangement with a program yourself by saying that you will refer players to their program exclusively in exchange for a promise that they will not be solicited and maybe even for a league sponsorship at your ballpark. Alternatively, you could arrange for  the program to come to your facilities for the benefit of the players in your program. This way you can be assured that there will be no recruitment as you control the environment.

Whatever you decide never (as a league administrator or team manager) don’t refer players to an outfit that actively recruits for its own teams. These programs get parents or players twice. First they get them to pay for the winter training and then they get them to pay to again be on their exclusive elite super-duper showcase team. It’s the perfect cross sell for them. On the other side, these efforts can rapidly undermine and even destroy any community program.  It goes without saying that these programs should be avoided like the plague by leagues.

On the other hand, I have known team managers and league administrators that refer a few parents and their players specifically to these programs as a means of ridding the program of problem players or their problem parents. In other words, they pray that these players and parents get picked up by some other team so they don’t have to deal with them next season.

As a footnote to all leagues, it is absolutely imperative that all winter training programs involving board members be advertised and available to everyone in the league and not just a select few.  Not only is denying access to winter programs discriminatory and just plain wrong on its face, when excluded parents and players find out you’ve done this, it will come back to bite you.  Oh, by the way, in case there is any doubt,  they will find out eventually.

My upcoming novel, Saving Babe Ruth, is a story about the underbelly of youth baseball. Click here to read more. It’s set to be released in 2014. Sign up to be on my mail list for alerts on more blog posts, the novel or special offers. Get ready for Saving Babe Ruth!

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If you have any thoughts or wish to share some experiences, please feel free to leave a comment below.