Well, here I am, manager of 12U travel softball team, and President of a travel softball organization that has as of right now a 12U team and a 14U team, a total of 26 players. As I'm typing, I believe I'll use this thread will focus on the joys and headaches of managing a small non-profit travel softball business. I'll start another thread to specifically address my 12U team.
So, where do we stand with everything? Short answer: Good. Long answer...keep reading.
That we're still here toward the end of our first winter season is a minor miracle in itself. We've (me and my close circle of softball coaches and parents) been kicking around the idea of starting a travel ball program for a couple of years, but at the beginning of this year, I finally sat down and put together a business plan and kicked around some ideas on what a successful travel softball program looks like to me given what I knew about the local softball community:
Unknowns going in:
1) Could the local softball community support a competitive travel ball program given the relatively small numbers of players?
1a) Would there be enough interest to field at least a couple teams?
2) Could the rec-league voodoo that I do as coach work on the travel ball level?
3) Could we keep our monthly dues at less than $100?
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Our small town, Ramona, supports one rec-league softball organization, and that organization has about 220 girls in it from ages 4 to 14. The rec-league competes at a high "C" to a low "B" level and in the past couple of years have fielded All-Star teams that have been the strongest from Ramona in at least a decade.
There were about a dozen girls aged 13 and up who were already playing travel ball "down the hill", which is our small-town way of saying San Diego or one of its surrounding cities. "Down the hill" means at least a 45 minute drive to where you're going. These girls were going "down the hill" to play more competitive softball than what was offered in Ramona.
Our lone high school has not had a winning record in at least 6 years, though last year's JV team finished one game over .500. Sometimes the high school has a freshman team, but usually just a JV and a Varsity team. Some of the Varsity players play travel ball, but most do not. Only three players from the JV team play travel ball.
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So what would a viable travel softball program look like, given the above? Could the community support a local travel ball program at all? I have to say, a lot of folks "in the know" said that there wasn't enough interest nor enough talent to succeed, or even start. There was only a handful of us (shout outs to Mike Simone, Dave Foreman, Keith Pittman, Mike Jimenez, Brian Meitzler, Micki Wright, and Frank and Julie Bernas) willing to try. And of course, starting any business in these economic times carries with it a high chance of failure no matter how good the idea.
I was willing to gamble that there was a demand for travel ball. I felt that a lot more of our local girls (and their parents) would be interested in playing travel ball if they didn't have to worry about driving down the hill three or four times a week. When my daughter played travel ball during the summer, it was an hour drive to practice 3 times a week so 6 hours a week sitting in a car going to and from practice. And I'm fortunate that I work from home most of the time -- there's no way we could have done it if I was working "down the hill".
The travel ball team my daughter played for this summer cost $125 a month, and if you factor in gas, really cost us over $225 a month. Unacceptable! So when I calculated the cash flow, my goal was to keep dues below $100 per month. I figured that if we were cheaper than most other programs down the hill, AND local, the players would show up.
By howdy, did they! We started tryouts at the end of July, and by the middle of August, we had 25 players, including most of the 14U travel ball players who were going down the hill to play. The one disappointment was that we had no high school players try out. We'd hoped to start off the bat fielding a 16U team, particularly since one of our inner circle was assistant coach for the High School. We didn't count on the attitude of that age group being "we made the high school team without travel ball, so why do we need to start playing now?" That attitude will hopefully change over time.
So we kept it cheap, we kept it local. One other quality I wanted was to have an integrated program, not just a bunch of teams who wore the same uniform but otherwise had nothing to do with each other. Fortunately, our resident High School assistant coach, Mike Simone, and I coached together way back with my very first All-Star team and the genesis of what became the San Diego Blaze started after those practices. Mike and I would talk for hours about how to become better coaches, about instituting a program for all the rec girls, about tying in with the High School, etc. So with Mike as the Blaze 14U manager and me as the Blaze 12U manager, we have implemented a program where all the girls are exposed to the same techniques, terminology, and tactics. The two teams even practice together on Sunday (when we don't have friendlies).
To me, having a program in place is key to our long-term survival. I think our retention will be higher as girls transition from one age group to another and have another Blaze team with a bunch of familiar faces on it. We're a bit isolated as a community, so we don't have quite the problem with other teams trying to steal our girls, but having a multi-team program in place keeps parents from having to make contingency plans as they know that there is another Blaze team at the next level. Come January (or sooner), we'll have a third team up and running, so we'll have a 12U, 14U and 16U teams.
So there was indeed a demand for local travel ball, and we're three months into our enterprise. The final objection to be answered is "Yeah, but the talent pool isn't deep enough to play competitive travel ball." I will admit, the jury is still out on this, though we're seeing some promising results. Particularly with the 12U team (more that half of our 14U players have played travel ball with other teams before this season), we've had a steep learning curve. We've had to take a bunch of good rec-level players and ratchet up their skills and their cohesion to play at a much higher level than they've ever played before against teams that have been together a lot longer than we have.
BUT...we are competing, and we're winning games. We aren't dominating, and we have had the occasional game where we've been blown out badly, but those games are fewer than I first feared. While we're certainly working on advanced stuff that I never had time to teach at the rec-ball level, I'm happy to say that the Booty Chest, Don's Coaching Rules (including playing everyone more than half the innings), Practice Organization, and Keeping things Fun works just as well with travel ball teams as with rec teams.
So that's where we stand as far as our field operations go. On the financial and admin side, well...if you've ever started a business, you know that there are hiccups. Our contracts and player agreements are only now catching up to where we are, and uniforms were a HUGE headache and expense that almost killed us before we got started. Collecting monthly dues is more of a hassle than I ever imagined it would be, and getting the bylaws in place and filing our non-profit status is a constant test of perseverance. On the plus side, though, I've got plenty to write about "what not to do"!
So that's about it. We're chugging along. Our parents are very supportive (Thank God!) and there's been relatively little drama (knock on wood). Nay-sayers have stopped naying, and we're starting to get a trickle of new girls trying out, including some from "down the hill". We have our eye on Western Nationals next summer, and with the progress all our girls are making, we could have a very successful year.
