Baseball at ISU?

[AuH2O]

That's because you just can't play unless you are 200% committed to the sport and nothing else. You can't just "be on the team" and play some JV and maybe get in for some scrub time. Lots of times kids get told "if you aren't on the year round travel team, then you're not serious and you won't play". Or similar. So kids just give it up.

Not just baseball, its most hs sports now, particularly at bigger schools. Gone of the days of kids just playing for fun.

That is one of the good things about football. You have to lift year round and you have to go to summer training, but it is probably the last sport where you can do really what is required by the school team only and still have a good shot at playing.

Pretty tough at a large school playing basketball or baseball if you aren't doing the travel stuff but it's possible. I really don't think our HS baseball coaches push it. We've had a couple good players the last couple years that didn't do travel baseball in HS. Most do, but I don't think they pressure kids to do it. My kid does it because he would practice and play 365 days a year if he could. But I think it's a lot more about putting in time on your own however you can throughout the year vs. doing travel ball.

If coaches are using that as some virtue signal and making it a prerequisite to play, that's a real shame. Being realistic and understanding kids that do that kind of stuff might be better is one thing. Making it seem like a prerequisite to even get a fair shake is not OK, especially at the expense of other school activities. I'm sure it's common unfortunately.

 

[AuH2O]

My kid made kind of the same decision. He will be a senior and chose not to go out this summer. Last year the coach made it clear that if you played AAU, you played no matter what. 3 8th graders that played AAU were coming up and the coach made it known that they would play.

Son figured it wouldnt be fun to just pitch once a week and nothing else. He was either first or second last year in Ks and innings pitched, was even the opening game pitcher, but decided to say screw it and make money.

It's really tough for kids, especially ones heading off to college to turn this down. It's damn near impossible to get a summer job if you're playing varsity baseball. From mid-May until early July it's a crap load of BP, double-headers and practice. Smaller schools maybe don't play as many games, but we played 39 in the regular season, and the schedules were kind of all over the place. So when you can't tell an employer when you can for sure work until the middle of July, it's tough to find one willing to deal with you, and I don't blame them.

Because of baseball my kid has had to stick with doing lawn care stuff in the summer. Then he does snow removal in the winter and some odd jobs in between. It would be nice to get a legit job where you have to learn some additional skills and get more hours, but I guess there are plenty of years ahead for that.

 

[IASTATE07]

Baseball has definitely seen a resurgence in Iowa, at least in Central Iowa. Anecdotally what seems to really drag overall participation numbers down vs football is attrition. A lot of the large schools have a huge number of 8th graders and Fr out for baseball, but those classes thin out a lot by the time they are Srs.

2010- 11,268
2011- 10,729
2012- 10,696
2013- 10,847
2014- 10,596
2015- 10,407
2016- 11,010
2017- 10,445
2018- 10,463
2019- 10,615
2020- No Data
2021- No Data
2022- 15,631
2023- 10,159
2024- 10,330

There is no data for 2021, but I'm curious if coming out of covid baseball saw more participation. Or if 2022 numbers are inaccurate.

 

[ESciGuy]

You don't have to got that far, but you have to have good indoor practice facilities, which honestly a lot of Iowa high schools and private club teams now have, where few did when ISU still had baseball. That still means totally front loaded, and probably overall heavily loaded road games, but nowadays there's so much more development that happens in indoor facilities, even in the south, that the weather disadvantage isn't so big.

Still, it's a big money loser almost everywhere. Now, if I got stupidly rich, I would happily dump a ton of money to build a nice little stadium, state of the art indoor facilities for ISU baseball, and NIL for players. But that's about what it would take for ISU to get baseball back.

 

[AuH2O]

2010- 11,268
2011- 10,729
2012- 10,696
2013- 10,847
2014- 10,596
2015- 10,407
2016- 11,010
2017- 10,445
2018- 10,463
2019- 10,615
2020- No Data
2021- No Data
2022- 15,631
2023- 10,159
2024- 10,330

There is no data for 2021, but I'm curious if coming out of covid baseball saw more participation. Or if 2022 numbers are inaccurate.

That 2022 number seems like quite the outlier.

I kind of thought there would have been higher numbers lately based on what I've seen in central Iowa, but it clearly is not a state-wide thing.

 

[VeloClone]

According to the 2023-2024 NFHS participation survey, football is way ahead of baseball. Basketball closely behind baseball for third.

Edit
Track and Field is actually second most participated sport followed by baseball and basketball.
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This makes sense. At my son's (rather large) high school the only two mainstream sports that are pretty much never subject to cuts are Cross Country in the fall and Track & Field in the spring. Last fall his XC team had well over 50 kids (boys and girls) and last spring over 200 on the T&F squad.

They can generally do that since costs don't increase as much with greater numbers and there isn't the same struggle to find ways for extra kids to participate in these sports.

 

[mramseyISU]

My kid made kind of the same decision. He will be a senior and chose not to go out this summer. Last year the coach made it clear that if you played AAU, you played no matter what. 3 8th graders that played AAU were coming up and the coach made it known that they would play.

Son figured it wouldnt be fun to just pitch once a week and nothing else. He was either first or second last year in Ks and innings pitched, was even the opening game pitcher, but decided to say screw it and make money.

My son was on the fence and straight up asked the coach if he was going to get an opportunity to play in the field a little on top of pitching before the first day of practice. The coach told him he would and after 3 weeks of games he was the only one in his position group who hadn't been given a chance to play in the field. He spent the last 3 years watching guys who hit under .100 never come out of the game and he'd sit the bench until it was his turn to pitch. They were winning (one of the 4 games they won this year) by 8 that third week and he sat and watched. Afterwards he came up to me and said I think I'm done. My wife and I took it harder than he did I think but I understand it. His mental health improved a ton after walking away.

 

[CycloneSpinning]

As a former baseball parent there's a lot of issues with high school baseball in Iowa. From what I've seen (and talking with parents at other schools) for some reason it's become super political on who plays and who doesn't. Part of that I think is because you need a kid who's all in and playing basically year round to sort of be good, especially with the big schools. The kids that do that have parents that can swing a checkbook. The other big thing I've seen is it's such a time suck in the summer where a kid could be hanging out at the pool or working a summer job, baseball makes it so you can't actually do that because of when it is. We had a pretty big senior class this year, started with 6 and finished with 5. My kid made it 3 weeks and decided that if they were only going to let up pitch despite only 2 kids being able to hit over .250 he wasn't going to waste his last summer at home to play 5 innings a week at most. Lots of kids have to make that decision eventually and no matter how much money mom and dad spent on super duper elite travel teams only 9 play at once.

It would be nice if you could start the season a couple weeks earlier, get games started by May 1st and get the state tournament over and done with before July 4th. Give those kids (especially the football kids) the month of July off to have some semblance of a summer break.

Baseball is probably the only team sport where you can be elite at several facets of the game, but if you are deficient in one…you can go from playing the whole game to losing all your playing time. In particular if hitting is your deficiency and you can’t pitch.

 

[BryceC]

Baseball has definitely seen a resurgence in Iowa, at least in Central Iowa. Anecdotally what seems to really drag overall participation numbers down vs football is attrition. A lot of the large schools have a huge number of 8th graders and Fr out for baseball, but those classes thin out a lot by the time they are Srs.

My observation has been that in football if a guy sticks with it and works hard in the weight room and other training sessions there’s probably a role for him as a Sr. In baseball there are lots of guys that are behind people in their grade or below on the depth chart and see the writing g on the wall. Plus baseball at the varsity level is pretty all consuming of your time May - mid-July, so it’s tough to work or do much else. Football is a big commitment, but it’s a little more spread out and less intrusive in the summer.

I think at Ames we have had 30 plus freshmen, only to have senior classes in the single digits in baseball. In football there might also be 30 ish Fr but 20-25 stay out for four years.

That’s every sport in the metro. There were 75 8th graders that went out for basketball at southside Ankeny last year. There will probably be 50 or so 9th graders. Probably 15 sophomores.

 

[BCClone]

It's really tough for kids, especially ones heading off to college to turn this down. It's damn near impossible to get a summer job if you're playing varsity baseball. From mid-May until early July it's a crap load of BP, double-headers and practice. Smaller schools maybe don't play as many games, but we played 39 in the regular season, and the schedules were kind of all over the place. So when you can't tell an employer when you can for sure work until the middle of July, it's tough to find one willing to deal with you, and I don't blame them.

Because of baseball my kid has had to stick with doing lawn care stuff in the summer. Then he does snow removal in the winter and some odd jobs in between. It would be nice to get a legit job where you have to learn some additional skills and get more hours, but I guess there are plenty of years ahead for that.

The kids coach would schedule practice at times that sucked also. They would get early morning ones on game days and like 11 or 1 on non game days so you couldn’t even really lifeguard with that schedule. He worked for the school up until this year. Would be lucky to pull a grand a year. He’s doing construction this year and made more in a week and a half than all of last year.

 

[BCClone]

My son was on the fence and straight up asked the coach if he was going to get an opportunity to play in the field a little on top of pitching before the first day of practice. The coach told him he would and after 3 weeks of games he was the only one in his position group who hadn't been given a chance to play in the field. He spent the last 3 years watching guys who hit under .100 never come out of the game and he'd sit the bench until it was his turn to pitch. They were winning (one of the 4 games they won this year) by 8 that third week and he sat and watched. Afterwards he came up to me and said I think I'm done. My wife and I took it harder than he did I think but I understand it. His mental health improved a ton after walking away.

Kids coach is not bright. An example is last year they had what you deemed as 4 main pitchers. They had this game where they were down like 6-0 after 3 innings and they weren’t going to win. They had a game they should win the next night though. This numbnut changes pitchers after 60 some pitches. He puts in another main pitcher and has him throw like 43 pitches. Then he brings in my son and has him finish it with around 28 pitches. (Remember over 25 pitches you sit a day). We lose 9-0.

So he’s burned 3 starters in a non conference game. The next night he has one main pitcher left. They are up 8 runs in the 5th and the starter pulls a hamstring and has to come out. We proceeded to watch the next three pitchers walk or hit the batters so much that we are now down 8 runs. This is how bright the coach is.