Whether your son or daughter is a great athlete right now or not, there will always be opportunities that will present themselves that your son or daughter may want to take advantage of. A roman philosopher wrote "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity". You can't cheat or take short cuts in the preparation. If you do, it will catch up sometime. Do everything you can to stay ahead of it.
Perfect Game (PG) is an organization that does many things well. One of the more outstanding tools and services that they offer players is the ability to track statistics, game performances, physical growth and school grades among numerous other items in a player's profile over the years. The profile is initially built by the player before they play in a PG tournament. During the tournament, the stats are recorded and added to a player's profile. The profile becomes a single location for important data for recruiters and scouts to view the information to see if it supports what they see on the diamond. You may think that "Billy" does not have a chance at the next level but the reality is no one really knows when a player is young. In our conversation about entering a Perfect Game tournament, the team manager stated that there was no reason to complete the profile because these 11u ballplayers will never go to college to play baseball.
That conversation still makes us cringe. No matter the age, we encourage coaches and parents to have an open mind. Prepare your players or find someone that can. Feed them as much information as possible. If they decide as a well prepared player not to take that next step, then the decision is all theirs. Don't place them in a position of what if. They will have an empty feeling when they realize that the time has passed and they can't make up for the lost time. Take advantage of the free services such as the PG profile and other tools that build a picture of the complete player. From our experience, we can now say that our sons have accomplished playing at a level that we could never have imagined for them at an early age. They are prepared and now there are more opportunities to come! There are no limits!
