Travel Program Guidelines

Hello GBA families. We are excited to announce some enhanced process to the GBA travel program. This is specifically addressing areas on the tryout process, manager selection and ultimately how your kids get selected to play in GBA’s travel baseball program. Last fall, we administered a survey to solicit feedback to understand what’s important to you and ways we can continue to eliminate personal biases and ensure all kids have an equal opportunity to compete.

We are grateful for all the coaches and managers that volunteer their time. It’s their contribution that makes GBA so successful. The travel season is over 6 months long and it’s important that families are aware of their baseball options going into the tryout process. The community did not favor the manager being selected before or after the tryout process. But most importantly, 78% of the community felt a coach’s input should weigh heavily on player evaluation. Because of this, the Blue team manager will be selected and announced ahead of tryouts. The White team manager will be selected immediately after tryouts to ensure all kids have an opportunity to play for the Blue team.

The committee will interview manager for each age level every year. A vote by this committee will decide who will be selected. Criteria for each coach is as follows:

• Overall baseball acumen
• Parent feedback from previous seasons
• Ability to be available and meet the scheduling demands of GBA travel ball
• Ability to maintain and manage the travel budget

Manager interviews will be conducted by an expanded travel committee of 5-7 GBA board members.

• GBA is proud to announce that we have partnered with Champion Craft Coaching to manage tryouts and facilitate the team selection process. Champion Craft has facilities in St Charles and offers baseball training and development services to various baseball organizations in and around Kane County. They are excited to offer their expertise to Geneva Baseball to facilitate the tryout process. CCC coaches and evaluators have over 20 years of cumulative experience shared between their staff and pride themselves on setting up players and programs for success in their baseball careers. We are sure that the athletes and their families will leave tryouts with a positive outlook for the future of Geneva Travel Baseball!

• We are excited to have these coaches direct and observe Geneva kids during the tryout process.

• CCC will be running tryouts with their staff of professional coaches. Like tryouts in the past, we will be evaluating the kids on hitting, fielding, pitching and overall sportsmanship. The tryouts will still be held over 2 days the week of July 14 th (actual dates by age group TBD).

• Each Blue Team’s manager will be allowed to attend the tryouts but must observe from afar. Managers will not be allowed to facilitate or support any drills nor converse with the kids. His or her role will be to collect their own personal feedback to help inform final recommendations.

• No other coaches, parents or board members with a child participating will be permitted to observe or support the sessions.

• In addition to the tryout, CCC will provide ALL current coaches (both head coaches and assistant coaches) a template to collect feedback on your child for the previous year. This will be included in the overall evaluation. If your child has not played GBA previously rest assured this will not be counted against him or her. CCC will provide additional attention during the tryouts to ensure we can get a complete understanding of your child’s performance.

Concluding the tryouts

• CCC will provide their recommended roster for each team. They will choose the roster based on the top available talent from the evaluation process and balance the roster to ensure there is proper pitching and catching talent on each team.

• CCC will meet with a representative from GBA and the current Blue manager to review proposed rosters and other considerations to ensure the right team is assembled and each child had a fair opportunity to make the team.

• GBA will issue offer letters via our Crossbar system to the 12 blue team members within 24 hours of the final tryout date.

• At that point, families will have until noon the following day to accept the offer. If that acceptance is not received by the deadline, it will be retracted, and we will offer to the next ranked child.

• Once Blue teams are solidified, offer letters will then go out to the White team families for acceptance that afternoon and the coach will be notified of his role as manager.

• GBA will continue to consult with each team’s manager to ensure they are playing the appropriate local league divisions within the WSBL or KCBL leagues (ie. A, AA or AAA).

The best and most important stat coming out of our survey last fall was that many of you felt it was important to play baseball in the community we live in. Which supports our goal to provide the youth of Geneva an opportunity to play all levels of baseball. We understand that there is no perfect solution to manage team selections, but our goal is to minimize biases and ensure a fair and comprehensive process is in place for our program. We know the investment in both time and money is significant for our families and there are multiple options to choose from. It’s important to the Geneva Baseball Association that we are transparent with our approach to ensure you are informed heading into the next season.

Please email our Travel President Jason Patterson if you have any questions.