In this episode, guests Amber and Brenda join Stephanie and Diana to discuss personal experiences with GameDay USA and Baseball Youth individual events. We talk about those GameDay MVP tags and golden tickets, plus lots more!
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Welcome Amber and Brenda. Amber has a son that played in a few GameDay USA All Star events as well as for the GameDay USA Prospect Team in Disney in 2019 as an 11-year old, then played in a Baseball Youth All American event and for the BY Elite team at the New Year's Baseball Fest in Panama City Beach as a 12u player in 2020.
Brenda has a current 13u son who played in several GameDay USA All Star events, starting at 10u, and also previously played in the GameDay USA Junior All-American games in West Palm Beach, Florida. The same son participated with his current travel team in Panama City Beach's New Year's Baseball Fest in 2020.
Stephanie and Diana both have 13u sons who played in the Mason, Ohio All Star event for GameDay USA in 2020 (as 12u) and then played for different GameDay USA Prospect Teams at the Panama City Beach's New Year's Baseball Fest in 2020.
After recording this episode, we did hear back from GameDay USA regarding their response to how teams are created at the NYBF (and how those players are chosen) as well as how much weight is put into buddy requests. The response is included here:
"Our teams are selected from our pool of All-Star players, who are MVP recipients that showcase their skills at one of our All-Star weekends. From these events, we handpick our top players to be invited to our PROSPECT team.
In terms of how the teams are divided up, we break them up based on their positions and pitching ability primarily. Of course, we want all of our teams to succeed, so giving each team as much pitching as possible in an extensive tournament like the New Year's BaseballFest is essential. Buddy requests come into effect as we are making the rosters, but do not take a priority over making sure each team is filled with enough players for each position. We would love to fulfill every buddy request if it was possible, but sometimes it is simply not possible.
The coaches that we hire are all high school/college coaches or former coaches with extensive experience in the baseball world. These coaches have the hardest job in the world because they are expected to coach a group of about 12 players that they have never met and get an idea of everyone's playing level and abilities. These coaches find out their teams at the same time everyone else does, but even then they have never seen these players play. We truly appreciate all that they do, and we believe they did a phenomenal job this past weekend with the situation that was presented."
On Deck for next week: We continue our discussion of the New Year’s Baseball Fest tournament and our experiences playing with Baseball Youth Elite & GameDay USA Prospect Teams, and participating with an independent team.
Please note that while we attempted to record this episode and post it uncut, we did have to cut a few small sections for various reasons--especially due to the occasional poor quality connection/audio.
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