Select teams playing within Pony Baseball

My son played for both a Bronco team and a "Select" travel team this year.

The Bronco league ran it like a 'normal" league... 8 teams with a draft and All-stars were selected from the 8 teams.

However, the league worked closely with our Travel Club and the top 3-4 players in each age division play on a Travel team. Our Pony league has 3 coaches that also coach for a Travel team. There has been a very good cooperation between the two and that made last season very easy on my son's time scheduling. (As opposed to previous years with an uncooperative LL)

Most parents view the Travel teams as "the next Step" or something to Aspire to, as opposes to something to BAN!. Of coarse, prior to All-Star selection, it was made KNOWN that the two Bronco Boys that also played for the SD Stars would be leaving July 29th whether or not the All-Star team was still in contention. Everyone was quite amicable with this.

Now, if we were to take our "Select" travel team and try to play in the Pony league it would be a waste of our time...(little competition even against All-star team. .. also by allowing our kids to play "rec" as well as "Travel" , it let's our RF(and others) play SS and P, which they don't get to do on our travel team...and provides the benefits of the REC league... "Big Fish in small pond syndrome."

Having a "Select" team in a rec league is only viable if they ONLY play other "Select" teams in the area... (50 mile radius?) Playing normal "Rec" team will only cause bad feelings and lower competition (IMHO) and isn't quite fair to the Non-Select teams...

I beleive there is no way you can combine the two in the same league, but working separately, in concert with each other, thethe two systems develop some strong ball players...