It’s never enjoyable. It’s never easy. But it’s one of the realities of playing travel sports. In youth travel baseball, there is a balance between giving opportunities to as many kids as possible and making sure the individual kids get enough repetitions. What this means, then, is when more kids tryout than there are spots available, teams cannot take everyone. This leads to what we have found is the most difficult aspect of youth sports: roster cuts. 

For better or for worse, the youth baseball circuit in North Carolina is dominated by three organizations: NC GameOn Sports, Top Gun Sports, and USSSA. These 3 organizations host the largest quantity of tournaments across the state and regularly attract the most amount of teams. Triple Crown Sports also hosts a single event in North Carolina, the annual Border Wars, which takes place in early May. In 2018, a new face, Atlantic Coast Baseball, emerged on the North Carolina scene with their signature event, the Cap Classic, which was held in Rocky Mount the last weekend of June. 

A trend is emerging across youth travel baseball in North Carolina. If you haven’t noticed, you may not be paying attention. Gone are the days of travel teams being put together from the all-stars of every town’s recreation leagues. The last few years have ushered in a trend that is sweeping across the travel baseball events of North Carolina: the rise of the national youth programs. Yes, you read that right. National programs targeting youth players.

As always, North Carolina will host several huge youth baseball tournaments in the spring and summer of 2019. In order for teams to best prepare for their upcoming seasons, we want to spotlight several of the biggest tournaments in North Carolina this spring as well as a few of the biggest events from surrounding states.