Girls Travel is for 5th through
8th Graders, who want a richer basketball experience than is available in the
Girls In-House Program.
Players for the Travel teams are selected by a tryout process that occurs in
mid to late September.
Practices begin in late September or early October. Each team practices twice
per week, with each practice generally one and a half hours long.
Rather than league play, Travel Teams play in weekend tournaments. Generally
in each tournament a team will play 3 games.
RYBA will sponsor a 4th grade
travel team, if there is enough interest, and if someone, generally a parent,
steps up to organize the team. Once it is clear that there is enough
interest, the
Travel
Director will help arrange tryouts and the formation of the team. The
Travel Director will take the responsibility for scheduling tournaments and
games for the team.
During seasons when there is no 4th grade travel team, 4th graders may try
out for the 5th grade travel team. Our bias, however, is not to exclude a 5th
grader who is skilled enough to play travel to make room for a 4th grader.
Registration: Available from August 1st until the Saturday after Labor
Day [2012 -- Sept 8]. Tryouts: A two
day event held on a weekend in mid to late September [2012 -- Sept 15-16]. Practices:
Practices are twice a week, beginning in late September or early October, and
running through mid March [start:2012 --Sept 24; end: 2013--Mar 2]. Tournaments (Games):
All games are played in tournaments. The first tournament is in late October [2012 -- Oct 26-28]. The RYBA fund-raising tournament is in December [2012 – Dec 7-9]. The final tournament of the season is in mid March.[2013 -- Mar 1-3]
You can register your daughter
either on-line, or at our one-day Walk-in Registration event.
Online registration is available from the Online Documents page available
from the Main Menu in the left hand column of this page. Online registration
is open from August 1st until the Saturday after Labor Day [2012 -- Sept 08].
Our Walk-in Registration is also held on the Saturday after Labor Day at
Roseville City Hall [2012 -- Sept 08,
9am-12:30pm]. The walk-in registration event
also serves as an Open House, so that anyone with questions can meet and have
a discussion with RYBA Directors.
Tryouts for the travel teams are a
three day event held at Roseville
Area High School in mid to late September [2012 -- Sept 15-16]. All girls trying out are expected to be at each day of
tryouts. If you must miss one of the days, you must notify the
Girls
Travel Director, prior to tryouts.
The schedule for the tryout times for the upcoming 2012-13
seasonwill be available August 28th -
On Saturday, each grade level will have a 15 minute
warm-up period followed by an hour and a half tryout. The main focus
is on skills.
On Sunday, the girls are brought back for individual match-ups and
scrimmaging.
Tuesday's tryouts will be used as needed to for additional evaluation time.
Uniform sizing will take place on Saturday for girls new to the Travel
Program and returning players who have outgrown their uniform.
To keep the Tryouts as fair as possible, we generally ask the High School
Varsity Basketball Coach to coordinate the tryout, and use outside evaluators
unaffiliated with RYBA to grade the girls trying out. Any girl, who tries out
but is not placed on a travel team, will be automatically enrolled in the
appropriate Girls In-House program.
Each team practices twice a week,
and each practice will be around an hour and a half long. Teams will
generally practice once on either Monday or Tuesday evening and then again on
Wednesday or Thursday evenings. We make every effort to work around Wednesday
night religion. Practices begin in late September or early October [2012 -- Sept 24], and end in mid March [2013 -- Mar 3].
Practices are scheduled to work around soccer practices until late October,
and then the schedules shift to permanent times for the remainder of the
season.
Games for travel teams are played
as weekend tournaments, each tournament usually consisting of 3 games. Teams
will play in 9 to 12 tournaments during the season, depending upon the grade
level. This equates to approximately a 30 to 35 game season.
The sites for travel tournaments are at various locations around the Twin
Cities metro area. Two of the tournaments are in Roseville, including the
Holiday Classic which RYBA hosts in December. We will also play in one
"overnight" tournament. See the sections immediately following for
information on the RYBA tournament and the overnight tournament.
Our first tournament is the Roseville Coaches Classic [2012 -- Oct 26-28], and our final tournament is the MYAS State Tournament [2013 -- March 1-3].
RYBA is able to reduce the cost of
travel basketball by hosting a fund-raising tournament each year. The money
raised from this tournament allows us to charge travel players only half of
what the costs would be without this tournament.
This year's Roseville Holiday Classic [2012 – DEC 7-9],
will be our 24th consecutive year of
hosting. Around 120 teams will participate in our tournament.
The tournament is planned and teams are recruited to it by volunteer
directors who work on it during most of the off-season.
To have enough help to be able to run the tournament itself, we require RYBA
travel families to work a number of shifts at the tournament. Usually this
amounts to approximately 10 hours. And since this tournament reduces each players cost
of participation by around $400, that's not a bad hourly rate!
We also require each family to submit a deposit check of $100 at the
beginning of the season. Once a family has satisfied their work obligation,
their check will be destroyed.
If a family is unable to satisfy their work requirement, then their check
will be cashed and the funds will be used to hire help to cover their work
slots.
Each season, we schedule one
out-of-town tournament. This year [2012 -- Nov 16-18] our overnight tournament will be in Duluth. Most families choose to stay over in Duluth during the tournament. RYBA
arranges for a block of rooms to be held at the Edgewater Hotel in Duluth. More information coming soon.
Because the kids have so much fun staying at this hotel, most families book
rooms here even though, for some, the Friday night reservation is not an
absolute necessity. Families are free to manage expenses by booking at other
hotels in the Duluth area on their own. A few families commute on a daily
basis to further cut expenses.
The purpose of this weekend is to give the girls a special fun experience
with each other, so we encourage families, who are financially able, to stay at the Edgewater.
Travel basketball fees are divided
into two parts. (1) The Registration Fee[2011-12 -- $140]
is identical for all RYBA programs (with the exception of our 1st-2nd Grade
program). (2) The Travel Fee[2011-12 -- $280],
generally in the area of $300, covers the additional expenses inherent in the
travel program - tournament fees, additional gym time for practices, etc.
So the total up-front cost of Travel Basketball is about $400. There are also
"subtle" costs associated with participating in the travel program.
In the interest of full disclosure, and to help families make their
participation decision, we've prepared a document that elaborates the Total
Cost of Travel Basketball. If the costs dissuade you, please see the
section on Financial
Aid. RYBA is committed to working with families so that no qualified
player is excluded from Travel Basketball strictly on the basis of their
family’s inability to afford the program.
We don't want the cost of travel basketball
to drive families away and to deprive girls of the chance to participate. So
in addition to mitigating the cost by holding our fund-raising tournament,
RYBA also makes financial aid available to families where needed.
Families, who are on their school's free or reduced price lunch program,
automatically qualify for having the registration fee waived. Families who
need further help, should contact the
Girls
Travel Director to arrange for additional financial aid. To begin the
Financial Aid process, download the 2012-13
Financial Aid Application, and follow the instructions on the form.
Head Coaches for girls travel
teams are selected by a four member panel. To be considered for a head
coaching position, all candidates must submit an application. Interviews are
conducted where valuable to the process. Head coaches select their own
assistant coaches. As a general guideline, we look to use volunteer coaches,
generally dads or moms, in the 6th grade and lower, and to recruit paid
coaches in the 7th and 8th grades. Our policy excludes Board members and
family members from receiving compensation for coaching a team.
We recognize that families with children
in sports are very busy and juggling time. RYBA Girls Travel attempts to be
as considerate as we can, by making full and timely information available to
families to aid their planning and decision making. Contact Lists: Family address, phone and email information is provided
from the registration data to the appropriate coach for each travel player.
Either the coach or a parent volunteer can make a contact list from this data
so that team families can communicate with each other for car pooling, etc. Website: The website is our main medium for communication. On the Main
Menu in the left hand column, there are a few menu items worth highlighting
for travel families. (Click the page name below to visit that page.) Teams:
Each team has it's own page on the website. In season, this page will
contain:
(1) contact information for your coaches;
(2) a roster of the players (first name and last initial only)
On your first visit to your team page, it is advisable to bookmark the page
for future reference. Gyms/Directions:
Our database has location information, driving directions, and a map for over
100 basketball venues. If a girls’ travel team is scheduled into a venue not
in our database, we update the database to keep it current. Contact
Info: This page contains contact information for the Girls Travel
Director as well as other Board members and volunteer leaders of RYBA. Tournament Info Pages: While we know which weekends we will play
tournaments and generally where they will be, we don't know the details of
game times and specific locations until about 10 days before tournaments.
Within 24 hours of the detailed tournament information becoming available, we
publish a tournament information page on our website and communicate a link
to that page to travel families via an email chain. The tournament info page
will have brackets (game times) for each team, as well as a link to the
Gym/Directions page for each game site.
Our playing time policy tries to
achieve the balance between development and competition. We give each coach
discretion over a portion of playing time as both a motivational and competitive
tool.
Every Travel player should receive, as minimum playing time, an amount equal
to half the minutes available in the first 3/4s of the game, which calculates
to 10.5 minutes per 28 minute game. The remaining time is distributed at the
coach’s discretion.
For 5th grade and younger travel teams, players should receive equal playing
time for games through January 1st, as the team forms and the coaches get to
know the players. If a player is shorted playing time in a game, the coach
should look for opportunities to make up the shorted time as soon as
possible.
A travel coach may, at their discretion, restrict playing time in the event
that a player cannot or does not meet reasonable requirements for attending
and participating in practices. This restriction should be communicated to
parents or guardians prior to the game.
A parent may request a reduction in minimum playing time to benefit or meet
the needs of their child. This decision is revocable at any time by the
parent.
Because of the competitive and
fast paced nature of basketball, it is not difficult to get swept up in the
emotion of the game - especially when our own children are competing. Still,
RYBA expects coaches, players and fans to moderate their enthusiasm with
sportsmanship. Everyone involved with travel basketball is expected to know
and comply with RYBA's Code
of Conduct.
The buzzer beater from half-court put the girls of Roseville over Totino-Grace by one point on Tuesday night.
The Back and Forth game came down to 2 seconds and a half court shot.
It made ESPN SportsCenter Top 10 plays of the day, play #5!!
See the Highlights on:
Fox Sports North.
WCCO.
Youtube.
