I'm in NC and we start Mar.1, play all-stars and travel ball thru end of July, and start back up late August for Fall ball that runs thru early Nov. This is for 7 year olds. Travel ball is fairly prevalent by 8 or 9, but is very fragmented and somewhat unstructured, which hurts baseball as a whole.

Soccer is the opposite, with very large organized clubs providing the travel aspect. As a result, and with a lot of competition from lacrosse, we see a lot of kids play baseball at 7, 8 or 9 and they are not playing by 11 or 12. Rec coaching is not very good by 11 or 12 because most of the baseball people's kids play travel ball, which also feeds into it.