As many of you know, several years ago we substantially redesigned our program with the specific purpose of creating a best in class, year-round and community-based training program and experience in order to prepare our 7th and 8th grade players to play baseball at the highest levels for New Trier High School.  With those changes having taken root, we believe that our not-for-profit program, dubbed the “New Trier Feeder Baseball Program,” now exceeds the quality of those offered by the best “pay for play” organizations in our area while still permitting out athletes to play with their friends in their own communities, to be a part of what will be a true “feeder” program into New Trier, and to allow the significant number of multi-sport athletes in our community to be able to engage in other sports—all at significantly less than the all-in cost of what “pay for play,” for profit organizations charge.  

On the field, the program has been a rousing success.  We have won 14 MSBL and LSFBL league championships over the past several seasons, in one season winning all four LSFBL Pony leagues.

But most importantly, SIXTY (!!!!) of our alumni were selected to play baseball for New Trier High School this season—an amount exponentially larger than that of any other program.  (In addition, virtually every one of our alumni that tried out at Loyola also made a team this year).  Indeed, many of our freshman alumni were selected to play at the sophomore or junior varsity level in their first season, several of our alumni are poised to make the jump to varsity teams as sophomores, and an unprecedented five of our freshman were selected by NTHS Head Coach Mike Napoleon to play for his Wilmette Waves team this summer before ever playing an inning at NTHS.  That is not because NTHS favors our players; rather, it’s because our coaching staff, consisting largely of former New Trier players and coaches, knows exactly how to help our players prepare and develop so that they can be successful at New Trier and beyond.  It’s fun to win, but it is development that is our primary goal.

The Fall Tryout Program

Below you will find the details of this year’s fall program for incoming 13U and rising 14U (i.e.  current 13U) players.  That program, called the Fall Tryout Program, will be substantially similar to the program we have conducted for the last several years—to almost universal player and parent acclaim.  It is designed to help our evaluators see more of players than they would in two short tryouts, while still being flexible enough to allow multi-sport athletes to play their other, in-season sports.  While the Fall Tryout Program is optional, it is STRONGLY ENCOURAGED for players who intend to try out for the NTF Program.  Indeed, every single player selected for our teams in each of the last five seasons (and almost every WBA or NTTB 12U player) participated in the Fall Tryout Program.   

As usual, the Fall Tryout Program is scheduled to have three components.  First, beginning on Saturday, August 27, 2022 and continuing each Saturday thereafter through October 1, 2022 (but skipping September 3, 2022 this year), there will be intrasquad games for each of the levels at our home fields in Northfield, WJHS, and/or Winnetka, complete with senior umpires.  The 13U games will take place at 9:00 A.M. and 11:00 A.M., and the 14U games will take place at 1:00 P.M. and 3:00 P.M.    As in the past, each player will be invited to one of the two scrimmages at his or her age each Saturday, and all scrimmages will last 2 hours.   All game sessions are run by a combination of our tryout evaluators and our senior, professional coaches.    Each week’s scrimmage schedule assignments will be posted by the Wednesday preceding them.

Second, beginning on Monday, August 29, 2022 and on each Monday (other than Labor Day), Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday thereafter through September 29, 2022, there will be weekly skills sessions at each of the 13U and 14U levels, held from 4:30 P.M. - 6:00 P.M. at Northfield.  The 14U sessions will be held on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the 13U sessions will be held on Wednesdays and Thursdays.   Like the scrimmages, each player will attend only one of the skills sessions; unlike the scrimmages, each player can choose which of the two skills sessions at his or her age each week to participate in—the choice is yours, and you can make it differently on a week-to-week basis without any notification to us required.  (The session for each age level is exactly the same on both nights).  As with the scrimmages, all skills sessions are run by a combination of our tryout evaluators and our senior, professional coaches.

Third, the final tryout sessions will take place the week of Monday, October 3, 2022—more specifically (a) on Monday, October 3, 2022, Thursday, October 6, 2022, and Friday, October 7, 2022 from 4:30 P.M. - 10:00 P.M., and (b) on Saturday, October 8, 2022 and (if necessary) Sunday, October 9, 2022 from 9:00 A.M. - 5:00 P.M..    (To clarify—those are just the time blocks for the final week.  No one is going to have to be present at all of them—a complete schedule with assigned slots for every player within those blocks will be posted in the week leading us to the final tryout sessions).    Rosters will be announced immediately following the final session, and players will have 48 hours to claim their spots.    The cost of the Tryout Prep Program is $395, and there is no additional tryout fee.

Important Final Points:

A few final points about the program:

No parents, whether members of the New Trier Feeder Board or otherwise, are involved in training or evaluating our players or selecting our teams.  All decisions are made by our independent baseball coaches and evaluators.  Our program is a complete meritocracy.  As is made abundantly clear to all of the players on the first day of the program, the entire five week program is a tryout—that is, players are being evaluated throughout the five weeks, not simply at the final tryouts.    It is true that for our 14U players, there is a heavy emphasis on their 13U performance, but what happens in the fall does matter, in particular on the margins.  And at 13U, what happens in the Fall is all that matters—we strongly believe that 13U players should be given a clean slate at 13U and looked at anew, and as a result our coaches do not consider what team a player was on at 12U or how they performed at that level.  At all.

In addition, the Fall Tryout Program is intended for the competitive baseball player that intends to play at NTF and then go on to play baseball at NTHS (or Loyola or NSCD).   While (until we reach capacity, see below) we will not turn away registrants, we do ask that, as parents, you please consider carefully whether your player fits within that criteria.  Players are evaluated on a daily basis, the competition level of the program can be exceedingly high, and as a result parents often comment to us that the program is intensive and nerve-wracking.    Our answer is simply “yes, exactly.”  The high school tryout process is equally long and stressful.  Our job is to prepare our players for it, and this is part of that.    In addition, we strongly believe that our lengthy process improves our coaches’ decision quality by giving them a detailed body of work to review to make placement decisions, rather than the smaller sample size of simply a day or two. 

Finally, in each of the last few seasons, we have been massively oversubscribed, and have had to close registration early—usually after only a couple of weeks—as there is a limit to the amount of players our coaches can fairly evaluate.   For that reason, new this year, registration will open early for our current NTF players only, on Monday, July 25, 2022 at 10:00 A.M. on the website.    Registration for all other players will open on Wednesday, July 27, 2022, again at 10:00 A.M.    Thereafter, registration will remain open for all players until we hit capacity.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at info@newtrierfeederbaseball.org.

Drew Cardonick, on behalf of
New Trier Feeder Baseball

Congratulations to the SIXTY (!!!!) New Trier Feeder alumni selected to play for New Trier High School teams this season: