The East Cobb Baseball program is recognized as one of the top travel organizations in the country. In addition to operating over 50 travel baseball teams, East Cobb also hosts a variety of tournaments and clinics at their state of the art baseball complex. The organization has been around for about 35 years and remains committed to a very specific mission.
East Cobb strives to provide their players with a youth baseball experience that will allow them to advance to collegiate and professional levels of baseball. Having said that, their primary goal is to pass along the integrity of the game to their players and provide them with life lessons throughout their baseball journey. East Cobb is able to do all of this effectively by providing their players with a suitable learning environment, top competition, and an enjoyable baseball experience. These values and principles guide East Cobb’s everyday operations and long term planning, which is a main reason for their continued success.
Unlike some organizations that rely heavily on a paid coaching staff, East Cobb is mostly represented by volunteers that coach and oversee events. ECB doesn’t select just any volunteer though. In order to land a coaching position, the individual must be able to demonstrate their baseball knowledge and experience. These volunteers are committed to the players and willingly dedicate countless hours of their time.
The combination of the talented players, dedicated volunteers, supportive parents, and ECB’s leadership are what make this program so special.
East Cobb Baseball Complex
East Cobb runs its operations out of a multi-million dollar facility located in the Atlanta metro area. The complex contains eight baseball fields, indoor and outdoor batting cages, meeting rooms, dugouts, and living quarters for out of town players.
With a large number of quality fields within the same complex, the facility is suitable for some of the largest and highest level tournaments in the country. Perfect Game uses their facility for a number of WWBA and championship level tournaments. As a result, some of the top players in the country and many future MLB stars pass through this facility every year.
In addition to tournament events, the complex is also home to a number of training clinics. For instance, East Cobb is currently hosting a four week clinic for position players ages 8 through 18. During this training event, players will receive personalized defensive and hitting instruction from East Cobb’s highly experienced coaching staff.
ECB is a non profit organization that operates within strict budgetary guidelines with the goal of breaking even every year. ECB’s revenue comes from a variety of different channels including contributions, sponsorships, tournament fees, on site clinics, player registration fees, and fundraising efforts.
Travel Baseball Teams
East Cobb operates over 50 travel baseball teams spanning across eleven divisions. Organizations have different names for it, but a division is essentially an age group. The youngest age group that East Cobb offers is 8U and continues through 18U. For most of the divisions, there are four to five teams per age group.
The Astros are considered the premier team within each division and often feature the top talent in the greater Atlanta area. This past year the East Cobb Astros Navy 17U team was ranked 3rd in the nation by Perfect Game. The team had runner up finishes at the BCS National Championship, PG Elite Championship, and 18U WWBA National Championship.
Every year, East Cobb holds tryouts at their complex for players ages 8 through 18. Based off of their performance at the tryout and the coaching staff’s evaluation, the players are placed into the different travel teams. No matter the team, players have ample opportunities for player development through a combination of instruction and high level competition. A typical East Cobb travel baseball team will cover a wide geographic region to play in some of the top tournaments in the nation. In total, players can expect to play around 50 games.
Over the past 35 years, East Cobb has secured 262 national championships since their first Pony World Series Championship in 1985. Sure, these championships span across a variety of different tournaments and age ranges, but 262 is a pretty astounding number. The full list of East Cobb players that have reached the MLB level is pretty lengthy, so we’ve provided a few below to close out this article.
- Javier Baez – Chicago Cubs
- Charlie Culberson – Atlanta Braves
- Tyler Flowers – Atlanta Braves
- Dexter Fowler – St. Louis Cardinals
- Jason Heyward – Chicago Cubs
- Nick Markakis – Atlanta Braves
- Buster Posey – San Francisco Giants
- Dansby Swanson – Atlanta Braves
- Zack Wheeler – Philadelphia Phillies
