Nobody goes into travel ball thinking “I can't wait to share a hotel hallway with 14 families who all have different definitions of bedtime.” And yet here we are.
The Room Selection
You will be given a room between two other baseball families. The one on the left has four kids who treat the hallway like a batting cage. The one on the right has a parent who sets an alarm for 5:15 AM and showers like they're training for the Olympics. The walls are made of suggestions.
Pro tip: request a room at the end of the hall. It won't help, but at least you'll only have noise from one side.
The Continental Breakfast
At 6:45 AM, the breakfast room will look like the floor of the Stock Exchange. Fifteen families competing for seven waffle irons. Kids in full uniform eating cereal like it's their last meal. Someone's dad is making six trips to the juice machine. There is exactly one banana left and two people reaching for it.
The coffee is terrible. You will drink three cups of it. It is the only thing standing between you and a felony.
The Pool Situation
After a 97-degree doubleheader, every kid on every team discovers the pool simultaneously. The pool has a capacity of 15 people. There are now 40 children in it. The lifeguard is a 17-year-old who did not sign up for this. “No diving” has been yelled 11 times. No one has stopped diving.
At least three parents are sitting poolside in their tournament chairs because the hotel chairs are wet. Someone brought a Bluetooth speaker. The Veteran is asleep in the corner.
The Team Dinner
Fourteen families will attempt to eat at the same restaurant. They will not have a reservation. The hostess will look at the group like they just announced a hostile takeover. There will be a 45-minute wait. Three families will break off and go to Chick-fil-A. The rest will wait and end up at a table so long it wraps around a corner.
The bill will take 35 minutes to split. Someone will have left before their card was charged. The coach will pick it up because the coach always picks it up.
The Hallway After 10 PM
There will be running. There will be a ball being thrown. There will be a door that opens and closes 47 times in 12 minutes. Someone's kid is doing slides in socks on the tile. The ice machine will be used as a gathering spot. Room service will be called by exactly one family — the family that has been doing this long enough to not leave the room after 8 PM.
By 10:30, the group chat will have a message that says “KIDS IN ROOMS PLEASE.” It will be ignored.
The Checkout
You will leave behind at least one item. A phone charger. A cleat. A half-eaten bag of Goldfish behind the nightstand. You will not realize this until you are 90 minutes into the drive home. You will not go back for it. It belongs to the hotel now.
The parking lot will be full of families in various stages of car Tetris, trying to fit bags, chairs, coolers, and a pop-up tent back into a vehicle they swear was bigger on the drive there.
Every miserable hotel weekend becomes a story your kid tells for years. You're not just booking a room — you're building a memory. An expensive, sleep-deprived, waffle-based memory.
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