This isn't a huge deal, but I've been curious for a while now what everyone's take is on "travel" teams (more from a definition standpoint)? I see the term tossed out in various threads and always wonder how the poster views that terminology.

In our city (rather large), a travel team would be considered a team that goes out of state on a regular basis. Our team "travels" all the time to various gyms, suburbs, and cities around our state, but I wouldn't consider us to be a travel team. We play teams from other states in some of the tourneys, but don't go out of state on a regular basis.

Around here I hear the following terms used...

club team
travel team
aau team

Most people I talk to have a different definition of what that really means and have different viewpoints of what it means. I wouldn't make any assumptions on the type of team they are really on unless you ask specifically.

Another one is "youth teams"... I know some people that consider their 9th and 10th graders a youth team. And other that think youth is only kids that are 3rd grade or below.

When talking with coaches I often forget that my definition of "youth" might be different than theirs.

I think of Youth Teams as kids in the 5th grade and below.....

We had what we called Junior Demons.... 6-7-8th grade teams and they traveled to neighboring schools / towns. They also played in a couple of tourneys so they got to play vs a lot of outside teams. We never traveled out of state though.

Now, like Jeff, I hear AAU, Club and travel teams. I think a lot of that has to do with where you live. I live in a NW suburb of Chicago so there are a lot of towns in our area and they all play ball.