E O Coffman (Lawrence Co) should be pretty good this season. They have a pretty solid pitching rotation with, I believe, 5 travel ball players. They should be able to hit pretty well in the top 5 or 6,but not sure about the rest. Defense will need some shoring up from what i have seen. They lost a great leadoff hitter with blazing speed from last year and 1 other good bat, but thats all. They were pretty solid last year only losing to Summertown,who was stacked with a lot of 8th grd talent. They will definitely need some help from the 7th graders this year. They only had 14 or 15 tryout. WOW!!! But they still should be the strongest team in Lawrence Co.
As far as travel vs league or school ball, I believe not only are your travel ball players getting a lot more reps, but the coaching is a lot more experienced and organized than school or league. The practices at most travel teams, like the Comets, Worth,etc., are a lot more intense,organized,planned and detail oriented in instruction and teaching the game than most, not all, school and league practices.