| SOFTBALL TIPS |
|
|
|
| SITE STUFF |
|
|
|
|
ARCHIVES
|
| • |
June 26, 2005 |
| • |
July 03, 2005 |
| • |
July 10, 2005 |
| • |
July 17, 2005 |
| • |
July 24, 2005 |
| • |
July 31, 2005 |
| • |
August 07, 2005 |
| • |
August 14, 2005 |
| • |
August 21, 2005 |
| • |
August 28, 2005 |
| • |
September 11, 2005 |
| • |
October 02, 2005 |
| • |
October 09, 2005 |
| • |
October 23, 2005 |
| • |
October 30, 2005 |
| • |
November 06, 2005 |
| • |
November 13, 2005 |
| • |
December 04, 2005 |
| • |
December 18, 2005 |
| • |
December 25, 2005 |
| • |
January 08, 2006 |
| • |
January 15, 2006 |
| • |
January 29, 2006 |
| • |
February 05, 2006 |
| • |
February 12, 2006 |
| • |
February 19, 2006 |
| • |
February 26, 2006 |
| • |
March 05, 2006 |
| • |
March 12, 2006 |
| • |
March 19, 2006 |
| • |
March 26, 2006 |
| • |
April 02, 2006 |
| • |
April 09, 2006 |
| • |
April 16, 2006 |
| • |
April 23, 2006 |
| • |
April 30, 2006 |
| • |
May 07, 2006 |
| • |
May 14, 2006 |
| • |
May 21, 2006 |
| • |
May 28, 2006 |
| • |
June 04, 2006 |
| • |
June 11, 2006 |
| • |
June 18, 2006 |
| • |
June 25, 2006 |
| • |
July 09, 2006 |
| • |
July 16, 2006 |
| • |
July 23, 2006 |
| • |
July 30, 2006 |
| • |
August 13, 2006 |
| • |
August 20, 2006 |
| • |
September 03, 2006 |
| • |
September 10, 2006 |
| • |
September 17, 2006 |
| • |
September 24, 2006 |
| • |
October 01, 2006 |
| • |
October 08, 2006 |
| • |
October 15, 2006 |
| • |
October 22, 2006 |
| • |
November 12, 2006 |
| • |
November 26, 2006 |
| • |
December 31, 2006 |
| • |
January 14, 2007 |
| • |
January 21, 2007 |
| • |
January 28, 2007 |
| • |
February 04, 2007 |
| • |
February 11, 2007 |
| • |
February 18, 2007 |
| • |
February 25, 2007 |
| • |
March 04, 2007 |
| • |
March 11, 2007 |
| • |
March 18, 2007 |
| • |
April 01, 2007 |
| • |
April 08, 2007 |
| • |
April 15, 2007 |
| • |
April 22, 2007 |
| • |
April 29, 2007 |
| • |
May 06, 2007 |
| • |
May 13, 2007 |
| • |
May 20, 2007 |
| • |
May 27, 2007 |
| • |
June 03, 2007 |
| • |
June 10, 2007 |
| • |
June 17, 2007 |
| • |
June 24, 2007 |
| • |
July 01, 2007 |
| • |
July 22, 2007 |
| • |
July 29, 2007 |
| • |
August 12, 2007 |
| • |
August 19, 2007 |
| • |
September 02, 2007 |
| • |
September 16, 2007 |
| • |
September 30, 2007 |
| • |
October 07, 2007 |
| • |
October 14, 2007 |
| • |
October 21, 2007 |
| • |
November 04, 2007 |
| • |
November 18, 2007 |
| • |
November 25, 2007 |
| • |
December 02, 2007 |
| • |
December 09, 2007 |
| • |
December 16, 2007 |
| • |
January 13, 2008 |
| • |
February 17, 2008 |
| • |
February 24, 2008 |
| • |
March 02, 2008 |
| • |
March 09, 2008 |
| • |
March 30, 2008 |
| • |
April 06, 2008 |
| • |
April 13, 2008 |
| • |
April 20, 2008 |
| • |
April 27, 2008 |
| • |
May 04, 2008 |
| • |
May 11, 2008 |
| • |
May 18, 2008 |
| • |
May 25, 2008 |
| • |
June 01, 2008 |
| • |
June 15, 2008 |
| • |
June 22, 2008 |
| • |
June 29, 2008 |
| • |
July 06, 2008 |
| • |
July 13, 2008 |
| • |
July 20, 2008 |
| • |
August 03, 2008 |
| • |
August 10, 2008 |
| • |
August 17, 2008 |
| • |
August 24, 2008 |
| • |
August 31, 2008 |
| • |
September 07, 2008 |
| • |
September 14, 2008 |
| • |
September 21, 2008 |
| • |
September 28, 2008 |
| • |
October 05, 2008 |
| • |
October 12, 2008 |
| • |
October 19, 2008 |
| • |
October 26, 2008 |
| • |
November 02, 2008 |
| • |
November 09, 2008 |
| • |
November 16, 2008 |
| • |
November 30, 2008 |
| • |
December 07, 2008 |
| • |
December 21, 2008 |
| • |
December 28, 2008 |
| • |
February 15, 2009 |
| • |
February 22, 2009 |
| • |
April 12, 2009 |
| • |
April 19, 2009 |
| • |
April 26, 2009 |
| • |
May 03, 2009 |
| • |
May 10, 2009 |
| • |
May 17, 2009 |
| • |
May 24, 2009 |
| • |
May 31, 2009 |
| • |
June 07, 2009 |
| • |
June 14, 2009 |
| • |
June 21, 2009 |
| • |
July 05, 2009 |
| • |
July 12, 2009 |
| • |
July 19, 2009 |
| • |
August 02, 2009 |
| • |
August 30, 2009 |
| • |
September 06, 2009 |
| • |
September 20, 2009 |
| • |
October 04, 2009 |
| • |
October 11, 2009 |
| • |
October 18, 2009 |
| • |
November 08, 2009 |
| • |
November 15, 2009 |
| • |
November 22, 2009 |
| • |
November 29, 2009 |
| • |
December 27, 2009 |
| • |
January 03, 2010 |
| • |
January 10, 2010 |
| • |
January 17, 2010 |
| • |
January 24, 2010 |
| • |
January 31, 2010 |
| • |
March 14, 2010 |
| • |
March 21, 2010 |
| • |
March 28, 2010 |
| • |
April 04, 2010 |
| • |
April 18, 2010 |
| • |
April 25, 2010 |
|
|
| SOFTBALL LINKS |
|
|
|
One Other Pony Nationals Story
by Dave
Thursday, July 26, 2007
I almost forgot to mention a little anecdote I have from the Pony National championship tournament. I give it to you with a little reluctance because I cannot guarantee whether anything inappropriate happened or not. I share it with you because it highlights a little gap in the way rules are applied.
Last year at Pony Nationals, my wife got a little sick of competing for the one washer-drier pair at our hotel. She went out driving and located her favorite laundromat on the planet. When we returned to Ohio this year, she resolved to completely skip the hotel laundry room and head straight for it. Apparently she was not the only person to avail herself of this particular very clean, well-run laundry.
Once, while waiting for the uniforms to finish washing, she encountered the mother of a girl from another team. The team had done well enough in pool play but had bumped into an extremely talented team which had soundly defeated them. She noted that she thought her daughter's team had a decent chance of making some noise in the tournament. Then she got diarrhea of the mouth and said something I believe she wished she hadn't.
The woman at the laundromat claimed "we have a chance to win this tournament" and then noted that one of the girls had brought her older, ace-pitching sister with her. I don't know the age of the girl nor her ability level but this woman said the kid sister's uniform fit the older sister perfectly and perhaps she might be trying it on very soon, as soon as bracket play began. If you're not getting me, let me say it outright. This woman said her daughter's team was going to use an illegally aged super pitcher because they were there to win, period.
So you think this sort of thing doesn't happen? The only thing I'm sure of is, if this did actually take place, it is neither the first nor last time it has happened or will happen in youth competitive sports. It is a travesty because the lessons learned by the team, which clearly knows the age of the girl in question, completely wipes out any of the good which has been gained by participating in sports.
Several weeks ago, we played a team in the seeding round of a small tournament. This particular team was from several hundred miles outside our area. I'm not sure why they came all that way to play a tournament but come they did. The team was a little weaker than we expected and we beat them pretty easily in the seeding round. Then we got them again in the elimination round but this time they had a pitcher we couldn't hit.
The team was playing 12U and, after they eliminated us, the coaches and parents told us that they were an 11 year old team. I was struck by this comment because although I could clearly see that the majority of the team was young, the ace pitcher clearly was not. She had at least four years worth of pitching lessons at a high level under her belt. Her mechanics were pretty much flawless for an "11 year old." She threw a bona fide 55, reaching near 57 on occassion. Her control of all pitches was impeccable. She walked not a single batter. She would typically go up 0-2 and then throw a ball just 9 inches off the plate on a drop-curve. Most of our batters flailed hopelessly and went down. My daughter, a very accomplished hitter, was the only one who could touch her. She drilled a double off the kid and you should have seen the look on her face when that happened. To say she was surprised is an extreme understatement.
Now I do not know the age of the pitcher but there is one thing I'm certain of. She was NOT 11 years old as the team told us she was. The birth certificate she was on most definitely said she was 11 but the girl was not that age. I've spent quite a lot of time around girls this age (Pony Nationals had around 700 of them in the house). What I look at is their physical development, particularly muscle definition, and, most of all, facial characteristics. You can tell a girl's age largely by facial characteristics, including expressions, fairly easily even when they are otherwise early bloomers. Muscular development can vary quite a bit but even amongst very high caliber athletes (pre-Olympic), I've never seen this kind of development in even an older 12 year old (say January birthday). This girl's muscle definition was off kilter. This girl had the facial characteristics of a 14 year old, perhaps 15. Her pitching would have been just about right for a very good 14 year old.
Besides looking at her face and muscle development in a vacuum, one had the entire rest of the team with which to compare her. The other kids looked like 11s in terms of faces and muscles, though they were clearly an older 11 year old team. This girl was different on all accounts. She didn't look or act like the other girls. And there was another kid on the sidelines who just happened to be about the right age. She also happened to look enough like her to be her sibling. She seemed a little out of sorts like she belonged on the team but just didn;t have a uniform. She sat quietly, maybe even a little dejected. It seemed odd. Other girls on the team kept looking at her sitting on the sidelines. After the game she joined up with the other girls while the big kid seemed disinterested in talking to anyone.
Given the ability level of this particular pitcher, I would have expected this team to play some type of competition which culminated in one of the bigger sanctioning bodies' championships. In conversations with the team, we learned that they decided not to play any of those (ASA, NSA, PONY, FAST) and instead raised money to make the trip to our state just to play this tournament which was not a qualifier for anything. I can't prove the girl was over the age limit and I don't really much care. I didn't mind our team being eliminated. But something just didn't feel right.
You know, in softball, the age stuff is basically supported by the honor method. A birth certificate cannot provide any real level of certainty unless it is closely scrutinized and the scrutinizer is absolutely certain that the person on the paper is the person in the uniform. There is dishonesty everywhere. I am not so naive that I expect everyone to be completely honest. And I know this stuff goes on because I have witnessed it first hand.
Some years ago, we were watching a 10U game and saw a very large girl playing. My youngest daughter has a kid on her current 10U team who stands at 5 foot 8 inches tall, weighs somewhere near 150-175 (a girl never tells), and can crush the ball when she gets ahold of it. But her musculature belies her youth and her coordination is not great as her nerves are working overtime to keep up with her height. Her facial expressions are age appropriate. Still, she's had her age questioned in 10U ball since she was 8!
The girl I saw several years ago was just as tall as the girl on my daughter's current team but she was easily 50 pounds heavier, had some muscular definition which was highly unusual for the age, threw about 53-55 miles per hour with good accuracy, hit several balls 200+ feet, and wore the facial expression of an older girl. I never thought to question the her age. I simply accepted it and moved on. I was naive then.
Several months later I heard that someone on the girl's team had reported her birth certificate had been falsified. The sanctioning body investigated, found that indeed it had, removed the girl from ever playing under its authority again and did basically the same thing to the coaches involved because they had been found to be involved in the scheme.
So I'm coming to a point here and I think it is extremely important for all to consider what I'm about to say. Softball ain't the only sport around these here parts. Soccer and basketball, for two, are more well developed across the nation as a whole. They have encountered this problem quite a bit before and the way in which they deal with it is a more well developed mechanism for insuring age restrictions are followed than what softball does.
It is my understanding that some sports sanctioning bodies, particularly in basketball and soccer, require a much more rigorous proof of age than a simple birth certificate. They require some sort of age guarantee affadavit, signed by persons who can suffer penalties if the document is falsified. They also require a photo ID which stays with the kid for the year and is presented before all competitions. This is certainly costly but I believe it is the bare minimum needed to prevent (or almost prevent) the sort of cheating which has become far too commonplace at too many youth sports events.
Please understand that the issue I'm referring to is something which can never be entirely prevented. Siblings often look so much alike that you can easily confuse one older with another younger. And if people want to get around the rules, they certainly can. But I would like to see the sort of last minute "surprise substitutions" alluded to by the woman in the laudromat be prevented. Personally, I think it's silly to have your kid play down an age category in any circumstance. It bores me more than horrifies me that this can happen. But I believe this is something which sanctioning bodies should at least examine to see if things can be tightened up a bit.Labels: rules
 
|
|
|
