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Surviving Your First Rec Season!
by Dave
Friday, February 16, 2007
So, you've signed up your sleepy 6, 7, 8 or 9 year old daughter for the recreational softball league. You and your daughter went to "tryouts" which were basically s skill assessment so the league can put together balanced teams. She was picked for a team and the coach called to tell you she was on his team and practices will start whenever weather permits. Your darling daughter is so excited about the prospect of playing softball, whatever softball is, that she is besides herself. These are great days - cherish them always. And begin taking some steps which will make the most of this first golden moment.
The first thing I'm going to tell you is to prepare to open your wallet. Young girls and boys like to get "stuff" which they can hold dear for their activities. You can open your wallet as much or as little as you like depending upon your means. But prepare to open it some.
The first thing you'll probably need are shoes. Try to get the best fitting pair of cleats you can. Comfortable shoes are important for a softball player's enjoyment of the game. Think about church for a moment. I don't know about you but my worst remembrances of church were the uncomfortable pair of shoes I was forced to wedge my feet into. Softball is more so since you have to stand in the field for interminable minutes and if your feet hurt, it makes a boring, uncomfortable experience even worse. If she absolutely will not wear cleats, that's OK. Sneakers will do in a pinch. One of my kids refused to wear cleats and it didn't affect her game at all.
Next, your daughter will need a fielding glove. Buy the best one you can afford. If she has a good glove, it can last for several years - so the cost is mitigated. Get one just bigger than you think she needs but not so heavy that she can't comfortably lift her hand while wearing it. Purchase some oil so you can soften it for her. I know lots of people like that stuff you use to coat the mitt before you cook it in the oven. I'm sure that's great but I prefer oil since putting a little oil on the glove periodically keeps it soft and in good shape. I disagree with the folks who claim the chief benefit of the oven softener is it doesn't add weight to the glove. Pick up a container of oil and explain to me how putting one fourth of it on the glove will add more than an ounce or two.
After you bring that glove home, explain to your daughter that before she can use it, you need to oil it and then it has to dry for a few days. She'll want to store it in her room or keep it in her bed. She's going to treasure that thing. Let her sit and watch you oil it. Get out some newspapers and paper towels. Sit down at the kitchen table with the mitt on top of the newspapers and slowly drip the oil onto various parts of the mitt. Work it all over the glove so that the color darkens a bit. Make sure not to ignore the laces. You'll have to drip a tiny spec of oil into all the little openings but you don't want to drench the darn thing because her hands will get greasy when she uses it.
Once you have oiled the mitt, scrunch it up and pound it as much as you can. These things are made to get beat up. The more abuse you can put on it, the softer it is going to be. I like to pound a ball into it a couple tens of thousands of times so it develops a good pocket and becomes very flexible. If there is somebody around who throws reasonably hard, I use the mitt first and catch for twenty or so minutes with that hard thrower so I can soften the thing properly.
You might also consider getting your daughter a bat. I'm not claiming that she needs to have her own bat but if she gets uses to swinging the same stick every time, she'll probably enjoy the experience more. You don't need to get an expensive bat unless your daughter is going to have her first experiences with an ASA "A" level 10U team. The idea is just to get her a stick which is small enough for her to swing comfortably. I'm not going to go into the specifics of how to but a bat here. Just get something light and don't spend a lot on it - you don't need to. And she's probably going to want something better at a later date. Stay way from "tee-ball bats" unless the league requires it. These don't take much abuse before they dent. Buy a fastpitch softball bat say about 26-28 inches long and weighing 14-18 ounces. Let your daughter know right away that she can let her friends use it if they ask. It's hers to do with as she pleases and since you didn't spend a lot of money, don't worry about somebody breaking it.
Next up, I strongly suggest you buy some balls and a batting tee. The size and type of balls varies by recreational league. Check with yours and see if you can get the same kind. Also buy a dozen or so whiffle balls (around 11 inches) for the batting tee and other kinds of batting practice. We'll get into that in a moment. And get a can of tennis balls while you are at it - I'll explain below.
If you cannot find out what kind of balls the league uses, do not despair. If the play is for age ten and under (an assumption for this particular article), get yourself 11 inch yellow "softee" softballs and maybe a regulation 11 inch regular softball or two. The league may use ten inch bouncy balls but there's really no harm in getting balls which are too big. Players generally do not injure their arms throwing with a ball that is oversized. In fact, arm-injury-recovering ball players often deliberately use heavier, bigger balls because they aid in recovery. For example, Chicago White Sox pitcher Jose Contreras often keeps 12 inch softballs in the bullpen to use when warming up precisely because they help avoid injury.
I advise you to get "softee" balls because they provide a way to have a catch without the pain usually associated with getting hit by a ball - an experience which can end a career before it gets going. Plan to play catch with your daughter as frequently as your busy schedule allows. These games of catch will provide all sorts of opportunities for you and your daughter to get to know one another better so enjoy them and make them as frequent as you can. To have a proper catch, there are two elements for your daughter. One is teaching her to throw properly. The other is the opposite side of the equation - catching.
Catching takes a lot of experiences. Be patient. Throw the ball to her softly and underhand at first. Teach her to at least hit the ball with her mitt - to protect herself using the glove. Actually I just realized I am ahead of myself. You don't need to use the soft balls or mitts to have a useful game of catch. Try having a bare-handed game of catch using the tennis balls first. And keep this in mind as your daughter begins to practice and play but still has trouble using the darned mitt. The best way to teach catching is to put down the mitts at least for awhile and just throw any old ball around. This enhances the hand-eye coordination needed. If the tennis balls give you trouble, use the whiffle balls. I can't give you a thesis on how to teach catching but suffice it to say from the knees up, fingers point up or to the sides and from the knees down, fingers point down. There isn't so much technique to learn at this stage as there is a need for lots of repetition. Make it easy for her at first and then ever so slightly more difficult. Build confidence first and ability second. And encourage two handed catching.
Throwing mechanics are more difficult to teach but require less discussion and more hands on than catching. I've done this before but I'll go into some details here to make it a little easier for you.
First the ball grip. The ball should be placed in front of her with the laces forming the letter C. She places her four fingers on top of the laces and the thumb underneath. There should be a small gap between the ball and the area between thumb and index finger. The ball should be held firmly but loosely. It should never be able to drop out of her hand but you should be able to remove it easily. Grip is essential so don't ignore this. You daughter should practice taking the ball out of her mitt while obtaining the proper grip. Look at first but then do it without looking.
Now, stand your daughter up sideways with the ball in her glove and her throwing hand gripping it. Have her pull her hands apart and make what is best described as a weak version of the sign an NFL official would make after a field goal. The elbows should be bent at 90 degree angles. If she looks at her glove hand, she is seeing the back of the mitt and if she looks beyond that, she should be looking at her throwing target. Her throwing hand should similarly have knuckles facing her face. The ball is pointing upwards slightly at say a 45 degree angle.
Now to make a throw, she should step with her glove side foot - just a little step - and as she drops her glove hand straight downwards, she rotates her shoulders towards the target while swinging her throwing shoulder with emphasis and snapping her elbow and wrist so that she ends up releasing the ball towards the target and pulls her throwing hand down towards her glove side knee - slightly across her body. At this point, one of the things to watch for is that she doesn't collapse her elbow into her side and push the ball with her hand. Keep her elbow as high as she can, ideally straight out (perpendicular) from her body.
(As an aside, a sure fir sign that a kid's parents are disinterested in her softball playing is an elbow that collapses during the throw. It shows that the parents didn't care enough to play catch with her.)
The wrist snap in kids is critical ... and rarely executed. One way you can work on this aspect of throwing is to have her rest on her knees on the soft ground or a spare base or some such, and just do snaps. Have her hold the ball in her hand as she would when making a throw but have her glove side hand cup her elbow out in front of her. Cock the wrist back so that it gets closer to her face. Then simply snap it forward and throw the ball. You catch about 10-15 feet away.
That pretty much covers what a beginner thrower should work on. A very easy way to have fun playing softball while working on throwing with a beginner without having to deal with the problems of catching a thrown ball is to emphasize ground balls. All you have to do is roll the ball to your daughter and have her throw it back. But while she is doing it, maybe we could just say a few words about fielding mechanics so she doesn't develop too many bad habits.
Teach your daughter a reasonable ready position. Ready position does not involve leaning on your hands which are resting on your knees. Keep feet more than shoulder distance apart and flex the knees while keeping the butt down. The throwing hand side foot is slightly back from the glove hand foot. The back should be rigidly up, not hunched. It won't be completely vertical but should not be hunched over. I think the best way to describe this is about 10 degrees off vertical. Weight should be on the balls of the feet and the toes. The heels can be touching the ground but do not need to be. When you are in good ready position, you are ready to come forwards. Now roll the ball slowly to your daughter in her ready position. Have her step with her glove side foot so as to keep the ball coming to a point between her feet. For a righty, this means, she steps past the end point of the ball with her left foot. Her right leg will become extended and her upper body will move closer to the ground. She opens her mitt to the direction of the ball and lets it roll into her glove while bringing her throwing hand in behind it and getting the throwing grip.
Next she hops from her current position, just a little, into that throwing position. Try it yourself several times before you teach it to her. Regarding the "hop into throwing position," keep in mind that when she is standing in ready position, her toes are pointing at you, her eventual throwing target. If you examine the throwing mechanics closely, you will notice that her back foot's instep was pointing at the throwing target. This is one of those transitions which is difficult to teach young girls. But it is absolutely critical that you do so.
I've seen this taught in a number of ways and all of them go in slow motion. Basically, have her retrieve the ground ball which results in her weight being on the glove hand side foot. Now she steps beyond that front foot in the awkward position of placing it down with the instep facing the throwing target. Next she steps forward with the throwing hand side foot and makes the throw in slow motion. Again, try it yourself first and then teach her. Do it slowly to get the basic mechanics down right. Then have her do it very slowly many times so she gets the logic of it. After a lot of trial, she can do it more quickly so it isn't in slow motion and eventually changes from a step to a hop.
More important than any of these fundamentals is this point. Motor memory takes a lot of repetition to set in. Do a lot of ground balls. Do a lot of catching practice. Provide your daughter the opportunity to throw as often as possible.
Most likely your daughter is unaccustomed to throwing things. It is critical for you to get her as much practice as possible so she learns to throw in a manner which won't damage her arm. The only thing worse than standing around in badly fitting cleats is nursing a sore arm during practice. Make a plan to play catch for at least 15 minutes 3 times a week. If you can go longer or more frequently, that's better. But do not make the mistake of throwing for a very long time once each week. Four days of 15-30 minutes is better than 1 day of two hours.
Batting practice is something every parent usually tries to do. But cut your ambition for these sessions and focus on making them fun. Use the whiffle balls and tennis balls so your batting practices are not abbreviated by stinging hands. You can do batting practice in your yard if you stick with the whiffle balls. Keep your pitching as accurate as possible by standing close to her. If you've got a batting tee, use that some. Keep it varied so she doesn't get bored.
I won't give you a step by step beginner batting guide here but the things you want to emphasize are balance in the stance, relaxed position, and taking as strong a swing as possible without moving the head all over the place. I suggest teaching her to stand with feet shoulder width apart with the bat resting on her back shoulder. Hands are knuckles out and up with the bat resting between the palms. Now lift the bat barrel so it is about 4-6 inches off the shoulder. The elbows should be pointing down at the ground - the back elbow should NOT be pointing backwards. Your daughter takes a small step of say 6 inches or less which is more for accomplishing a very slight weight shift backwards and timing than it is to accomplish forward momentum.
Indulge me by letting me reiterate a couple of points. First, the step forward (which is not necessary by the way) does not accomplish forward momentum except in over-40 beer leagues. I once had to disabuse my daughter's coach of that notion but we'll talk about coaches later. Any step should occur prior to the pitcher's release of the ball. Secondly, the back elbow does NOT point backwards. This is a technique taught by well-meaning fathers who "played ball" when they were kids and think they understand the game. Rather the two elbows should be approximately the same position which is most like the way you think the front arm should look. Elbows are pointing down and the arms are with an elbow bend which is around a 45 degree angle - half a right angle.
When you have your daughter actually swing the bat, don't worry so much about her bat speed. Instead focus on her keeping her head "quiet," still, unmoving. You cannot hit a speeding ball without vectoring it - seeing it from two points - the two eyes. If the two points from which you are vectoring are in motion, how are you supposed to accurately judge where the ball is going? Teach her not to swing so hard that her head moves. The power of the swing comes from the hips and shoulders and should not be accomplished by stepping hard or jerking the body so hard that you cause the head to jolt around. Go for smooth instead. If you get to games and just cannot stand the weakness of her swing, maybe her bat is too heavy or maybe she just needs to swing it more frequently. Please, please, please do not teach her a violent swing - you can't later undo the damage that does.
So that's it for basic throwing, catching, fielding and swinging. If there are any clinics in your area which are for the specific age of your kid, sign up for them. Go to everything your league sponsors. But if there is anything else, try that too. High schools and colleges often conduct softball clinics for very young girls. These are usually pretty cheap and your daughter will have a great time. Keep in mind that what I'm talking about here is basic, beginner clinics only. The time may come when you want something more sophisticated but we're talking about a first year player here.
Plan to attend as many games and practices as possible. If you can't make all the games, I have only one question for you - why not? You'd better give me a good answer or I'll be coming to get you. The bare minimum for parents of kids playing recreational sports is an honest attempt to make every game. I've coached long enough to see some parents who only come to a quarter of the team's games. That's inexcusable. Some of these games are on Saturday afternoons. Why exactly can you not make those?
If you set your expectations very low, you will thoroughly enjoy these games - they are remarkably funny and enjoyable. And don't pay any attention to the score. That way when your daughter asks you who won that game (trust me she won't know if you don't tell her), you'll be able to honestly look her in the face and say "I don't know - I think it was a tie." I have a friend who coached and told his 10 year old team every game was a tie until the last game when they won. Years later those kids tell me how unusual it was that they tied almost every game that year. One of these days I imagine they'll figure it out.
I would also advise you to be a presence at practices, if you can, especially the early ones. If the coach needs some assistance, she or he will probably ask you to help out. It doesn't matter whether you have any softball knowledge to share. At this point practice is not very sophisticated. You have all the knowledge you need if you've ever watched a single softball or baseball game. Actually, if you are reading this site and have gotten this far into this piece, you are probably more qualified than the coach! If you are phsyically capable of rolling a ball fifteen feet and walking 30 to retrieve the overthrown ball, you can help out.
If, on the other hand, your kid tells you she doesn't want you to stay at practices, just stay in the car. This is her thing after all. You don't have to be there per se, but don't leave. If you leave, you'll miss the only opportunity you have to watch her grow up without actually participating in the process. There are no other opportunities to be a fly on the wall of your child's life.
If you have a video recorder, plan to use it. Buy tons of spare tapes or disks, perhaps an extra battery. You will treasure these artifacts of your kid's childhood for decades. One of my daughters is becoming a big time pitcher. My most treasured possession is a tape of her first pitching outing a full two years before she had any lessons. It is so comical I can't begin to tell you. She blooped her first 12 pitches so far from the strike zone that both coaches had to retrieve them for the poor catcher. Now the bases were loaded with nobody out and the tension grew. Would she ever throw a strike? She threw four consecutive balls to the next hitter which invoked the coach pitch rule. The coach pitched a perfect strike and the hitter hit the ball straight to my kid who dutifully picked it up and threw it home in time to nail the runner. Then four more balls, coach pitch, grounder back to my kid, runner out at home. Two outs, bases still loaded, and I began to wonder if she would be able to maintain her perfect ERA without ever throwing a strike! Alas, she found the strike zone and the opponent found it too. They hit her hard and damaged the ERA severely but she recovered and never gave up the desire to pitch after that first outing!! She hates that tape. You couldn't buy it from me for ten million dollars.
Finally, a word about the type of coaching your daughter is going to encounter. Let's see. How to put this? Unless you are extraordinarily lucky, the level of coaching your kid is going to get will not be particularly good. Get used to it. You mostly don't get to choose coaches in rec league. And if you keep your eyes on your kid's enjoyment of the game rather than the level of coaching she gets, you'll be better off. Don't give the coach any grief or you'll develop a reputation. Just let your daughter find her way regardless of the coaching. There's an important lesson in that. You mostly can't decide who your teachers are going to be. Some are better than others. You have to learn to deal with it. The same is true of bosses and co-workers.
You may find coaches out there who teach your kid exactly the wrong thing to do with respect to almost every fundamental skill mentioned here. That's OK provided that you are practicing with her. The average rec team practices maybe once a week for an hour and a half. There are usually about 12 kids at these practices. So these unqualified coaches should only have about 7 or 8 minutes to devote to the destruction of your baby's budding softball career. You can undo that without much effort and without upsetting the local political apple cart. Be gentle. And enjoy the game. Enjoy the opportunity to spend a lot of good time with your daughter. Soon she'll be not so sweet 16 and won't want to spend any time at all with the likes of you.Labels: catching, fielding, parents, throwing, Youth recreational softball
Permanent Link: Surviving Your First Rec Season!
 
Rule Uniformity
by Dave
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
I suppose it is the German part of my heritage which cries out for uniformity, organization, and order. I like everything in somewhat neat rows. Incongruity gets under my skin and makes me feel like the planet is lopsided. For example, it bothered me to no end when league ages in the various fastpitch softball sanctioning bodies were not perfectly aligned. A kid might play 12U in one sort of play like Babe Ruth while stuck in 10U in Little League, or vice versa - I forget which way that went. Other misalignments also got under my skin but it seems like some of these are starting to disappear. Hopefully that trend will continue. But, as always, there's more work to be done.
Last year, for the 2006 playing season, Little League changed its softball age groups to align them with the other bodies. They adopted the calendar year for age group cutoff purposes. This was a very good thing. Girls who played 12U in Babe Ruth- or ASA-sanctioned play would also play 12U in Little League. The first year no doubt caused some pain as girls who had always been together during rec season were pulled apart by the happenstance of their birth dates. But after the first year, this sort of problem gently disappeared or at least the players got used to it the same way they got used to the original cutoff dates. And with respect to at least that one factor, everything was more perfectly aligned.
In August of 2006, Little League changed its rules for the 2007 season with respect to ball size. That Little League World Series of 12 and under girls you saw on ESPN was played using an 11 inch ball while those 12U ASA, NSA, Pony, etc. tournaments at the local fields were played with a 12 inch one.
It offended almost everyone I knew within the sport, particularly parents and coaches, that girls of the same age weren't all playing with the same sized ball. But the ones it hurt the most were the girls themselves who actually played with the 11 in the spring and into the LL international tournament, changed to the 12 for late summer and fall tournaments and leagues, and then changed back again to the 11 in the spring. There is quite a difference between the balls when it comes not just to pitching but also hitting, fielding and throwing. It is a difficult adjustment, though one that can be overcome given a few months. But nobody had a few months. A player had at most a week or two to acclimate themselves to the bigger, heavier ball. It just didn't seem fair to make kids go back and forth. Little League has now fixed this incongruity.
For the ball size reason alone, I believe many people kept their kids out of Little League. While that was not my entire motivation, it definitely was an important factor. I wasn't going to allow my 11 year old pitcher to practice from July to March with a 12 inch ball and then ruin her motion and lose her release point to adjust down to the 11. Another reason I removed my kids from LL play involve the way the international tournament is set up and the way different organizations follow those rules. There are other reasons but I don't have time or space.
Little League rules state a particular date (I don't have that handy at the moment) after which a league all-star team can be put together for play in the tournament. Many leagues, like our local one, follow this rule to the "T" and do not so much as allow the girls to practice together until after that date. Typically, our rec league ends a week or two before the tournament organization date. Generally league officials get together shortly after the end of the season and pick some coaches from each division to coach the team. Then the team is put together based on evaluations of the girls made by coaches on the final day of play. Finally, about a week or two before the first game, the girls begin practicing together.
When I helped out with a tournament team a few years ago, we were able to schedule just 6 practices, each for two hours. And the weather refused to cooperate so we got in maybe three sessions. Needless to say, our girls were not well prepared. They were unaccustomed to each other. While I would stack up our kids against anyone we saw, they really could have used a month or two to get ready for competition. They're all good ball players but they aren't used to even throwing the ball around the infield to each other.
Contrast this with the fact that many of the top LL tournament teams play together under other sanctioning bodies such as ASA and Pony during the rest of the year. They're not supposed to under LL rules but there are ways around the strict letter of the law. For example, while the league body itself cannot sanction a "travel team" comprised of participant players, some enterprising soul can put together an ASA team of his darling daughter's favorite friends from the all-star team and play a dozen tournaments long before Little League rules kick in. Many of the top teams do just this.
A few local leagues are so dominated by one or a few parents that these characters are able to hand pick the all-star team from the rec league draft in January and then play together as a unit for all of rec season. They don't get challenged but they do get used to each other. Then maybe in the summer or fall, the coach contacts the parents and asks if these same kids want to play in some other local league. They accomplish the same result as would occur if Little League just completely abolished the organization limitations.
Another part of the LL rules says girls can't play other competition during the tournament. if a great pitcher were to compete in one of the state championships, win or pitch a perfect game and make the local paper, you can bet somebody would report them to LL. So what they do is try to find the best available teams around to conduct frequent scrimmages. This gives them the added edge they need to win big LL tournament games.
And while we're at it, let me point out another LL tournament rule which bothers me. Little League applies baseball mentality to softball but limiting pitchers to an extent not seen anywhere else. If a girl pitches two innings in game 1, she can't pitch again until game 3 and only if sufficient time has passed. That may be off by a little. I'm getting these LL rules a little confused because I haven't been involved in it for several years but I do know that there are significant pitching limitations. Compare that with tournament fastpitch in which a girl can pitch 18 innings or more per day if necessary, and if she can handle it. throwing windmill just doesn't wear out the body the way throwing overhand does. My pitching daughters can pitch for several days consecutively if they need to but throwing overhand for an hour will wear their arms out. Still LL keeps the pitching limitations in place. I expect that will be the next rule to go but you never know.
Our town league board members won't even creatively break these rules (or wouldn't until recently) because they are letter-of-the-law type people. Instead they chose to stand around complaining about what other towns did. Then some competitive guy who got bored watching his daughter's team get bumped out of the tournament in the first round each year decided to put together a travel team so they could play more games well into the summer. Now that age division is the only one which ever gets past the first round. And this year it seems as if the program will be expanded to other divisions. They don't use the same fields. The "travel group" gets ASA insurance, plays on other available fields, and practices together some during the winter months as well as all other seasons. They usually find more competitive spring and fall leagues to play aside from the rec league. So by the time the LL tournament gets going, they are fairly competitive.
Trust me in my conjecture that this is very common within Little League. If you put global positioning devices on every LL all-star kid whose team finishes in the top 50 to 100 teams in the tournament, you would find a lot of the kids from each team together in the same places - indoor and outdoor softball facilities - for much of the year. Somehow LL needs to find a way to address this. I don't have any easy answer to the issue. I'd prefer if kids were allowed to play more rather than less. I realize this creates two classes of rec player - some who are "all-stars" and many who are not - but the reality is some kids are really into this sport and many are not into it to that degree.
Little League is not the only place where such differences abound. High school ball has its own interesting variant on the theme. Our state's high school teams have clearly delineated seasons. This is important in as much as it creates a better situation for kids who play multiple sports. I'm an advocate for affording kids the opportunity to play different sports in all three high school seasons. I grew up in the days when "athletes" were those who played soccer or football in the fall, basketball or wrestling in the winter, and baseball in the spring, all for school teams. These kids relied on the clearly demarcated seasons in order to be able to play their three favorite sports. The day after football ended, basketball practice started up. The day after basketball was over, baseball began.
Even with the clearly demarcated seasons, conflicts developed. For example, our basketball team was not very good. So members of the team were freed up in time to go out for baseball. If they had been good enough to play into the championship season, these kids would have been two weeks late to their first baseball practice. Kids who were more successful in, for example, wrestling, were hurt by the overrun between the two seasons.
Unfortunately, I didn't play basketball. Instead I competed in swimming. Whereas I never missed more than a swimming practice or two due to the length of the football season, the same could not be said of the transition from swimming into baseball. Our swimming championship season extended a full week into baseball practice. But more importantly, one didn't compete in swimming merely by making the high school team. If you wanted to be reasonably competitive in high school competition, you had to also swim for a club team long before you ever got to high school and well into your high school career. Our club team's season didn't end until baseball was just about over. The choice was A) play two sports badly or B) get serious about one or the other. I chose option B.
Also, sometimes sports injuries complicate the situation. My sophomore football season ended with a broken elbow which was still healing a full month into high school winter swimming practice season, not to mention my club team's fall practices. At that point I had to make a decision to give up all other sports other than summer baseball. But I'm going too far away from the theme. So, let me get back to high school softball.
Our high school softball teams are allowed to begin formal practices in a couple weeks. Before that time, coaches are not allowed to coach at anything even remotely similar to a practice and they can't use school owned equipment at any disorganized casual get-together which just happens to involve the starting varsity line-up. Still, somehow, certain things just happen. For instance, all the girls on the team somehow learned about this one particular travel team which a parent of a kid on varsity just happened to put together. They play together all summer long. Then in the fall, another ad-hoc organization puts together a team which is made up of kids who all happen to be from the same high school team. They play double headers against these other teams which just happen to also consist of kids from a single high school varsity team. During the winter, there is this entire 18U league whose team names ring familiar bells as well. If a school team were named the St. Joseph-Farmington Angels, this other non-high school winter team might be called "SJFAST" or something along those lines. You often see HS team coaches visit such venues but they're only there because they love the sport so much!
Recently, one of my kids' travel teams began its indoor workouts. I know - it's late for that but I don't have a say - my team started in November. This other team uses one of the few facilities in the area which can accommodate throwing drills. We arrived at the facility a little early to do a half hour of pitching. When we arrived, there was another team using the throwing drill area. For a moment I didn't realize who it was but then I began recognizing people. It was a local high school team which was gathered together at an ad hoc get together. The practice was being conducted by parents. This is a very common thing.
There's nothing unusual about this sort of practice and I don't necessarily think it's bad. There are just some sports which are too difficult to play for only 3 months of the year. Can you imagine a golfer who only plays the game during the spring? How about a tennis player? The same applies to my old sport of swimming. Like I said a moment ago, if you want to compete in high school swimming, you must practice year-round. You can't just jump into the pool in November and expect to get in decent enough shape to win races. These are all individual sports which don't require working with others. You can play golf by yourself (or with a private coach) to get ready for the spring season. The same is true of many other individual sports which have developed over the years into full year practice and competition schedules. But training for swimming, competing as an individual in tennis or golf, or wrestling with a club team are not analogous to playing team baseball or fastpitch softball.
The diamond sports require team work. It doesn't matter how much a kid practices on her own when the issue is defensing the bunt or relaying cutoffs from the outfield properly. There are other intangibles which teams which play together often during the whole year can achieve which teams that do not, cannot. There is a decided advantage to knowing that second baseman Alexandra tends to throw the ball two or three feet up the line at third when she takes a cutoff from the right fielder to her right and then turns to throw. Similarly, there are a thousand other situations which are different when you play with different girls. You can't play high level softball at the top of your game when you only get together with a particular group of kids for 3 months a year.
On the other hand, this raises a whole host of ethical issues. When we teach sports, we have to wonder exactly what life lessons we are teaching our kids. Are we teaching them to break the rules subtly when it suits our end goals? Are we teaching them any enduring lessons in morality? I try to not bring politics into this blog because it is largely not relevant to any discussion of girls fastpitch softball. Yet, it bothered me to no end when Nancy Pelosi promoted expansion of the minimum wage to include all US territories EXCEPT Samoa. In Samoa, 90% of all employed persons work for one of two fish packing plants. The US federal minimum wage does not apply to them. And both are owned by California-based large companies which contribute to political campaigns. California just happens to be Nancy's state!
Another problem evolves when high school softball teams remained semi-organized out of season. Under these circumstances high school coaches tell their players on the QT that they should play for this team or that, or that they cannot practice with their high level travel teams during the season.
When I was a freshman in high school, I was made aware that certain players on the football team would be conducting conditioning get-togethers at a local field on certain nights. I was officially told that I was welcome to participate but that the team could not require me to attend. I decided that I didn't need to go to them until my father convinced me otherwise! And when I arrived at these impromptu workouts something strange happened. Somebody was taking attendance! Had I not gone there to workout with the team, the coach would have known. And there would have been hell to pay.
So a girl can decide that she will not participate with her high school softball team's impromptu workouts and, ahem, practices, but she may find herself, seemingly unfairly, playing JV ball when she is good enough to start or even star on the varsity team. This can be more than unfair. It can be detrimental to a kid's development as a player and can hinder her ability to obtain a college softball scholarship if that's what her ability and desires might otherwise dictate.
I can think of at least one girl who pitches for a showcase team which practices year round. In January when other teammates are working out in some place under some parents' supervision, she's in Florida or California playing against some of the best competition in the country, under the supervision of a professional coach, a coach far superior to those parents conducting team workouts. The girl I'm thinking of, however, is well known to the HS coach. She understands that there is no way she can get this kid to play for her if she puts any such restrictions on her. But many HS coaches don't care. They won't allow such a kid to start for them just on principle. And that's wrong. A kid who has been playing high level travel softball should be allowed to continue with her team when she's in high school, especially when that team is doing showcase tournaments. It most likely will not hinder her ability to play for the school team. She is probably better served by staying with her team.
When it gets down to brass tacks, the college coaches will generally understand if the player-prospect communicates that they had to choose between travel or school ball, and they chose travel over school. College coaches know full well that high school coaching is not comparable to travel. Most often, it is the school team which loses out when their coaches put these kinds of restrictions on kids.
As I said at the beginning, I like order. Given the options of uniformity and lack of uniformity, I'll choose uniformity every time. I applaud Little League for adopting the 12 inch ball for 12U girls the same way I applauded their adoption of an age cutoff which is identical to all other fastpitch sanctioning bodies. I think the date on which tournament teams can organize needs some revision or scrutiny but I don't have any easy answers.
The same sort of issue pervades high school ball where team parents can and do provide the opportunity for teams to practice and play out of season. I think more opportunity to play team sports is necessary but I do understand the problems it causes, especially for athletes who would like to play several sports. I do not believe it is fair for HS coaches to restrict kids from playing travel ball. They are coaches not dictators. They don't own a kid just because she plays for them. these kids developed long before the HS coach got hold of them and should continue to do so. It isn't fair or right for a HS coach to try to control a kid out of season. It may actually hurt the kid within the sport.
I don't have easy answers on these issues. But they do need to be examined.Labels: high school, little league, rules
Permanent Link: Rule Uniformity
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