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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Act Your Age (Real or Artificial)
by Dave
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
There's a lot of bragging and crying going on. What I mean is, it is not all that unusual for teams to play up a class in tournaments as a means of preparing or hardening the kids for competition in their own age class. This is a perfectly fine practice. But where it breaks down is in places where the younger team which wins, throws it in the face of the older team, or where the younger team complains at the older team to take it easy or tries to diminish a victory by yelling that "you just beat an (under-aged) team."
I make no bones about it, I think girls who are capable of playing up, ought to do that unless they find a team their own age which suits their needs. I have personally seen several younger players who could compete with girls two or more years their seniors. This is definitely the case at the highest levels of the youth game and less so as you work downwards through the brackets.
A December 9 or 10 year old looks and acts quite a bit younger than a January 11 or 12. If you go to extremes and pair up the December 9 year old with the January 12 year old, you see a very stark difference. Yet many talented 12s can play with a good degree of success with 14Us, particularly those which include 13s. When you jump up to 16U and 18U levels, it is clear that the cream of the crop younger kids can be quite good while playing up. I have seen quite a few 8th graders out there playing 18U showcases. There is a whole host of social, personality, interaction issues which might arise but that's too big of a subject for today. The bottom line is the right younger kid can play up and look like she belongs on the field with the older ones.
Similarly, whole teams of younger kids can compete with whole teams of older ones. At say the 12U and 14U levels, I do not believe that the top teams are in the same class. You take a team of girls who turned 15 in January - March, who have played together and won big tournaments since they were 8, and put them against another team of say girls who turned 13 in January - March but who have only played together for a couple years, whether successful or not, and you are probably going to run into a mismatch. But if you take a top level team at 10U or 12U, they can probably kick some butt against mid to low level 12s or 14s, respectively.
I have seen some tournaments where 12U teams defeated the field and claimed bids against pretty good, but not outstanding, 14s. I've seen 10s play very competitively with 12s. I have seen probably more times when 14s were able to effectively compete, perhaps win entire tournaments on more than one occassion, against 16s and 18s. This is a skill game more than it is a size or strength one. Size and strength can be important assets on the softball diamond but technique, drilling, and skills rule the day.
I have known several teams which make a practice of playing up. There are many reasons why this is done. One important reason to play up is preparation for the following year. We were involved with a team of girls considering playing up at 16 during their 14 year old year. They played a high school team fall ball league just to show everyone on the team what they were getting into before throwing the switch on playing up, and to get the girls ready for their first years of high school ball. My then recently-turned 13 year old played with the team because she was likely going to play for them the following year. I would never say that this was a mistake but there were times when she looked over-matched. She pitched a little without any real success and played the field reasonably well. She got a couple hits, even one or two game winners. But many of her at-bats weren't real good and I think this may have broken her down a bit. Still, we'd do the same again without hesitation.
Our team played against others which ranged from similarly constituted teams to last year's complete JV team, to partial varsity teams missing their star players, to full blown high school varsity teams. We did well enough and I suppose, in the end, everyone was satisfied. During one game we lost, I heard our side's voices proclaim that "you are beating a 14U team." There's nothing about that comment which is any good to anyone.
The older team which is scheduled to play the younger one in a tournament or league setting did not sign up so they could be harrassed by a bunch of young kids. They most likely signed up with the idea that they were going to play other teams like themselves. Who, in their right mind, with any experience at all in this game, would sign themselves up to play against a younger, smaller team? There's nothing to be gained. If they beat you, they can make you feel bad about yourselves by telling you loudly that you just got your butt kicked by a bunch of little kids. That's nice! And if you happen to beat them, all you get for your efforts is, "don't be proud of yourselves, you just beat an inferior team." Again, that's nice and all you get for your trouble is a bad feeling about a game when you could just as easily have played against a team like yourselves and maybe walked away from that with a win. Why would anyone want to play a younger team?
The trouble is many of these younger teams do like to throw age up into the face of older ones. I suppose it is something of a natural response. You're getting killed (really watching your darling daughters get killed) and you feel bad. Everyone dislikes the team beating them right now. So it is natural to try to diminish what the people you don't like are accomplishing. Also, if you happen to be a parent on the younger sideline and your team is ahead or just won, you are probably bursting with pride and want to exclaim to the world that your kids can play with the big girls. So you cheer "way to go 12s, way to beat up on the 16s!" or something along those lines.
I was recently involved with what boiled down to a weak 12U tournament. The lion's share of 12U teams were either entirely younger (had another year of 12U eligibility) or were mixed-age. Several had one or more 10U eligible kids playing for them. Late in the team registration process, a 10U team from a well-known, pretty high quality, organization called to ask, "please let us in because we want to play up." The tournament reluctantly permitted the team into the tournament. They most likely will never permit a younger team into another tournament as a result.
The younger team struggled in the preliminary round losing to two mixed age teams and, possibly beating one town team of indeterminant age - I don't know for sure. After each loss, the parents of the younger team informed the older victor that they had just beaten a 10U team. During each game, when one of the really young kids came to the plate, got a hit, walked or whatever, the parents of the younger team and sometimes even the coaches would announce so everybody knew what was going on, "hey great job for an 8 or 9 year old." Did they think for a moment that their opponent was not eminently aware of the youthfulness of the team?
Later, in the first game of the championship round, the younger team beat our team which includes one or two kids who are currently 10U eligible, mostly first year 12U players, almost all of whom have never played intense travel ball before, and a couple of 12s including several who turned 12 in December. That's not an excuse about losing. It is reality. Also, our team is sort of in disarray with fewer kids on the roster than we would like, an inability to get the kids together to practice for a variety of reasons, and some very bad tournament experiences under our belts. We can compete with better teams but we are certainly not one of them.
During the game, on a couple of occassions, our girls did what they do in tournaments against girls their own age, like slide hard into second, tag aggressively on plays at bases, etc. On more than one occassion, our players, some as young as 10 even now, were screamed at by opposing parents for "playing too rough with these 10 year olds." On one occassion, a coach from the younger team complained at one girl in particular that she had deliberately tried to hurt one of his kids. You'd have to know the kid to understand that she is emotionally incapable of doing that. If she is involved in any play during which a kid, even a much older kid, goes down, we have to pull her aside and tell her repeatedly that she did nothing wrong and that's the way this game is played. Yet this coach wanted us to call off the dogs in order to be nice to his little girls.
The result of all the yelling and other strife was, our girls were completely taken off their games. We played worse than a 10U team. We played like a 10U all-star team. And we lost 4-2. To add insult to injury, the other parents congratulated their little babies for having beaten up on the big, bad, mean team. That's completely uncalled for.
So we stayed and watched the 10U team get beaten in the next round by a team which can only be described as under-age 12U. Heck, this team which beat the younger team had difficulty drawing enough kids before things froze up for the winter. They practiced with what they had through the winter months and finally pulled together a complete team relatively late in the spring. By the way, the younger team had been in full 3-a-week practices, including some which had college level coaches teaching the kids to hit, since December. The "older" team included at least one girl who was 10U eligible playing third base and batting leadoff. She's a mighty-mite but she is unquestionably under-aged for 12U. They may have had other under-age kids as well. I'm not really sure. But I'm reasonably certain that if they did have anyone who was legal aged 12, there were just a handful of them, and those on the team who were older had no more experience than my team's girls did. But this team has pretty much jelled over the past couple of weeks. They played a very good game and shutout the younger team. Then they went on to win the championship.
During the semi-final game, there was any number of catcalls from the stands throwing up into the face of the "older" team the fact that they were beating a much younger one. I didn't hear any admonishments about playing nice with the little girls and not hitting too hard but I was out by the outfield fence, not able to stomach the parents of the younger team, so I can't be sure. I expect there were such bush league comments made, most likely directly made to players. The whole thing left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths and this team will have a very difficult time ever getting any of the teams in attendance to play with them again.
The truth is, younger teams are finding it very difficult to gain entry into older tournaments. It shouldn't be that way but teams like this younger 10U group have caused that. If there is nothing to be gained by permitting a younger team into your tournament, why would you? Why not just pat them on the butt and say, "go away little girl, run and find someone your own age to play with or go to ASA Nationals and see how you do there?"
At this point, I want to end this little piece. I'm not getting anything out of writing it. It's time to move on. But I want to leave you with some words of advice.
Play up if you can. It's a great experience, if you are ready for it.
If you play up, act your age, your league age, the age you signed up as. Guys who joined the military while under-age during World War II were not cut any slack by the Nazis. That was even true when the Nazi dude happened to be some 13 or 14 year old Hitler Youth member who had been handed a gun and told to point and shoot. If you want to go play with the older girls, show that you belong, and not just by the score in the book.
One of the advantages of playing up is to experience what girls this age play like. Don't ask them, don't even think about asking them to tag nicer, slide easier, or just play as if they know you are underaged. You came to their tea party. They'd never come willingly to yours. They didn't sign up so that they could play with one arm strapped to their backs. Don't even ask them to. Don't you dare try to bully them into to it.
When you win, show that you have at least some class. Don't throw up into the face of the losing team that they were beaten by a younger group. They already know that. Trust me on this. Even if you disguised your team name by dropping off the age, everyone can see about how old you are. There's nothing to be gained by telling the other team that a bunch of little kids kicked their butts. So, why open your trap and tell them something which gets you nothing and just makes them feel worse?
You want to play up? OK. But promise that you will try your hardest to earn the right. And don't ruin things for the next group of girls who want to rise to the challenge of playing up and who are mature enough, have enough class to recognize the responsibility which goes with the privilege.Labels: attitude, Conduct, Tournaments, youth tournament teams
 
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