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And ... The Music Stops
by Dave
Thursday, August 28, 2008
These are anxious days, and not merely because school is about to begin. For many, it has already begun. Where I am, girls have been trying out for teams over the past month. It is like a giant game of musical chairs. But the music just stopped.
No, all the chairs have not been taken. As in any game of musical chairs, 80% of the players sit down immediately. Then there is a scuffle as a few fight over possession of some seats. Then a bunch of girls, not having found seats yet, stand up, look around and realize there are still several left unoccupied. They glance, calculate the opportunity, then sprint for one while remembering other unoccupied ones in case they don't win this one. This secondary shuffle ends with several more seats taken, the recognition that a few weren't sought after, and another sprint by the remaining standers for the last couple of seats. Finally, it is all over and somebody has lost, one player has not found a seat. Now its time for round two of the game!
Round two involves players who don't like their seats getting up while those who do can remain in theirs. Then there is the fight to occupy desired places, the secondary scuffle to sit anywhere and not be eliminated, etc.
This is an overly simplistic view of reality. The truth is much more complicated than any silly game analogy. The softball environment is a human endeavor and whenever many humans get involved in anything, chaos rules.
I can't say what it looks like where you are. My only window onto most of the country comes via e-mails folks send to me. Apparently every place is different depending on softball population density, the popularity of the sport, available facilities, coaches, organizations and teams, and several other considerations. In some places, there are a few (maybe just one) elite programs and a bunch of secondary ones, possibly several layers.
The tryouts for elite programs are usually well attended and highly competitive. Those for lesser ones, much less so. Everywhere, parents and players look for situations which fit their circumstances, hopes and goals. And the environment is almost always in motion.
Sometimes there are mass defections (including coaches) from one elite program to another. Sometimes elite teams break apart and send their members out into the game with several players landing here, a few more there, a coach or two leaving the game entirely, one or more ending up in a new place. It seems as if things are always rather untidy and someone always gets hurt. But that's life!
It would be easy to proclaim that these things always go in cycles. I'm not convinced yet that this is the case. There are trends to be sure but I doubt any of us will be involved with the sport long enough to recognize actual cycles of growth and contraction. The best we can do is examine the current situation and move towards a seat so as to not be shut out.
I suppose that in the beginning of time, there were a couple elite programs out there and everybody who desired to really play the game pursued them. The best players found slots and many people were left without a place at the table.
Enough of these people got together to form new programs whose desire was to show the elite ones they can compete with them. Some of these new programs succeeded and entered the elite fray. Of course, this increased the number of tryouts and spread the talent pool thinner than it would have been otherwise. But more girls got to play at a relatively high level. More girls obtained better training than their rec programs provided, and did so during periods when softball was not typically and generally available, during the fall and winter months.
Many other teams failed to play at a level competitive with the old and new elite teams. Sometimes these groups stayed together over multiple years, improved and joined the upper ranks. Sometimes, perhaps more frequently, these teams split up and their members went their ways, sometimes qualifying for one of the old or new elite teams, and sometimes having to join lesser skilled ones.
Sometimes, a remnant of the old roster for a team failing to compete with the elite ones was left behind. They sought new talent to add to their core. Perhaps one or more of the old players on the old team were unhappy with the coaching, the schedule, or the results and decided to found their own new, aspiring team. This sort of thing is good for the softball industry as more slots are available for girls who are unable to make the elite teams, more uniforms are needed, more equipment is purchased, and more composite bats are sold. But this sort of trend further confuses the landscape.
As more and more teams form and aspire to "show" the elite teams they can compete with them, the talent pool gets stretched and stretched until several elite programs can no longer field the sort of team they once were able to. A couple top players are no longer willing to drive an hour each way for practices 3 times a week. Maybe these girls want to play with the girls from their own current or future high school so that team can be competitive. Perhaps a parent or two believe they know more about the game than last year's coaching crew and want to head out on their own. Some girls want to get more time in the circle, behind the plate, etc. Rather than just give up on pitching, catching, etc. because they are fifth on their elite team's depth chart, they move on to teams which need them as a number one.
So it goes, year after year, until eventually, the number of players and teams no longer fit together. To draw a weak analogy, the softball environment becomes like a jigsaw puzzle box which is missing some pieces and contains some from another puzzle or two. Say there are 125 girls for 10 teams, made up of 12 players each, one year. The next year there are 127 girls and 12 teams. Many teams are going to have one or two open roster spots, a couple teams may have to fold and many girls left with no team, or maybe several teams are going to dip into the pool of rec players and attempt to suck up several girls who don't really aspire to play against the best possible competition.
The next year it gets even more messy. A few more girls enter the scene. A few of the ex-rec players decide they want to stay in travel. There are now 159 players available to fill roster spots on 19 teams.
Maybe the elite teams can fill their rosters and maybe they can't because Sara is not satisfied with playing only two thirds of the innings or with pitching in the number 3 role. She wants to be an ace, or her parents want her to be. They can pull in five friends from rec, including a catcher, advertise tryouts, get a few bona fide travel players, and hopefully pull this thing together. They didn't like that coach anyway.
As the numbers in this thing get really large in terms of girls and teams, things get more and more complicated, messy, and sometimes ugly. Elite programs find they can field elite teams at just a few age groups. Their 10s, 12s, or 14s are really bad and not indicative of the sort of teams they typically put onto the field. Whole, intact teams leave organizations and join others over money, facilities, or one of many other possible reasons.
Organizations which once fielded complete arrays of high caliber teams find they have gaps in various age groups. Two years ago they had two teams in every age group, last year they had one in the 16s, one in the 14s, nothing in the 12s and two in the 10s. This year they have no 10s, one 12, no 14s and two 16s. Tryouts for their 18s were sparsely attended and they've only pulled together 8 qualified kids. They are going to form up in the hope that girls from other programs will contact them during the winter or that some of the 8-member team will be able to convince a few high school players to join.
During the winter, a few kids or their parents decide this is not what they wanted. Maybe the coach told them it was going to be OK to miss Wednesday practices for flute lessons when they committed. Then he kept harrassing them about trying to make one every once in a while. Maybe the coach told the parents that the group would practice twice a week from October to March and then he or she realized that the group does not have adequate financing for such facilities and cut it back to one per week from December to March. Maybe the group of kids who everyone thought was joining this team was not the actual final group because some of the better kids joined other teams and several lesser skilled kids were used to fill in the roster. Ever heard or said this one: "Some of the better players seem to be missing from this practice, scrimmage, tournament? But we've got 12 kids, so who is missing?" I remember talking to someone at a scrimmage who told me the several good pitchers are missing today. When I pointed out that 13 kids were and wondered how many they carried on their roster (16?), the answer was a blank stare.
Maybe this team was supposed to be an older 14 team but when the final roster was set, there were 2 x 12s, 6 x 13s and 4 x 14s with one or two of the girls playing their first year of travel! Maybe the coaches turned out to be completely disorganized or underqualified. Maybe that good coach at tryouts was never planning on coaching this team. Maybe he was very patient and calm at tryouts and turned out to have anger management issues in real practices and you don't wish to find out if he is able to control himself during games.
Whatever the reason and the possibilities are endless, the fact is kids end up leaving teams, joining others, or leaving the sport altogether every year, after rosters have been "set." And a few kids who were actually ready for travel during fall tryouts never realized teams were forming up then. They contact organizations, teams, coaches begging for a tryout. They come to an indoor workout, get asked to join the team and then refuse to commit just yet! Nothing seems to be all that settled during the fall and sometimes teams fall apart during the winter months. Everything is always fluid.
It occurs to me that there is no neat conclusion to all of this. It is a mess and it never gets any cleaner. Yes a few girls will advance, move onto elite teams (ASA Gold and others) and stay where they are for years to come. The rest of us have to hack our ways through an ever growing jungle of confusion. We will invariably commit to teams and then learn the roster consists of 7 or 3, besides us, that the coach has left to join another team because that team has sought out his daughter, that the coaching is not quite what we thought it would be, the workout schedule is too heavy or too light, the facilities are too far and practices are scheduled so as to make the driving more difficult, practices are all scheduled at the same time as flute or pitching lessons, our daughters don't fit into the social fabric of the team we joined because she is at the young end of the age span, isn't as good as the other girls or maybe is older than most or by far the best player, or for whatever reason imaginable.
This confusion, anarchy and chaos is probably the last thing any of us needs. We have other worries including academics, finances, a sick relative, other commitments, etc. Softball was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to fit neatly into the rest of our lives notwithstanding the rigors of an intense tournament schedule. It was supposed to be something which it seems no longer to be. Yes, practicing and playing were always work but this ridiculous game of musical chairs was never supposed to be part of the equation. The only way off this crazy treadmill is to just get off it completely. And, after all is said and done, all we really want is for our daughters to go and play some games. If we stay in the game, they will. So the best we can hope to do is do the best we can hope to do.
Best of luck to you. Please take a seat ... NOW!Labels: parenting, youth tournament teams
 
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