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Sticker Shock
by Dave
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
I am writing today to discuss a subject near and dear to all travel softball players and, more importantly, their parents during late summer, early fall. That subject is team costs. I have recently heard and read a number of discussions which propagate and perpetuate certain myths and misconceptions. The spectrum of possible costs is broad and confusing to the uninitiated. My goal is to dispel certain myths, boil down some of the considerations into a digestable summary, and help those new to the softball world understand better the types of costs associated with playing travel ball. I hope to make the muddy waters a bit more clear.
In order to discuss this subject, I need to establish certain parameters. First of all, what I am writing about is the world of travel ball which girls aged 8 to 15 or 16 play. That is, I am not writing about gold or showcase ball or any type of "travel ball" which involves extensive long-distance travel or showcasing in front of college coaches. I am also not talking about the run-of-the-mill travel program run out of a rec program with its rec all-stars which plays a handful of ASA-rule or other tournaments and perhaps the Babe Ruth or Little League championship tournaments. Instead, my focus is on the type of travel ball which might more accurately be called "club ball" in which girls join a privately organized group which may be a not-for-profit corporation (though often times not) and which is not necessarily affiliated with any quasi-governmental organization like the town recreation league.
These types of organizations generally play 8-16 tournaments and perhaps compete at a "national" or other large-scale tournament at year's end. They most likely get together after an open tryout in late summer, begin practicing shortly after organization, probably play a slate of fall games and a couple tournaments, break apart briefly in late fall, get back together for winter workouts, and then engage in a spring/summer schedule which includes a minimum of 6-8 tournaments. After the summer season is over, there is a brief break and then tryouts, after which the cycle begins anew.
In order to add up the costs associated with being on a club team, you need to take a couple steps. First off, you need to add up costs for each individual kid (uniforms, insurance and such), then calculate the amount of overall team fees, divided by roster members, and add this. Then subtract out expected fund raising or other means of funding and you arrive at an expected total which may be off a little here or there but which should give you a picture of what the total cost should be.
Individual costs can vary but generally consist of a few sheckles for insurance, a fair amount for uniform(s) and more money for ancillary items. Insurance to play softball is generally obtained via the ASA program and is very cheap. I don't have a current figure (because I choose to stay out of this end of the thing) but we're talking about ballpark $20.
Uniforms can, I suppose vary but typically a single one is $100-$150. Most teams have two uniforms and that will generally run you about $250, give or take $50. If your uniforms cost lots more than that, something is wrong. Some few teams overcharge their players for uniforms and some buy such garbage that you'll need to purchase a new set after the mid-season point. Some teams include such things as sliding pants and some require you to go out and buy your own. But make sure you get an exact color match if you have to buy your own.
Some teams leave the issue of batting helmet to the parents. Some teams include them. Some teams get decent helmets and some get garbage which won't protect your kid all that well or will give her headaches. Some teams charge you exactly what they paid for the helmet and some teams, again, overcharge. I had the misfortune once of being involved with a team which collected $50 and then handed out junk helmets which cost them no more than $25 and which we had to replace at our own cost because the kids didn't want to wear them and neither did we.
It is most interesting to me when we go out and watch teams play over several years, we see a certain phenomenon. A few teams do buy better helmets for their kids. We know this because those kids often have their helmets for many years after they have left the team. We can go out to watch Team X play and see one or two kids using their helmet from last year's Team Y. Somtimes we see the same kid with the same helmet for three years after they left the team. Sometimes we see a kid playing high school ball using her travel team helmet from five years earlier. We always note this and then make sure to check out the brand and model of helmet those kids have. You can usually buy one in the right color for your current team and then get decals for that team to place on it.
Some teams make a big deal about equipment bags and some teams ignore them. Equipment bags do not last. My kids tend to drag them after the first game of the day. They develop holes. Zippers jam up like the buttons on a cheap suit break apart. I've yet to have a bag last a season and retain mint condition. If they do happen to last, chances are decent you'll find yourself with a bag that has "Nowhere Nomads" embroidered on it when you try out for the "American Dream Crushers" the next year. And you'll be buying yet another new bag the year after that too. Sure, everyone on a team having the same bag looks great as the girls make their way through a tourney but they are a monumental waste of money. The only bag my kids have had for more than one year is one I bought myself. &n bsp; If you can buy your own decent quality bag and get your kid not to drag it, that's a better way to go than always buying the team bag.
While we are on the subject of uniforms and ancillary equipment, the issue of add-ons comes to mind. Get yourself extra socks and any other article you know your kid is going to wear out during a season. Socks are cheap and a sound investment. They get holes in them! If a kid has a propensity to rip pants or spill on their shirt, well you know what I mean. Caps or visors are almost a complete waste of time unless you know your kid is going to wear one. I have dozens of visors in the closet with all sorts of team names on them. My kids very seldom wear a visor.
Many teams "offer" to sell practice t-shirts, sweat suits, etc. A practice shirt can be very important if the girls wear them for scrimmages or when they go out as a team to watch a tournament they are not playing in. Most kids do not want to do without one. Sweat suits can be important too, especially if you play fall ball in a relatively cold place. But economic reality should dictate whether you spend a lot of money on such things. Unfortunately, many teams require certain of these items as part of the standard. I've seen teams which have multiple practice shirts required and which sometimes do a sort of fundraiser which again requires the purchase of another shirt. When you consider joining a team, you should request a semi-exact figure for standard uniform and related costs. If the team is telling you $500 or more, there is a problem.
There can be other individual costs, particularly for equipment such as batting gloves, catcher's gear with team colors, etc. But I'll not go into that because it varies too much. The bottom line is individual costs for insurance, uniforms, and ancillary items should be about $300 and not much more unless you are on one of those teams which overcharges or requires a bunch of ridiculous purchases.
In terms of overall team costs, there is again a fairly broad spectrum depending on how much indoor training the team does, whether professional instructors are brought in, the quality and cost of facilities; the number of tournaments, and whether it hosts tournament and/or travels anywhere requiring a plane or train ride and hotel stay.
The team cost does not often include travel or lodging for kids when the team goes out of state. You need to factor this into the equation for yourself. Sometimes a team will travel to a location which is very driveable but maybe you will need to take alternative transport. Be aware that if the team stays at a hotel costing more than $100 per night, it is usually not acceptable for you to arrange your own lodging at Bob's Roach Motel at $15 per night or to stay at your third cousin, twice removed's time share for free.
Some teams lodge the girls in separate rooms. While, at least to me, this is inadvisable on non-financial grounds, some teams demand it and the result is added costs to you if you plan on attending the event. It doesn't cost you any more to keep your kid in the room you pay for anyway. But adding one third of the cost for an additional room is, of course, more expensive.
In terms of the tournaments themselves, you can easily figure out how much money the team pays to participate by going to eteamz tournament search and get an approximate figure for per tournament costs. These can vary some depending on whether the thing is a one or two day event, you play a minimum number of games of 3, 4, 5 or whatever, it is a qualifier or not, it has one or two umps, etc. But a nice round figure for a two-day event is $500 or so. And for one dayers, say $300. If we are talking about a schedule involving 2 fall tourneys, 9 summer ones, plus a trip to some bigger event, we're looking at about $6,000 for the team. It will cost less if your team hosts one, two or three tournaments. Add in a little more for a bigger tournament plus maybe another $1,000 for assorted scrimmages and perhaps a league, and I think using $7,500-$8,000 as a guesstimation is probably fairly accurate. Let's use the higher figure of 8 large just to be prudent.
Indoor training is pretty expensive if you use the most expensive, commercially available, elaborate spaces, you run frequent sessions involving several professional instructors, or the team coach itself is paid (which we'll get to shortly). I've used personally or seen used a broad spectrum of facilities. I've been involved with teams which have used free space which is so bad I hesitate to tell you about it.
In one organization, we used a warehouse (free of charge) which was patrolled by cats that spat out hairballs everywhere and were not enamored with the litter box, probably because the litter wasn't changed regularly. Sometimes, in the dead of winter, we would be sweating our girls through speed and agility when a delivery would arrive and several of the garage doors would need to be opened in order to offload a truck. The temperature would vary over a 30 minute period between 70 and 20 degrees. Now there's a formula for not missing school and keeping the flu bug at bay! When practice was over, governmental agents arrived to decontaminate the girls and their clothing was burned right there on the spot. Then they were wisked into ventillation booths but we never had to use the defibrillators.
In another instance, I am familiar with a facility which sports a nearly full turf field. Right now, I think it costs $5,000 to play 8 indoor games and run two or three practices. Most commonly, what we have done is a mix of one day in space for which one or two hitting tunnels were rented for an hour and a half, and another in fairly reasonably priced space which allowed us to hit some grounders and run throwing drills. This middle road of training cost maybe $300-$500 per week for approximately 8-10 weeks. If you ask your prospective team approximately what their indoor training schedule looks like, you can figure about what it is going to cost you.
In terms of using professional trainers at these locations, again, there can be a broad spectrum. I've seen nationally recognized trainers be flown in for a couple hundred dollars per week per kid more than one time during winter workouts. I've also seen lesser known hitting instructors be used for not that much more than facility rental. If you figure a twice weekly schedule, one hitting and one fielding, and perhaps a range of $0 - $750 as your professional training fee, I think you get the picture.
There are a number of teams out there, probably most, which use purely volunteer coaches. Some teams hire ex-college players or persons who are teachers that know the game and are looking merely to supplement their incomes by coaching teams. In a few instances truly "professional coaches" are hired. I say truly "professional coaches" because these folks make a living coaching teams. If you read this blog, you know that from time to time I advocate hired coaches. But when I do so, I am rarely advocating a real "professional" coach as in one who makes a living coaching just this one or two teams. The type of coach I envision is the type who maybe coaches high school or is looking to gain experience that will qualify him or her for such or perhaps a college coaching position. I am skeptical of the truly "professional coach" except in certain circumstances, usually at a higher level of ball than we are contemplating.
Recently a team with a professional coach was discussed. The cost of joining this team ran quite a bit more than most would expect. I know many who know me are trying to figure out which team I am talking about but I won't give away any clues. The bottom line is the coach made quite a bit more than the type of circumstance I usually favor. And the team did not compete at high levels. Essentially the parents of kids on the team were paying some coach through their noses to produce, at best, mediocre results. That's a huge waste of money that could be spent in so many other ways, it simply blows my mind. You could get your kid into weekly private hitting lessons for about the same, play for a cheap team, and experience much greater success.
Like I said before, if you factor in about $750 for some level of professional instruction, unless the team pays a reasonable sum for coaches, you should be in the right place. I'm figuring $6000 for winter workouts
To sum up where we are so far, let's add up the totals for team costs, divide it by a given roster size, add in individual costs and then move forward to bring this to a conclusion. We figured about $8,000 for a good tournament schedule. I figure a good indoor training schedule at space you have to pay for with moderate use of professional will run a team about another $6,000. If your team pays a coach, add in another several thousand depending on the level of ability she or he possesses. But I'll skip that in my overall calculation. I've figured about $14,000 in team costs.
We need to divide this by roster size and there, I suppose we don't have an overly large spectrum. If you know me, you also know that I favor a roster size of 12-13. I don't like the number 11. It is merely one louder than 10 which is merely one louder than 9. 12 puts us in a whole different and better situation. 13 is OK, though perhaps unlucky. Anything more than that is virtually impossible to sustain. I will explain briefly.
If you have ever seen this game played, you may have noticed there are 9 players on the field at one time. No, there is no fourth outfielder in the real game. That's only for rec. No, there is not a "shortfielder" in fastpitch. That's beer league. There are 9 defensive players who all bat unless you are using that crazy thing called DP/flex, in which case one player plays the field and does not bat while another, who usually does not play defense, takes up residence in the batting order. That makes 10 players in the game at any one time, assuming you use DP/flex. This leaves 2 players on the bench, assuming you have a roster of 12.
The two bench players can generally be used as courtesy runners for the pitcher and catcher. Some tournaments allow teams to bat their entire roster and/or to run for Ps and Cs with the last batted out. Some sanctioned tournaments / qualifiers do not. They require a player who has not been in the game in any capacity to run. If you don't have an available bench player, you must leave your catcher out on the bases even with two outs, even on 100 degree days, even when there is merely one minute between innings. Having a roster of 12 allows you to have courtesy runners. 10 or 11 often does not.
Further, it is often advisable to have the pitcher, catcher or both from game one ride the pine for game two, particularly when it is very hot out. They can be your courtesy runners without taxing them too much while still getting sufficient rest to take up their crafts in game three. And, you can still use a DP/flex, if you have figured the rules for that out yet.
OK, so that's why not less than 12. We all know 13 is unlucky but what about 14 or 15? OK, I'll bite. With just 12 kids on a roster, nobody should ever have to sit more than one game out of three. With more than that, I'm afraid the reality is that often kids sit two games. I have yet to see the team which carries 15 players and keeps everybody happy. Usually what happens is two kids quit for lack of playing time in which case you have 13, which is of course, unlucky. So, just divide team costs by 12 and we'll all be happier.
$14,000 divided by 12 yields almost $1,200. Add more for a hired coach, a lot more for a "professional" one. Add in about $300 for uniforms and ancillaries and you get to $1,500. But don't get sick to your stomach and run away mad at the ridiculous cost of youth sports. Now here is the kicker. How is that sum of $1,500 funded?! This is the key question! If it all comes out of your pocket, that's not necessarily a good thing!!!!
Some very few teams are "fully funded." I have heard of at least two teams which have "benefactors" aka rich guys or gals who pay the freight. As you might imagine, those teams are extremely competitive. They are hard to make as anyone with any common sense within a reasonable driving distance is likely to tryout. Because they have benefactors, they often hire expensive coaches and use the absolute best facilities. They bring in highly respected trainers, etc. But they do not always beat us poor schleps who wing it out of our own pocket and use our wits.
Many teams fundraise a good portion of the approximate $1,200 in fees we have calculated as a ballpark number for a year's worth of club ball costs. Some organizations do a very fine job of it. Others are pitifully bad.
There are teams which have "figured it all out" and which conduct a routine of fundraising which significantly defrays the cost to parents. These organizations have experimented with a bunch of fundraising techniques and developed practices which generate perhaps half, sometimes more, of the figures we are kicking around. Those organizations are usually run by people who care a lot about softball and want to make it affordable. They host tournaments and actually make money at it. They run other fundraisers that actually work the way they are supposed to. And, this is important, they channel the funds back to the teams which raised them.
Other organizations run some of the worst fundraisers you can imagine. Parents are left with the idea that it will cost, say, $600 only to learn that they are the proud owners of ten boxes of crummy chocolate bars, 35 St. Louis Cardinals "special" Christmas candles, or 15 of some item which will find its way into the garbage can shortly; frequent participators in a lottery or 50/50, or they must otherwise buy their way out of a "canning" session outside an infrequently trafficked organic, free range seafood market during the blizzard of 2010. They end up going into their pockets for another $500, $600, sometimes more when they thought they had paid everything required already.
Some organizations run fairly alaborate fundraisers, requiring endless hours of volunteer labor, and then grant just 25% of the profit back to the teams who did all the heavy lifting. Some organizations run fundraisers in which they give back none of the profits to teams. Yes, I know it is hard to believe but it does happen. We made the mistake of getting involved with such an organization once. And here, I don't particularly care if some of you guess the organization. This organization had (don't know if they still do) possession of a very nice, exclusively softball field complex, exclusively for their own use. The complex is used to host some tournaments including college showcases. But they have run their programs poorly and the money stream has begun to dry up as local kids decide to play elsewhere. They require parents to work the snack bar or groom fields during these tourneys. But not One Penny goes back to the teams. Further, they actually charged their own teams for using the fields. We had to pay a $150 "field usage fee!" And we weren't allowed to practice on the things many times for myriad absurd reasons. Worse still, they charged parents for all the team and individual costs well beyond what they expected the actual expenditures to be. So, at the end of the year, when parents demanded an accounting, they produced one which showed an overage of over $1,000 and told the parents that this money, according club rules or policy, would flow into the general fund. There was general unhappiness and mass exodus. Recently, they held a tryout for one age group and five kids showed up, including the coaches' daughters! At another age level not one single, solitary kid showed! Like I said, they are in trouble but you reap what you sow. And it is buyer beware.
OK, so let's wrap this up. There is a large spectrum of potential costs to play club travel softball. How much you should be willing to pay depends on the amount and quality of instruction as well as the indoor practice facility. The buyers (that's you, parents) should do what they can to understand how much money in total will be required and how much bang they get for their buck. Ask questions about the uniforms and ancillaries. Ask questions about the number and quality of tournaments. Find out if coaches are paid, if there are field usage fees, type of fundraisers, etc.
Don't get duped by that compulsively lying organization which overcharges you for everything, doesn't really care about the game or those who particpate in it, and view their organization as some sort of fiefdom. Expect to spend about a grand out of pocket. That's about $1,500 or more, including everything less all fundraisers (about $500) and totalling to a nice round $1,000. Some organizations can be less expensive. Some as low as $600. Most are there or slightly above that figure, extending out to $1,500 out of pocket. Don't pay $3-5,000 to play 6 B level tournaments in adjacent towns with a paid professional coach whose greatest dream for this team is to come in second or third place at one of them.Labels: youth tournament teams
Permanent Link: Sticker Shock
 
Hopes, Dreams, Goals and Such
by Dave
Monday, August 31, 2009
It is really important to have dreams. It is just as important to have goals. But what trumps both is differentiating between the two because doing so changes our actions and determines outcomes.
Dreams are wishes or desires which often exceed our realistic expectations. We hope they come true and we move in some ways to make them happen. But we don't necessarily expect them to come true. They are the upper limits of what we think we can attain.
Goals are things we believe we can achieve. We want them to come true and we act to make them reality. We expect to accomplish them. They are possible given our perceived abilities and ability to improve, and we expect that once they come to fruition, there will be new ones to replace them.
Differentiating between dreams and goals is important because, in the case of dreams, we do not take every possible step to achieve them immediately. I know a few folks whose dream it is to win the Mega-Millions lottery. But they do not mortgage the house or rob their savings in order to buy tickets. Whenever they happen to be near a lottery machine and have a spare dollar in their pocket, they buy a ticket. For a few hours, their dreams are filled with luxury automobiles, perhaps a new oversized house, or fantastic vacations. Then they go online and, if they are really lucky, they learn that they won two bucks to buy another two tickets for the next drawing. They dream about winning millions but they do not act constantly and consistently to turn dreams into reality.
In the case of goals, one does take many actions with the accomplishment in mind. A student sets a goal of achieving a B or B+ in some subject, as opposed to a C+ like they received last time, and they try a little harder every day to improve their understanding of the subject. Instead of devoting 10 minutes to the course's homework, they put in a half hour. Maybe more time is spent checking answers on tests. You know how that game goes.
With respect to fastpitch softball, the same principles hold true. Kids, parents, and coaches all have dreams and goals for themselves, their kids, and/or their teams. They may muse about making it to the final game of the world championship, dream about hitting the big homerun, or picture their child being recruited to play for the WCWS winning team. When we're talking about some Gatorade player of the year, some team which has already competed at the highest levels, or a kid, team or organization which has a realistic shot at achieving a truly noteworthy accomplishment, well, then we are talking about goals. But when we are watching our 11 year old daughter win the town rec championship, we need to temper or expectations and differentiate between dreams and goals.
This is all very rudimentary but I can tell you that often times kids, their parents and team coaches have unrealistic dreams and they act as if those are actually their goals. I would never suppose to take anyone's dreams away from them. I wouldn't even want to temper those, not even slightly.
When my daughter was four, she told me she wanted to be an astronaut. She had this little stuffed lion pocketbook which she cherished and carried around with her most of the time. So when she told me about her dream of flying off into space, I told her I was 99% sure that NASA would allow someone to bring their lion pocketbook with them into space provided that they had owned it a long time and kept it clean. She was very happy to learn this important detail and decided to wipe down her pocketbook.
When, years later, she told me she wanted to play basketball in college, well that was a different story. I thought about it for a minute and all that came to mind was, you are not going to be any taller than 5-6, you're not very quick, you can't dribble, and you only made two shots all of last rec season. So I said, "that's nice, and then we can come watch you play at a big stadium." She also liked the image that conjured up.
Early on in her softball career, my daughter began to play travel ball. She told me she wanted to be a softball player when she went to college. She was 11 at the time and playing on a 12U team of girls who were almost all 13 as of the beginning of the season. It was winter and the outlook for any playing time beyond a few innings on Saturday was not real good. There were four other pitchers on this team. The other girls had played more softball and were more in tune with the pace of the game than my kid was. As winter wore on, we worked very hard on her pitching. I had taken the focus off playing college ball (the dream) and placed it on pitching well enough to earn some innings (a realistic goal). She worked very hard and by the time we got to playing outside, she was pretty clearly the second best pitcher on the team. She had earned playing time through hard work and devotion to accomplishing a goal. She had not merely dreamed.
I tell you this story because very often at tryouts, I see kids who are decent pitchers or players but who could use more time in the laboratory. They make travel teams but do not practice real hard because they are not focused on goals. Their parents field the call from the team coach inviting them to join the team. After they get past the ancillary issues of cost, type of schedule, frequency of practices, etc., they get around to what matters most, "how much pitching time is Jillian going to get," "do you see her playing the infield or outfield," or "exactly where do you see her fitting into the roster right now?"
On numerous occassions, I have had kids play for me or seen kids on a team my kid plays for, who make a team, inquire about their status, and then never again work towards a goal because their dreams of playing for a winning team or of being the star pitcher, catcher or shortstop preclude them from making the realistic conclusion and sacrifice that they need to work and improve their game. On one occassion, I had a pitcher who I envisioned would develop over the winter, come out in spring and be primarily a Saturday pitcher who might also see some action for a couple innings in the field and then hopefully earn more Sunday time as she got her feet under her. Her parents were very proactive about my plans for their daughter, as you would expect. I explained about the need to work and earn playing and pitching time. Then when we got indoors for some live-pitched batting practice, it was immediately evident that she had not so much as picked up a ball since we ended our fall season a few months before. She couldn't pitch more than five minutes of batting practice without getting winded. She couldn't get a single pitch by our weakest hitters and we had a weak hitting team. They tee'd off on her and she got too tired to continue after the second batter.
At the time, I wrote this off and decided to put her in to pitch practice throughout the entire off-season to see what happened. One time she didn't have her mitt with her and could not pitch. Several times she couldn't make practice because she had rec basketball practice or games - her parents told me it was school ball because I had made an allowance for girls playing school sports to miss practice. I subsequently learned she was missing for rec basketball. I still wrote off the experience and hoped the kid would turn it around in the spring.
To be quite honest, that kid did not throw any better in April than she had in late December. When we played our first friendly, I could not, in good conscience, stick her into the circle. And they left my team precipitously. They blamed me, no doubt. I had broken a promise to pitch the kid. I had indeed but it was forced on me by her lack of work. She had unearned the right to pitch.
Another kid I had on my team was a pretty good hitter. She was moving up a class and an age group when she joined the team but she was a kid who I thought would find a decent amount of success. She was taking hitting instruction once a week and her swing was getting into a groove. We did some batting practices and everything looked pretty good. She was hitting the ball sharply. At some point, I noticed that there was the beginnings of a mechanical breakdown and she stopped hitting the ball. I didn't think much about it. Kids, even those in lessons, get into slumps where their coach is trying to correct something and they struggle for a while. Then her parent told me she was going to go "back to those lessons" as soon as the season started.
I couldn't understand what the parent was thinking when they halted this kid's hitting lessons. I knew money was not the issue. If it had been, it would have been a better idea to go once every two weeks or once every month. But this parent just plain stopped the lessons because we weren't in-season with the plan of jumping right back in whenever the weather turned warm. I'm not sure they ever started back to lessons. I do know the kid's swing never again looked right that year. She did not have the measure of success I expected from her when I put her on the team.
These are but two experiences I have had in which players acted as if making a team was the end goal of their lives. I can't count the number of apparently similar situations I have witnessed over the years. Some kid is the star shortstop for a team and she puts her glove away in late fall only to pick it up once a week during indoor training but never attends any clinic or gets out to field some grounders when the weather is agreeable. Another kid barely makes the cut, throws in the yard whenever the temperature rises above 33, goes to every clinic on the planet, makes her mom or dad get her out on the field to get grounders under threat of temper tantrum whenever they sit down for a millisecond. The team gets out for some tournament and the star can't make a play while the scrub acts like a human vacuum cleaner. Who do you think deserves to be SS? Who do you think the other 10 kids want at short?
Coaches are all too familiar with these kinds of happenings. We try out some kid in the fall and she forces us to buy new balls because the ones we were using are now coverless. Then we play real games and kid goes 0-fer-forever. We beg some tremendous athlete to join our team and she becomes the biggest liability on the field. I've heard pitching coaches who teach a large volume of kids talk about the freshman wunderkind who never got any better and was relegated to the bench in her sophomore year when the new promising freshman who played for some out-of-state travel team arrives.
A fellow I know had his daughter on some decent travel team. She was the youngest kid on that team, you might argue she was the twelfth addition to the roster. As tournament season proceeded, he began to notice that she played little on Sundays and not more than a game and a half on Saturdays. He began to get upset because he felt that much of her lack of improvement had to do with a lack of game playing time. Then, when another parent got very upset over her daughters perceived lack of playing time and voiced her disatisfaction directly to the coach, this fellow wondered if maybe he should do the same thing. He decided to think on it for 24 hours before saying anything.
This fellow, while thinking on the situation, placed a call to a relative who had several daughters that had played high level travel ball and then gone on to play in college. He explained the situation and asked for advice. The relative told him this was normal, a good experience for the kid, and not a circumstance which would be resolved by cajoling the coach into playing the kid more. He decided that the relative was right and while his kid's playing time did not improve during the remainder of the season, he learned a great deal and so did the kid.
The other parent, the one who had voiced her disatisfaction, got out of control. Her perceptions were off to begin with. At one tournament, her kid played about 3 innings in each of the team's three Sunday games. She complained to the coach that she was upset because her kid didn't play an inning, "not a single inning!" The coach informed her that she was way off the mark and he had the book to prove it. She threatened to remove her kid from the team. The kid's playing time ticked up a notch but when her mistakes started costing the team games, the situation went backwards and the kid did leave the team.
The parents of the kid most likely blame the coach but I can tell you that most travel coaches in the area know the full story. The kid is more or less marked. There are many teams and coaches who would be willing to give the kid a shot on their teams. But as soon as something similar happens, it is expected and the kid pays the price. That is, when the kid is not in a game for a couple innings and the parents complain about it, as they always do, coaches get their backs up and then start regularly removing the kid anytime she makes a mistake. The kid didn't learn anything. The parents didn't learn anything. The local softball community is wise to the games they play. The result benefits nobody.
As I said earlier, goals have a couple important facets. They need to be realistically attainable. Let's say you play a game and don't get a hit. Maybe your first goal in the next game should be getting a hit. If you've yet to make contact, grounding one back to the pitcher is a goal. I was watching a scrimmage recently involving one organization's kids. They put together two teams and the purpose of the scrimmage (as well as practicers and subsequent scrimmages) was to divide kids by ability and determine who would make which team. A kid from the prior year's B team was batting against the number two pitcher from last year's A team. The father of the B player yelled, "hit one out." The kid struck out! Now, I've never seen this kid hit one anywhere near any fence, let alone get an extra-base-hit off a very good pitcher. She should have been looking to make contact, perhaps get a single. But she began to tense up and swung way too hard because she needed to attain her father's apparent goal of going yard. She acted on the dream instead of accomplishing an attainable goal.
I remember one time my kid was called upon to bunt. She fouled the first one off. I cursed under my breath and yelled, "come on, get it down." She fouled the second one off. She took a pitch for a ball and then laced a lucky single. Another parent told me to chill out because "she got a hit and she's way too good of a hitter to be bunting in that situation." I cursed and told him that "my kid always gets her bunts down" and whether she is too good of a hitter to bunt there or not, that's what the coach asked her to do and as far as I'm concerned, she failed. I also told him, "as far as I'm concerned, if you can't get bunts down, you're not a softball player."
There are very few kids who can hit homeruns. There are very few kids who can be counted on to get hits in key situations. But every kid can get a bunt down. Just about every kid can hit a grounder up the middle when there is a runner on third and less than two outs. There are attainable goals in the shortrun which need to trump the dreams of achieving travel softball immortality. Players would be well advised to focus on something attainable and then set their sights a bit higher after the attainable has been achieved before shooting for the moon.
Tied directly into the issue of goals vs. dreams, of setting attainable goals rather than living and acting as if the loftiest dreams are the goals you should shoot for, is the concept of environmental factors. It is never a great idea in competitive situations to spend too much time and effort contemplating what others are doing. But on the other hand, one should not be oblivious to the competition. Players, parents, and coaches should take a look around themselves and see what others are doing.
I have had occassion to see teams play games in which one wipes out the other. The coaches of the victim team watch the other and comment about how well coached and trained they are. On a few of these occassions, I have tried to learn what sort of preparation the winning side does. Often I hear things like three, even four weekly practices year-round, or a large amount of fundraising which is then used to hire one or several professional coaches to come in a train the girls. I hear that this team has been trained together for three or more years under a particularly gifted coach. Perhaps this or that team is fully funded by some rich parent; they get over a hundred girls trying out because it is free; and all the best athletes from three states join this team because not only are they fully funded but they have the best training facilities available anywhere. You can't compete with that but what you can do is make the most out of what you can realistically do and what you have.
In these kids of circumstances, I never get the feeling that the coaches for the losing side appreciate the sort of preparation their opponent has done. They think if only they did X, got more committed athletes, or perhaps hired any old professional instructor for four weeks of lessons, the result would look like their opponent.
This breeds frustration more often than any measure of success. Coaches get wrapped up in this dream of coaching a team "like that one" and fail to recognize that the measure of their success is degree of improvement not beating the Olympic team. Their goals should be to improve their teams, not to have 9 batters come to the plate with swings that hold the potential of hitting one out every at-bat, or of having defenses that turn two every time there is a grounder and a runner on first. Coaches need to realistically assess the level of ability they have before them and work on devising practices which will improve their team and remove its deficiencies.
Similarly, players need to be aware of what others they play with and against are doing. I can't count the number of times I have heard a kid or their parent exclaim that so and so just "isn't much of a runner. She'll never be fast." I don't know if you all have been watching or not but fastpitch softball happens to be a sport! Running happens to be one of the primary skills. If you can hit a ball 300 feet 50% of the time, maybe you can get away with not running 50% of the time. Otherwise, you're out of luck. If you find yourself on a team which believes it can cover your lack of speed by positioning super-fast girls around you, great, but otherwise you sort of, kind of have to work on your foot speed.
It does not take very much for a kid who cannot run to get out in the yard or at some field and run 10-20 sprints a couple times a week. If you've got a few sheckles, it isn't all that expensive to enroll in an agility clinic once or twice a week. It does not so much matter that you'll never get to first in 2.7. If your current time is 4.0, I guarantee you that you can get that down to 3.5 with just a little effort and not too much time away from text messaging, IMing, or gaming. Think of it this way, when your friends say "what have you been doing," you'll actually have something to say other than "nothin." If you keep it up beyond a couple months, I'd be willing to bet you'll get down to 3.4, then 3.3, maybe even 3.2. Then all that embarrassed talk of "I can't (my kid can't) run" will disappear.
Pitchers in particular need to assess what the competition is doing. If all the other girls are throwing 4 times per week, 10 months of the year, you may be a big shot at 12U but the other girls are going to gain ground on you before high school if you make a habit of really working hard two days a week, only during real season, and only if it doesn't rain on your designated throwing day. I remember having a rough go of it in Little League all-stars. For whatever reason, the manager had designated some kid to be one of just two pitchers. I talked to her about practicing. She cheerfully came to me before one of her starts and told me she practiced every day that week. Well, she said, "not Thursday and Friday because it was raining but every other day." I asked her how much she had thrown and she boastfully told me "about twenty pitches." As you would expect, she got whalloped. She no longer pitches.
But that's an extreme situation and that's low level ball. I have seen similar situations at higher levels. One kid I can think of throws 5-6 days per week for hour and a half sessions. She perfects her pitches and can kill a nat on her catcher's shin guards with a curveball. Another kid has good stuff but throws only when she feels like it (like after she gets beat or when some other kid on her team throws better than she does). Eventually the kid who really works is going to consistently do better than the one who acts only when the spirit moves her. I have seen high school pitchers who are complete maniacs about practicing even though nobody, and I do mean nobody, ever hits them. I know of one girl who is in actual lessons four days per week. She is a throwing machine!
Not everybody can throw as long or as often as the two girls I'm referencing but everyone can plan and execute a program to improve their pitching. It takes a lot to be that good. You're not going to compete with these two girls unless you can realistically say that you've worked nearly as hard no matter how much talent you actually have.
In the middle of the pack, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen young promising pitchers who for one reason or another become satisfied and stop trying to get better. The typical scenario involves a girl who was lights out at 10U, 12U or maybe as late as 14U. She forgets what it took to get to that point and becomes enamored with her "talent." She doesn't work. She doesn't perfect her pitches and learn new ones. Then the hitters start catching up to her. She reacts with a spurt of hard work and then fizzles again. Then her competition begins to pass her and its too late.
We often see youngish pitchers who were once very good but who do not develop real command. Sometimes even their rudimentary control leaves them for extended periods. To be clear, I speak about control when I am referecing issues of throwing strikes and walking batters. I reference command when I mean actually hitting spots to get batters out. Pitchers without control sometimes hit spots. Pitchers with command sometimes walk batters, sometimes lots of them. But pitchers generally first get control and then look to develop command. Pitchers without command get pummeled at higher levels. Pitchers without control walk even number 9 batters on poor hitting teams.
I have watched pitchers who lose their command or fail to develop it. When the existing stock of batters gets better, they often get hit hard and then lose their confidence rapidly. They either go back to B ball and last a few more years or they give up pitching.
When younger pitcher lose control, they usually blame it on the umps or claim they have injuries which are never discovered by medical people. They walk too many batters and before long they find themselves not inside the circle. They seem to be better than that other kid but the coach just won't pitch them. They get invited to join teams but not as pitchers. Eventually the dream diminishes and they learn to play other positions or quit the game altogether.
All these little stories of failure obviously share a common theme. They are about kids who do not practice their craft. I believe much of this is caused by a focus on unachievable dreams rather than attainable goals. I would never try to shoot down your dreams. I would never even suggest that you cannot achieve them. But you've got to get there by working on goals and then stepping up those goals when you achieve your first ones. Before you hit the game winning homerun in the D-1 WCWS, you must hit the ball to begin with. Try that first. Then perfect your swing at the tee in your garage. Then be the star rec player. Then test travel and learn to be a good hitter there. By the way, don't frown when you get the bunt sign, instead lay one down.
You may not ever get to the D-1 WCWS. You may have to settle for the D-2 or 3, maybe even the junior college version. You may have to settle for just making some college team. Perhaps that college scholarship your dreaming of will only cover 10% of your school costs. Maybe you'll just barely make a D-3 school team but get academic money that covers the whole thing while attending a great academic institution which propels you to a wonderful career.
Maybe your dreams only extend out as far as pitching for the high school team in the conference tournament. Maybe they only go so far as 14u or 16U B tournament ball. You still need to focus on attainable goals and then make them happen. Before you do that, you need to determine which of those thoughts in your head are dreams and which really ought to be goals. You need to differentiate and then get to work.
I hope this discussion is helpful to players, parents and coaches. I could say lots more on goals. But I'll leave it at this because this thing has gotten way longer than I thought it would. And besides, I'll need something for another day.Labels: coaching, parenting, work ethic
Permanent Link: Hopes, Dreams, Goals and Such
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