12 should be the max (and 11 is better). 15 is out of control, this is always a struggle for Rec leagues who are encouraging participation but you don't get more kids to sign up by watering down your brand in the community with kids having a poor experience. Boards have to be willing to cut off registration and risk alienating a small number of people in order to protect the quality of the experience.
After reading your post I thought I missed something so I reread the thread again.
It is not a crime to want the players to see more field time and hitting during games,
Capability of individual players was never mentioned in the entire thread, or anyone not being a Team Player.
The last several years when I coached in our local rec league I had teams of 15,14 and 16. Even though it was very competitive, I just made up my mind that I would play the best 1,2,or 3 players all seven innings and the other 6,7 or 8 (remaining no. of players split in half) would play either 3 or 4 innings each. If they played 3 innings the game before, they would play 4 innings the next game. The best players of the week would be determined by team vote based on their practice performances during the week with some input from the coaches. The girls could not be the player of the week more than once until all of the girls had played a full game. It worked well for us since there were no hard feelings and it brought a lot of competitiveness and fire to the practices.
Last edited by YOCOACH; 04-14-2012 at 04:30 PM.
Screwball (04-14-2012)
Our rec league also has no minimum playing time requirements from 10u on up and this completely contradicts the spirit of recreational play.
16 players is 2 rec teams, not 1. With that much bench time having 15-16 players, you're hindering player development more than is necessary. The mission of recreational leagues is to get kids INTO the game. I'm not sure what purpose is served by benching them that much or by having that many players in the 1st place.
I agree with you whole-heartedly Momo. However, my old rec league was the only open league in the area. It was, and still is, an inner-city league but we would take anyone from wherever. All of the other leagues in the area were closed to everyone except the families that live within their township limits. If a family didn't like the politics of their league, they had nowhere else to go except to our old rec league. Everyone was a volunteer coach and guess how many we had for 12u....6 coaches for approximately 80 kids give or take per year. Very few people are willing to work with inner city kids and the inherent problems that usually comes with them. I often picked up 5-6 of my players at their "houses" for practice since their "family" didn't have a vehicle and their Aunt or Grandmother was too busy getting their nails done to bring them. Heck, we were lucky when their "family" actually bought them gloves to play with. What do you do? If you have that many kids, sometimes there is no right or wrong answer. You just do the best you can with what you have and hope you can instill some skills, teamwork, respect, love for the game and whatever else you want to throw in there. Complaining about it or criticizing it doesn't help except in the fact that getting it off your chest is good therapy in, and of, itself.Originally Posted by Momo'sDad
I realize that not all leagues are inner-city but often times I see alot of similarities between the problems we faced and the problems faced anywhere. i.e. a lack of volunteer coaching anywhere is still beyond that coaches control as is the number of kids they end up with...at least in rec.
Last edited by YOCOACH; 04-14-2012 at 06:53 PM.
Momo'sDad (04-15-2012)
Yocoach, please forgive me as I do now remember you telling us about your situation. It's quite different from what we experience here in our comfy suburbs. As under-staffed as we are, I do sometimes forget there are those in other softball circles who have far fewer resources than we. There's everything heroic about the job you're doing and I should revise my previous statement to exclude those who are working in circumstances similar to yours. Anything you can do to get young people to the field at all is a major step in helping to give them something so many of us take for granted. I applaud you.
Screwball, I was sad when one of our stars got hurt before the season, but not because it was going to make it tougher for us to win rec league games. I was upset because a kid was hurt and because we'd lost one of our teammates who was on track to make her very first all-star team this summer. Our league president always wants to schedule games during Spring Break. We typically have about 25% of the kids out that week, but it's only 1 game and teams usually have enough players to play, even if they're a player or 2 shorthanded, which I didn't mind at all.
In our competitive softball suburb, however, the rec experience we're expected and should be striving to deliver is vastly different from what's been expressed by Yocoach. I don't know that Quincy's area is really comparable to ours, but I don't think I'm out to lunch in saying that one of the general purposes of rec leagues is to have kids actually playing the game. We've had numerous discussions about that on this board and there's a near-consensus that 8u, 10u, and 12u players require as much field time as possible in order to improve. Many rec coaches and parents want their teams to go undefeated, but I could care less about that. If we win as a result of working hard and doing our jobs well, that's great, but that's not the primary reason we play.
If wanting smaller rosters to enable the players to get more individualized practice instruction as well as more playing time really makes it about me, then I'll have to accept that criticism from you. I don't see how wanting to do more for each player is a bad thing.
Axe (04-16-2012)
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