Politics and Pillaging Shenanigans--What's Your Experience?

Coaches,

What is your experience with your league/organization in the situation I describe? We work in an organization where coaches with seniority (time in the league) get all the picks he/she wants and then other coaches/teams get to pick theirs. What is your league's "tradition"?

Last year, my head coach and I were given an opportunity to coach a team and we were grateful for the opportunity. After the senior coach took his/her team, we were left with the remaining girls. Because turnout was low, we were short a full team. My head coach and I went out and recruited girls from around the area. We ended up fielding a 12U C/B team with three 12-year olds, five 11 year olds and five 10 year olds, most with no travel experience. We all collectively busted our butts and had a decent season but knew we would have turnover due to girls aging out and the length some of the girls were travelling.

Fast forward to now, we are were looking at needing five or six girls, 12U. Tryouts come along and turnout is good but after the top 7-8 girls, the talent drops off pretty dramatically. Coach with seniority comes over and says, "I am taking these girls". 6 girls, all our top picks. The girls left over include a couple of 11 year olds, which would be fine, but after that, we are talking girls at age 12, only rec league experience. We expect to play Tournament B this year. Bottom line, we are once again trying to find displaced girls with 1-2 years experience to fill out our team, which is proving difficult.

What is your experience with this nonsense? We live close to one of the largest girls softball associations in the States, who always field competitive teams. Their senior coaches get first pick, but then it goes around the horn in a draft. The senior coaches do not get to siphon off 100% of the prime talent.

This is such a frustrating experience. We have a core group of girls and our plan was to get a team together that can age together and continue to play as they get older. We have no problem taking girls and developing them, but as you get older, taking in girls who have no experience at this level just makes it harder to prep a competitive team.

I was just curious as to what you other coaches have experienced? Is this normal (probably)? It certainly has been an education...

Personacom

Do you get to keep your returning players? In our organization we have an older team say 12 year olds and a younger team of 11 year olds. We try to keep the girls together by age so they can move up as a team. The way y'all are doing it the coaches are starting from scratch every season and it will be very difficult to develop the team that can move up from C/B-level ball to B-level.

Yes, we get to keep our returning players. And our goal this year was to put together a team we could move forward all at the same age. But when you have to scrape together players because you don't have age appropriate or skill appropriate players available, it becomes difficult. And we know if we cobble together players this year, the likelihood of them all coming to the next age group together is highly unlikely and we will be in the same position next year. And, you are right, it makes it very hard to develop players to play at the skill level that you want. In my opinion allowing the senior coach to scrape off the top exacerbates the problem.

In response to your specific question, we do have "pure" age group teams throughout our organization. For example, our senior coach has a pure 12U team. The only coaches who really are rebuilding year after year are those who were not in the senior position. Most of the senior coaches have a core group of 10 or 11 girls that move forward with them year after year. This particular senior coach lost a handful of players to injury, girls moving, etc. but, instead of that being his/her problem to address, it becomes ours.

This is an issue in most every organization. There was a senior coach in our org that did the exact same thing as you are describing, however, my rag-tag bunch of rec kids after 3 years were coached up to the point where I had a better team. He folded his team and I was able to pick up, and I worked my butt off recruiting, the 5 best players off that team.

This is why in my opinion organizations wither away into "do you remember (this or that organization)? They had some pretty good teams once upon a time, I wonder what happened?..." The objectives of each team are not clear so the coach has to play a guessing game every year, every tryout, etc. The organizer of the organization should communicate tryout rules and expectations and stick to them. Otherwise, tryouts can be an absolute nightmare.

I am now coaching in a pretty big organization with multiple teams at various levels. What we do is attach a year to our team. So, we have a 01, 02, 03 etc team. During tryouts, if the girl trying out is of 03, that coach of the 03 team has first dibs. If he doesn't want her, then the the other the 02 has dibs.

Another thing you might suggest to your league is, if you have two 02 teams, choose which is going to be the gold or A team, and then that one would get priority.

For me, I take heart and positive attitude over skill.