Tell me something good about rec ball!

Good memories of rec ball. Girls-only league, and a pretty big one. Development was OK, coaching mixed, but they were required to attend clinics. Three levels of play up through HS, then rec-only for the kids that just want to keep playing.
I don't think DD would have ascended to TB without outside coaching, but it was a good place to be when it made sense for her abilities.

Clubby, yes, and an ol' boys club, but nothing like what I saw in LL.

This is a bit long but something I had experience with (good, bad and ugly). I used to be part of the LL Board of Directors in a major metro area (on baseball side) and was tapped to help implement a softball program. A few things of note that worked well were:

Offered coach the coach training sessions before, during and after season led by a couple people with legitimate fast pitch pedigrees. Initially thought about making this mandatory, but it was hard enough to get coaches who had any youth coaching experience. The coaches who attended had the better teams by the end of the season. The coaches who did not had teams of girls who were playing fundamental baseball not fast pitch. Getting the idea over that this is a much different sport than baseball was harder than expected.

If you don't have budget or option of having "official" fast pitch umps tap the older girls on the local varsity team as umps and pay them. We ended up using this as fund raiser for the team and always has plenty of umps who knew the game much better then most parents. $25 per ump per game was donated to the HS team which usually gave us 2 umps per game. By the way, when we tried using the baseball umps it was not good. Very few had any idea of fast pitch rules. Interesting side note was that parents and coaches were less argumentative with the HS umps.

Start marketing the program early and to younger girls. Soccer is huge in our area and a lot of the better all around natural athletes quit softball to go back to soccer only since they were not the star anymore and couldn't rely mainly on natural athletic ability. Reaching the girls at the 5-7 (tee ball & modified/coach pitch) age exposed them early and gave them the basic skills to develop. If you have a relationship with the HS team try to get them to come out in uniform to an open event that you've invited the elementary school girls to and just play with them, sign balls etc. The young girls loved this and were begging mom & dad to sign them up right then. We found the HS coach loved this too since it would be developing a larger pool for her to draw from down the road. Even had a couple of TB coaches approach us about bringing their teams out so they could get a look at potential players.

May sound silly, but it worked extremely well, get every team very nice, brightly colored and flashy uniforms. If teams will be buying their own uniforms require them to choose from certain pre-picked options. These uniforms got noticed and there were always girls who signed up because they thought the uniforms were cool. There was a competing rec organization who just had plain cotton tee shits with block lettered team names. We drew a lot of their players because the girls liked our uniforms better.

Don't dilute the game too much, adjust the rules as needed but not to the extent that the skill required to play is diminished.

Even though I was a part of it, don't associate with Little League if you don't have to. Go with ASA (or other similar) or just play independently. As noted here, LL tries to do everything it can to keep select/travel ball a secret and exclude those who play from LL. Especially in larger areas, the LL rules are ridiculous. Welcome TB players into your league. Not only will they raise the level of play but you will draw quite a few that either don't have the time for TB or aren't quite at the skill level yet. Don't let parents/coaches get intimidated by the "select player" tag. Most of the girls who are good TB players aren't going to be playing in a rec league anyway.

Have full draft of the new players entering the league each season or randomly assigned by commissioner if geography allows. Allowing the players to request a team with no guarantee of placement worked OK. Once a player is on a team, that is their team as long as they are in the league and the team exists unless there is a REALLY good reason why they want to switch or coach wants to drop them. Have formalized process involving 5+ people to decide to allow changes/drops and be conservative in allowing this. Even if players are randomly assigned, have new players try out for a group of knowledgeable coaches/representatives so you can keep teams reasonably balanced and randomly assign based on quantified skill level.

Here's a rec program (couple towns over from me, in our district) that's doing it right

espnW -- How Robbinsville (N.J.) built a softball powerhouse

The 12's (standing in the background) won the LLWS last night

LEADERSHIP:
There has to be a clear benevolent dictator who has final decision making powers. You can delegate but in the end one person needs the responsibility to make the tough decisions and stick to them.
Don't change things for any one parent or player. If they walk, they walk. It is about ALL the girls in rec.

- Development is #1. League wide.
Before the season we had 3 league wide free skills clinics led by local instructors (donated time to get access to potential clients) and local HS teams and coaches (many who had played their first game in the league) and even one of the local colleges. Service Hours can be GOLDEN for HS sokids and the HS coach needs to understand this is where his next set of players will likely come from
We had PITCHING and CATCHING clinics EVERY weekend through the season led by some local HS kids and some bucket dads. Are they perfect - NOPE - but they are better than nothing and we had pitching at all age groups for ALL teams. We even had our coach pitch players coming out prepping for next season
We had coaching clinics before the season (mandatory) and we also had coaching mentors that went to practices to make sure they were run well and were teaching good skills. We would step in often when it wasn't and there is always some level of help available to all or coaches. We over helped which is much better than just giving them a few balls and a scorebook and say go for it.

- Assessments:
We do league wide objective tryouts run by our local HS players. So coaches assess but EVERYONE gets a full assessment of every player even the ones they didn't see.
Kids that don't tryout are either hat picked or coaches can agree on a rating for her an include her in the draft. All this makes it easier for new coaches in a division.

- Draft: Coaches kids get assigned a draft round based on their objective assessment PLUS agreement amongst all coaches. This stops most sandbagging. So if you have the #1 pitcher as your DD, no first round pick for you. If your DD is average maybe you lose a 4th round pick. Really keeps down stacked teams.
We only allowed max of three coaches kids - so if a HC had twins, he only could assign one AC and he had to draft a kid to get another AC
We demanded that every team have 2 pitchers drafted by the end of round 4. If team didn't, we restarted the draft
Parent requests (car pool, play with friends, play for coach X) etc were listed on our draft package but there was NO requirement for any of them to be honored (in most part they are).
If sisters in a draft, when you drafted one, the other one would be slotted into an agreed round (based on assessment and coaches agreement).
Draft goal is FAIR teams as best you can. Even is impossible.
Ideally 12U and below should be max 12 players. They are still at the age where parents can MAKE them play and also MAKE sure they are there.
14U and above you can have 14-15 and be OK. A lot more important things happening than rec softball at this age group.

- Rules:
Mandatory infield and outfield play for ALL players. Bat everyone. Remove all injury rules so not having subs can't hurt.
Limit pitching innings per game so coaches don't ride their #1 all game, every game. We loosened, but didn't remove limits for playoffs
League chooses and assigns pool players
In 10U we had no stealing home and no extra bases on catchers throws on stealing runners (which meant they threw on every steal, which developed their skills which meant they were ready to play TB or 12U)
5 runs max per inning except for last inning which is unlimited. Multiple ways to do it.

- Travel ball is your friend or at least not your enemy. Work with them as best you can if you are not associated with them.
You can work with them. Figure it out.

- Umpires: If you can you use PAID umpires. It makes a HUGE difference. It just does. If you can't at least get a mandatory clinic or an umpire co-ordinater/development officer as umpires absolutely need to be developed as much as you do players.

- Recruit
You build your league through tee-ball and 8U. If your 12U girls have not had someone looking after that age group it may be too late. We have been lucky where there has been someone step up for each age year and taken the best of the girls to travel each year and care about an entire year. It is massively noticeable when this doesn't happen - it didn't happen for our '03 girls and they are clearly the weakest group of players in the league.
Talking about t-ball. GIRLS ONLY DIVISION. We went from 6 girls playing t-ball to 26 - which in t-ball is 4 teams. There is no need to have more than 7 on a t-ball team nor any need for outfielders.

Oh, DICKS Sporting Good have local marketing managers. They will give you a bucket (good) of practice balls (not great but usable) and scorebooks for every team you have plus throw in a few tees, some team bags, etc. They will also do a 'discount' day for your league where you get X% off your entire order plus coupon books and allow you to setup a recruiting table in-store for a day. Well worth a call for every rec league.

Need to add one more thing.

When one of your coaches decides to be a jerk (and there is always one) and tries to take advantage of some loophole in the rules you put in place to try to get fair playing time, continuous batting, fair play etc, etc, create a new rule to stop this and name it after the coach in the rule book on the website an send out notification of this new rule to all the coaches and parents. This stops this real quick.

Here it is - the only time we had to do this:

"Rule X.X Coach Rob Surname's Rule*: The catcher in a coach pitch game is required to take an appropriate catchers stance and provide the coach pitcher an appropriate target. Penalty: offensive team can either take result of play or the pitch can be retaken without counting as a thrown pitch in the count"

* Name changed to protect him here... but not locally

(Coach Surname was having his catcher stand up in Coach Pitch and not behind the plate as there were no passed balls/stealing/etc in this division in an effort to make it harder for the Coach Pitcher to throw decent pitches. This put a stop to this and further rule loophole efforts by this coach and all other coaches real quick).

We have a pretty good LL in our county. Fortunately, the president is a softball guy (no sons or grandsons, just daughters and grandaughters playing). We sent two SB and three BB teams to state this year. Our field is equal to the boys' fields. We have paid umpires from the 8u level up. Being on the LL All Star team still holds some prestige in this area.

With that being said, we still have only about 1/3 the girls playing to the boys. However, the ratio is consistent with our Little Dribblers basketball organization, as well. Here, we are fighting the dance studios for enrollment.

ignition said:

Looking to hear about some things that made a rec program in your area good or even great. Was it the rules, the fields, concessions, the coaches, etc?

I see a big drop off in rec enrollment and program options in my area and it seems like part of it is related to how the games and organizations are run. Most of them don't seem to care about the girls, preferring to spend more of their time on boys baseball. I'd like to pitch in and help, but need some input on what makes a girls rec program good.

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I can't speak to other leagues we have a combined SB/BB program and both are growing and healthy. I think the 2 biggest reasons fro this are -

1. Dedication of league commissioners and board members who put in countless hours to make the league run smoothly.

2. Strong dedication to coach training -
a - all first year coaches and coaches at the 8U and younger divisions are required to take a positive coaching alliance clinic
b - all coaches are required to attend a minimum of 2 coaching clinics annually.
c - league puts on at least a dozen coaching clinics each year

This year I believe we had 10 teams each at the 6U, 8U, 10U levels, 12 at the 12 U level and 6 at the 13-18 level (most of the better 14-18 years are all playing HS ball during or rec season and are not eligible for or rec league).

Our fall league is great. They do baseball in the spring and softball in the fall so the girls get a the best fields, good umps, etc. The girls do do have fewer games than the boys (10 instead of 14, not including playoffs), but the cost is a little less.

Our spring league is affiliated with Babe Ruth, and they heavily favor baseball. They schedule baseball first, so softball gets the left over fields. They only have one ump foe softball (at least for 10u, I don't know what they do for 12u) and baseball gets two. We had one game rescheduled because they needed a field for a baseball makeup game so they just used our field and we had to make up the game later.

Lots of great!! memories from REC.. Homeruns made from a simple bunt...LOL seriously haven't seen the ball overthrown from sheer panic so many times in a row in years .... Championships every season.. All Stars... These are great memories for us and still the negatives seem to outweigh all of them.....
For us the best part of REC is that it's over.

The best thing about rec ball is that we don't have to watch it anymore. Thank God.