The Commish needs help

That just sounds like trouble waiting to happen.

They are going to annouce DD's name next.

If you have 12 players on the Team you want your name annouced in the first 11, #12 needs to have a tough time. Boooo

I'll try to address these age suggestions all together as they all pretty much hit the same target:

Talent disparity within the teams was a huge issue, probably more so than disparity between teams. Age was not a factor when we looked at the All Stars from last season - most of my 12U AS team was 11, same with the other AS team. The really good girls were ridiculously bored most of the time, and the ridiculously bad girls were still bad. This is a result of coaching talent disparity, which I plan to address with coach the coaches clinics - you can find my other thread on that easily lol!

We play strictly within the league until All Stars, for which we are holding 12U tryouts this season.
Our guidelines for player requests run through a priority list:

1. siblings
2. coach request
3. friend request and location/school

I would keep the friend request for B, and add a "play down" request for friends who are separated by skill, and find some way to finagle the locations for the A draft. At this point the girls looking to move on will need to embrace the ideas that a) they're better than their friend from across the street, and b) not all decisions are made based on social considerations.

canyonjoe said:

Rather than A and B. I would suggest moving the whole league to more like little leagues...Still can break out by age for all stars.

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FP26 said:

Question:I have found it difficult at times to convince some parents that their son/daughter should be part of the "B" subdivision...If you play strictly inside your own league, then what would be the possibility of splitting into 11u and 12u instead of A and B? It becomes more difficult for those parents to argue the structure or rating system when it is age based.

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I might go with Majors and AAA, like LL? Dunno yet.

GOINGDEEP said:

I would avoid classifying by A/B #1/#2 like the plague. ( example: JV and varsity drama in school ball ) If anything, go with something more neutral toned, say blue teams and green teams. Rec parents go nuts enough on the All-Star pick day, I wouldn't want to deal with "why is my kid in the 'B' division" all season.

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Sweet Lou said:

Our rec league commissioner tries to split the teams so they all have 1/3 pretty good players, 1/3 average players, 1/3 dear god they need a lot of help.

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This was the biggest complaint, not just from coaches but from parents of the good players: talent drop off on teams. That's exactly what I'm trying to mitigate against.

quincy said:

I would be OK having different divisions but I would try to expand the Teams you are playing against.

(Between all your posts, comish of the league, MS coach, etc. do you have any other hobbies? Do you umpire in your spare time?)

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Might have to look into playing outside the league, we have quite a few locally. I like it!

I don't umpire, but I do coach my son's flag football team.

GunnerShotgun said:

You should have as many teams as you have pitchers and catchers.

Anything other than that and you will have issues.

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Absolutely. Another goal for me is P and C development across the entire league. We don't start them early enough, and the bucket coaches have no clue how to teach it.

BuckeyeGuy said:

This was the biggest complaint, not just from coaches but from parents of the good players: talent drop off on teams. That's exactly what I'm trying to mitigate against.

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2 travel teams and the rest stay in rec?

Sweet Lou said:

2 travel teams and the rest stay in rec?

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We have 2 C travel teams and 1 B team for 12U. We probably could put together another C team from the rec players, but we don't have coaches right now. However, that is food for thought. Thanks!

Also, for everyone else, I'm not trying to defend a decision that hasn't been made yet, just laying out my thought processes. Everything that gets posted goes on my list of potential solutions. Thanks to you all!

The blind draft can work, but I would tweak it a bit. Each person has a different eye for evaluations. As a result it is hard to have one person evaluate and put teams together. Have all the coaches evaluate the pitchers and players, and put each coaches players into a matrix type format 1 - whatever number of players you have. The players ranked position is that number. It usually works out better if you have a separate matrix for pitchers and catchers. You can do this in an xcel format, and it should give you some pretty good balance. The player with the lowest number is the first pick, and the player with the highest number is the last pick etc. It's a little bit of work, but anything that you try to do right usually is.

As far as the putting together of the teams. First 2 rounds pitchers are placed using a serpentine format, then catchers and position players are placed using a serpentine format. Once teams are formed you can draw for who gets what team. This would buy you time to put something new in place next year like splitting divisions etc.

canyonjoe said:

Rather than A and B. I would suggest moving the whole league to more like little leagues.

In our little league we have

Tee ball (5 and 6)
Farm (6,7,8)
AA (7,8,9)
AAA (8-11)
Majors (mostly 11 and 12, with some good 10's and once in awhile a 9 year old)

Still can break out by age for all stars.

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In less the rules have changed. You can not break out by age for all stars in little league. If a girl plays up the whole season she can not go down for all stars and can not play up.

BuckeyeGuy said:

So, thoughts about A and B subdivisions?

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No, no, and no.

Your league is huge. I would encourage the most talented 12u players' families to move to TB, because the disparity between an A-level player and a true rec player is too great. You're not punishing the highly skilled player by kicking them out of rec. Instead, you're doing your job as a softball mentor to help advance them along the path of competitive softball.

If, however, all are committed to remaining in rec, then for the good of the game, you make every effort to balance out the teams and in 12u, that begins with pitching, with catchers a very close 2nd. If that means that the 2 best pitchers don't get to be on the same team in order to dominate their town league, so be it.

I agree with having the pitchers rated if you're doing a blind draft. If you've got 16 circle-ready pitchers, and then 20 in the "developmental" pool, you'll want to make sure each team gets 1 from the former group before anyone has 2. If a coach's kid is an upper-level pitcher, then they've got to take another position - which could be a developmental pitcher - with their 1st selection in the (pitcher) draft.