Commish vs coach

GoCaboNow · Jun 26, 2015

Who do you play in AS? Is it your district and then you go to state if you win district? If so, tough position to be in. IMO, you have a flawed AS selection process and wonky timing for implementing it. But, as Commish, you have a greater responsibility to the league, as a whole, than just certain players on your team. I think the AS team should be made up of the best players available, and not a stock amount from each team. With that many teams AS selection should be a HUGE honor. I think it is great the kids wanted to keep the team together, but the culture of AS should be a step above everything else.

Even though AS is VERY important to the league, they still tell the parents not to apply for AS, unless you can meet availabitiy guidelines. Daily weekday practices for the three weeks right after the season, and a week of tournament play to, hopefully, win to get to state. AS selection is the day after the season ends. Some kids that might be selected do not apply since their parents are not committed to the process, would rather take their vacation at that time. That is their choice, just like the choice of your girls to play the tourney together. But as commish, under your current AS conditions, I could see most would still expect you to send your best 2-3 to AS and anything else could easily be taken as an affront by the other teams. Again, not sure if I totally understand your AS setup, but having a team go rogue does not send the right message - imo, no matter how warranted.

Change your rules so it is not a minimum number from each team and this all goes away.

quincy · Jun 26, 2015

GoCaboNow said:
Change your rules so it is not a minimum number from each team and this all goes away.

Yep, you will have no problems with AS if you have tryouts. (We really really need a sarcasm font

)

Axe · Jun 26, 2015

You, as league commissioner, you took the opportunity to stack your Rec team rather than creating a system that creates a level playing field within the Rec league. Mistake number 1 that made a lot of enemies, I promise. Then you took your stacked team to go play All-Star tournaments, mistake #2. In both cases it would appear you abused your authority as commissioner to do what was convenient for you. I might even argue that you don't have a Rec team at all, you have a hand picked travel squad that happens to be playing down to Rec ball.

I don't care that you haven't done it before, you should have known better (yes, I am the president of a Rec softball league). You are in a position with a lot of opportunities to stack the deck in your favor and do favors for your friends. You need to resist at least some of those impulses.

BuckeyeGuy · Jun 26, 2015

GoCaboNow said:
Who do you play in AS? Is it your district and then you go to state if you win district? If so, tough position to be in. IMO, you have a flawed AS selection process and wonky timing for implementing it. But, as Commish, you have a greater responsibility to the league, as a whole, than just certain players on your team. I think the AS team should be made up of the best players available, and not a stock amount from each team. With that many teams AS selection should be a HUGE honor. I think it is great the kids wanted to keep the team together, but the culture of AS should be a step above everything else.

Even though AS is VERY important to the league, they still tell the parents not to apply for AS, unless you can meet availabitiy guidelines. Daily weekday practices for the three weeks right after the season, and a week of tournament play to, hopefully, win to get to state. AS selection is the day after the season ends. Some kids that might be selected do not apply since their parents are not committed to the process, would rather take their vacation at that time. That is their choice, just like the choice of your girls to play the tourney together. But as commish, under your current AS conditions, I could see most would still expect you to send your best 2-3 to AS and anything else could easily be taken as an affront by the other teams. Again, not sure if I totally understand your AS setup, but having a team go rogue does not send the right message - imo, no matter how warranted.

Change your rules so it is not a minimum number from each team and this all goes away.

Our AS is purely local. On our side, it's usually just for the experience and much less about winning. The teams we play from the other league are much more competitive, and really bring their A teams. I don't know much about how they do things, to be honest. At the end of our AS "season" there's a single elim tourney with participation medals (which I pretty much hate).

And we do not have a rule that says each team must contribute. We solicit coaches' selections based on their evaluations. They can submit none or submit 5 (we may only take 3 or 2).

My idea for next season is to hold tryouts at the end of the regular season for nominated girls. Limit the AS teams to 2/age grp. Participate in a post-season rec AS tourney a couple of weeks after the end of the regular season.

quincy · Jun 26, 2015

Axe,

I think you are being a little harsh. I do not think there is a good answer of keeping a Team together or breaking them up every year. Even if the OP was not commish the Team would have probably been loaded.

BuckeyeGuy · Jun 26, 2015

Axe said:
You, as league commissioner, you took the opportunity to stack your Rec team rather than creating a system that creates a level playing field within the Rec league. Mistake number 1 that made a lot of enemies, I promise. Then you took your stacked team to go play All-Star tournaments, mistake #2. In both cases it would appear you abused your authority as commissioner to do what was convenient for you. I might even argue that you don't have a Rec team at all, you have a hand picked travel squad that happens to be playing down to Rec ball.

I don't care that you haven't done it before, you should have known better (yes, I am the president of a Rec softball league). You are in a position with a lot of opportunities to stack the deck in your favor and do favors for your friends. You need to resist at least some of those impulses.

Our policy is to place girls based on certain criteria:

A request to play for a specific coach
A request to play with a friend
Same school
Same geographic area
Needs of the league

8 of the 12 requested me as coach with zero input or influence from me other than having coached them in the past. I am simply reaping some rewards from having gotten them to a reasonable level of play over several years. There were several teams with far more than 8 requesting a specific coach. For us, that's business as usual. The remaining 4 were selected using criteria #4 after nearly all other players had been placed. Stacked? Not intentionally.

I know what it looks like to those on the outside. I can't help that - or was I supposed to deny their requests simply because I'm the commish? So yes, it looks deliberate, but it was not. We're nowhere near even a C level travel squad. Heck, we're not even close to an AS squad, at least not the ones I've coached.

And I haven't taken my team anywhere. We're playing regular season games, and will do so all the way through the end of the season. We are not participating in any outside tournaments until 2 weeks after the regular season ends. It didn't even occur to me that this was something that could happen until 2 weeks ago - I honestly didn't know there were such things as rec tournaments.

TimothyJ · Jun 26, 2015

Our league starts discouraging team placement "requests" at 9/10u, and prohibits them at 11/12u

Teams should be formed so that there is as much parity as possible. Only real way to accomplish this consistently is via a draft of some sort (whether you completely form new teams every year, or the weaker teams get early picks the following year.. Either way)

Between that and the need for All-Star tryouts, it sounds like you have an opportunity to make some significant improvements in your league going forward.

quincy · Jun 26, 2015

I keep going back to if another coach in your League tried to do what you are thinking of doing and what your reaction would be.

BuckeyeGuy · Jun 26, 2015

quincy said:
I keep going back to if another coach in your League tried to do what you are thinking of doing and what your reaction would be.

I'd support him/her fully. If they'd (or I'd) figured it out early enough, I'd have changed the AS process this season instead of next.

What I just sent to the email writer:

"Coach, I owe you an apology. I was tired and irritable last night, and I failed to read your emails with an objective eye. Instead, I got defensive. It felt like all of the hours I've put into the league meant nothing to you simply based on the All Star situation, but I see now that that was not what you meant. I apologize, both for my reply and for not thinking the All Star thing all the way through.

It didn't occur to me how it might look from the outside. I assure that I do fully support the league, even though our definitions of what that means might be subtly different. Regardless, you are correct in that it looks like I am not supporting the All Star program as much as I should. All I can say is that I handled it poorly, and that I have learned a hard lesson.

As it stands, I cannot add more players to the All Star teams. We are already at such numbers that playing time is going to be hard to come by. I waited too long to start focusing on All Stars, and the consequence is that we are probably not fielding the strongest teams we could have.

I do have some ideas for All Stars gong forward, and if you attend one of the post season coaches' meetings, you will hear them and be able to have input on molding them.

I hope you and your DD have a great rest of the season.

Sincerely,

Me"

Edit: I cc'd the association prez on the email as well.

quincy · Jun 26, 2015

Personally I would be furious with you.

(I would like to see the first Email.

)

Commish vs coach

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