Frustrating start to fall season

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Aug 12, 2014
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I wasn't sure whether to put this in the coaching or parents forum but since I'm an AC I'll put it in coaching. To sum up, we are a first-year 12U rec team. The spring season was a bit disappointing because the league we played in isn't very well-run, but there aren't a whole lot of options. We were really looking forward to the fall because it's a great league - really well organized and well-run.

In order to play in the league, you have to go through a member club. I generally really like our club (I coach my son's baseball team through them as well). Last year they had two 10U rec teams (including us), one 10U comp team, and two 12U rec teams. We had a full team for this fall with 13 players. It turns out that we are their only 12U team this year - the other 10U and 12U teams from last year all broke up for various reasons. So the club said we had to take all their 12U free agents, which put us at 18 players. Last week, HC called me to discuss our options, which were to either play with 18, try to have two teams of 9, or play comp and we could have tryouts and cut players we didn't want.

The first option had the obvious issue, and we're nowhere good enough to play comp, so I was in favor of trying to have two teams. HC was concerned because he alredy knew of a couple weekends (all games are on Saturdays) where some players would be missing. So he approached the club softball director and asked if he could try to recruit a few more players, or see if any 10U players wanted to play up, or something to help us get to 10 or 11 per team. He basically told HC it was our problem and up to him to recruit more players. He also said that if we wanted to cut players, we'd have to do it by when they regsistered, and some of our returning players registered late, so they'd be the ones cut. Ultimately, he did cut two free agents who hadn't paid yet, so that left us with 16.

We had our first practice tonight (we were supposed to start last week but HC put it off while he tried to work this out, season starts a week from Saturday). Only seven girls came, which is fairly typical for this time of year. In the middle of practice, HC got a text from our best player's dad (she's a true stud but her parents don't want to make the commitment to TB) that she isn't going to play because she decided to play Tennis instead. I'm sure the team size factored into the decision at least a little. On the bright side, that puts us down to 15.

On top of all of this, DD hurt her ankle a week ago on a water slide. I didn't think it was anything major and she'd be fine after a couple of days, but it's getting worse. She tried to play through it tonight but she couldn't run by the end of practice. We got her an ortho appt for Friday, and I'll be surprised if they don't put on a cast on it. I'm hoping we can get her better in a couple of weeks. She's registered for a pitching clinic at a local DII college (a very good program) starting in mid-August and I'd hate for her to miss it. I know it's not the end of the world if she misses a month of softball, but it just adds to the frustration of everything else. But from the coaching standpoint, that will knock us down to 14 for a while.

I just wanted to vent a bit.
 
Last edited:
Aug 12, 2014
644
43
We start the season Saturday and 5 players will be out of town, so I guess it's good we have 15 on the roster. I hate that we start so early, even a week later would make a big difference.

And DD saw the ortho on Friday and surprisingly they didn't cast her ankle. They gave her a brace and some exercises to do. So that's good, although I can't help thinking that it's just going to be a problem all season.
 

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