Playing Down

bleacher coach said:

I hear a lot of mixed feelings some are understandable if you have you 2nd or 3rd pitcher in and rotating girls, but what about when your in a 8u tournament this fall and your playing a team who has nothing but 07 girls and still playing 8u in fall but have to be in 10u in spring. What's the point there?

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If the rules allow it, I don't complain. I have always moved a team up in the fall but have no issues with teams that choose to stay down. If you are moving a 10U up to 12U and are getting smoked by soon to be 14U teams either take your lumps or find an easier tournament. Play 12B for the fall if you need to. You can't control what others do and if they are playing within the rules, it is really nothing but what some may consider poor style points.

mickeyedwards74 said:

I am curious to why you'd would play a 11U team down at the 10U level in the Fall and what are the benefits. I believe you should move them up to 12U in the fall and let them get used to the speed, larger ball and greater pitching distance. What am I missing?

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As with anything, there just isn't a 'one size fits all' answer. I generally agree that most teams should age up in the fall if for no other reason than "that is what most teams do." However, I can think of circumstances where it might make sense to stay down. I'll give a sort of extreme (and unlikely) example of 2 teams in order to make the point:

Team A is an '05 team who has played all spring/summer as a '2nd-year-of-10u' team. Every kid on the team has a January 2005 birthdate, which means that every kid on the team was eleven years old for the duration of the '10u' season. Due to the Jan 1 rule, this team of eleven year olds got to play a bunch of younger teams for all of spring and summer. After all, nearly all of the 2nd-year-of-10u competition was actually younger than this team of eleven year olds. Since being older LOOSELY equates to bigger, stronger, more developed athletes, this team enjoyed a spring/summer of dominating the younger girls. They are ready and eager to move on to the 12u waters in the fall. Go get 'em!

Team B is also an '05 team that played the spring/summer as a '2nd-year-of-10u' team. Every kid on the team has a December 2005 birthdate, and as such this team is, in reality, right at one year younger than team A. This team had some talent but never seemed to play late into Sunday. They got better as the season went on by playing good competition. Team A above seemed to get to play 2-3 more games than team B every single weekend, even though tourney fees were equal, so Team A and many others seemed to get more and more out of reach as the season progressed.

Now, you coached team B and those kids worked their butts off getting better, but still most Sundays were the same. Get up early, drive 90 minutes, play one game, and return home. Who am I to shame you for "playing down" in the fall just because my Team A is moving up with the majority?

By the way, you may have figured out that my Team A is all 6th graders and we will be playing the other/older 6th graders, our school peers, in the fall when we move up. Team B is a team of 5th graders. It is a team of 5th graders who have taken their lumps and played up a grade all year. If they choose to play other 5th graders in the fall to see how they stack up after working their arses off, why would I judge? Kids need a little success lest they start to become complacent with losing. Breaking a culture of long-term losing is a mountain of a task, but I digress haha.

I think it depends on your reasons.

However I'm a big proponent of playing the fall the age your team will play in the spring. I want to know and I want my girls to see what the competition we face will look like. Than we spend the winter working our butts off on the flaws we seen during the fall. If you play down in the fall you might not see the true flaws in your team since they aren't facing teams who will be their competition