Gains and losses of Rec players from year to year.

[Coach Al]

From my own personal experience I have found that normal registration levels stay steady in rec organizations. Factors that affect numbers can be loss of population, new organizations forming, old ones folding or major economic problems in a region. Generally, you lose 10% of your players from your organization from your previous year, but you pick up 10% new players. Do you agree with my assessment? Do you know of anything you have done to improve these numbers?

 

[YOCOACH]

As I stated in another thread, in our area, the local rec leagues are limited to those that live in there townships with the exception of one that is open to all areas. Those rec leagues that are closed are the ones that are actually growing, even if it is in small amounts. The one that is open to all areas is the one that is losing players in vast numbers. One would think it would not be this way.

However, IMO, this has more to do with them being a slowpitch league until 14u. The players learn good fielding and hitting fundamentals but the league is not able to keep their best players beyond 10u. Many parents feel, and I agree, that at that age, the league needs to develop pitchers and catchers to transition into FP. Also, IMO, that beyond 12u, the average players have a very hard time transitioning to the speed of the FP pitching versus SP. This is really noticeable in their 14u FP teams because they have sub-par pitching, catching and hitting. So for the players that want to pitch or catch, the parents are going back to their respective closed leagues, even if they don't like the politics involved trying to get them as ready as possible for HS ball. The best players are leaving after 10u forTB teams if they don't go back to their respective "home" leagues and the average players are leaving around the age of 11. This has all left that league in dire straights; so much so that they have had to combine their girls side at 12u with another league just to field enough teams to play. When I coached there, they had ten 12u teams on their own comprised of 14-15 players per team. Now they have three teams from their league and three teams from the other and all of them only field 11-12 players apiece. The numbers for the 8u and 10u have remained relatively stable though.

Edit to Add: I feel that if they had at least had 1 or 2 10u and 12u FP teams that played against other leagues in the area so they could develop pitchers and catchers, they would maintain their numbers, if not grow. The BODs won't do this fearing that they are opening the door to becoming purely a FP league. Eventually, I don't think they'll have a choice if they want to stay viable on the girls side.

 

[coach james]

In our area, the travel ball scene has exploded. I still coach my youngest dd in the rec league (8u) Its getting nearly impossible to get enough kids past 10u. Everyone wants the travel ball training and performance out of their dd, but the rec head coach is usually just Sally's dad, and he does the best he can, but is clueless. Until a rec program gets organized and has a training program for coaches, I believe the numbers will continue to fall.
Its absolutely amazing how big of a skill gap there is between some of the teams we've faced. I'm honestly not bragging here, but I've got a 16u dd that I've coached her teams since she was in teeball. And I've really worked hard to be a student of the game. So when I work with these little 8u girls now and show them the proper mechanics, its amazing how they dominate their competition.

 

[James Smith]

DD’s league works really hard to keep the Rosters small, we went into last year with a 10 player Roster. Everyone was playing all the time, batting a few times a game, etc. Everyone I know about that was on her Team will be back this year.

Every year we lose a couple players to surrounding cities, every year we get some players from the surrounding cities.

I think if we keep the rosters small our league will continue to grow, unfortunately this has meant turning some players away just because of how the numbers were working out.

 

[SoCal_Dad]

I think if we keep the rosters small our league will continue to grow, unfortunately this has meant turning some players away just because of how the numbers were working out.

How do you determine which players get turned away - last to register (first come, first served) or is it after teams have been formed?

 

[James Smith]

Absolutely first come, first serve. No tryouts.

 

[Elk Grove Hurricane]

In our area, the travel ball scene has exploded. I still coach my youngest dd in the rec league (8u) Its getting nearly impossible to get enough kids past 10u. Everyone wants the travel ball training and performance out of their dd, but the rec head coach is usually just Sally's dad, and he does the best he can, but is clueless. Until a rec program gets organized and has a training program for coaches, I believe the numbers will continue to fall.
Its absolutely amazing how big of a skill gap there is between some of the teams we've faced. I'm honestly not bragging here, but I've got a 16u dd that I've coached her teams since she was in teeball. And I've really worked hard to be a student of the game. So when I work with these little 8u girls now and show them the proper mechanics, its amazing how they dominate their competition.

Same here, Coach James. 10 new travel ball teams started this year for the 10U's alone. Numbers are definitely down, I don't know how much, but definitely down.
For coaches, the issue really is that a lot of people who are qualified don't want to deal with the responsibility and its hard finding assistants who can work with you and be there every week. Even then, I see a lot who will commit to coaching their sons' baseball teams rather than their daughters' teams.

 

[Coach Al]

In our area, the travel ball scene has exploded. I still coach my youngest dd in the rec league (8u) Its getting nearly impossible to get enough kids past 10u. Everyone wants the travel ball training and performance out of their dd, but the rec head coach is usually just Sally's dad, and he does the best he can, but is clueless. Until a rec program gets organized and has a training program for coaches, I believe the numbers will continue to fall.
Its absolutely amazing how big of a skill gap there is between some of the teams we've faced. I'm honestly not bragging here, but I've got a 16u dd that I've coached her teams since she was in teeball. And I've really worked hard to be a student of the game. So when I work with these little 8u girls now and show them the proper mechanics, its amazing how they dominate their competition.

I have been involved with 3 different organizations over the last 36 year. I have found that training coaches is easy. However, the old saying goes " you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." I have seen people go to 2 day clinics run by some of the best clinicians in the country, but not use anything they were taught. Seems they think they know better with their players standing around and being bored to death.

 

[Coach Al]

In our area, the travel ball scene has exploded. I still coach my youngest dd in the rec league (8u) Its getting nearly impossible to get enough kids past 10u. Everyone wants the travel ball training and performance out of their dd, but the rec head coach is usually just Sally's dad, and he does the best he can, but is clueless. Until a rec program gets organized and has a training program for coaches, I believe the numbers will continue to fall.
Its absolutely amazing how big of a skill gap there is between some of the teams we've faced. I'm honestly not bragging here, but I've got a 16u dd that I've coached her teams since she was in teeball. And I've really worked hard to be a student of the game. So when I work with these little 8u girls now and show them the proper mechanics, its amazing how they dominate their competition.

I have been involved with 3 different organizations over the last 36 year. I have found that training coaches is easy. However, the old saying goes " you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." I have seen people go to 2 day clinics run by some of the best clinicians in the country, but not use anything they were taught. Seems they think they know better with their players standing around and being bored to death.

 

[Momo'sDad]

It all depends on where you live and what's happening in the community. The rec league here had relatively static numbers for decades, as the population was stable and for the most part, only the best players went to TB and that was usually for 14u.

Then in the early 2000s, there was a population explosion in our tiny town and a 4-fold increase in people meant an expansion of the rec program. The regional softball landscape was changing as well and more travel teams began showing up. It's possible that the increase in TV coverage of the college game and availability of softball scholarship money has been helping to fuel that.

We increased the amount of advertising we were doing and also took other steps to make the rec program more accessible to residents of the community. With so many new people moving to the town each year, it was important to get registration notifications out sooner rather than later, as most people new to softball aren't aware that they have to register in October/November for a sport that doesn't begin play until March/April.

That increased promotional work led to a pretty dramatic 3-year increase in sign-ups, though the final year of growth was when the local economy crashed, and our numbers seemed to reflect that a bit. And then we had a massive exodus with several coaches in the 10u/12u range deciding to start their own TB teams.

Retention has been pretty good from a year ago, so hopefully we're entering another growth period.