Is it ever OK to purposefullly lose a game to get a more favorable bracket?

[Momo'sDad]

Deliberate sandbagging cheats the kids and cheats the game, but as a parent, I'd be a lot more concerned if a 12u coach never rotated player positions and only allowed 2 girls to pitch, despite having 4 on the roster. Every program has different goals, but I don't know of any quality organizations or teams that put a lot of stock into game results in January and February.

If I send our 3rd-best pitcher into the circle, she's out there to give 100% of herself to do her job for OUR team, regardless of who our opponent is. If the regular starting SS is playing RF, her assignments on each play might be different, but she's still expected to do the job the best she can. It's my job to coach her up so that she will be competent playing elsewhere on the field.

Once we get into May-June, however, players are going to start getting less time at their secondary positions.

 

[coach james]

Play to win.....period!
That's teaching his players to fear the competition rather than embracing the challenge!

 

[BB875]

Yeah, I'd probably pull my kid from that team. I would definitely start looking for another team, one that teaches about winning and losing. Can you imagine the dysfunctional parent meeting on that topic? LMAO. "We threw the game and well, now threw half the team under the bus!" Way to go coach!

 

[medicpelle]

It's unacceptable for so many reasons. If your a parent and you don't have a problem with this you are part of them problem.

 

[Coach JV]

Bush league all the way

 

[crystlemc]

My 14yo says "No way"! The way she sees it, you should have taken the level of competition into consideration when deciding to play that tournament. She said she would much rather play the better competition. That's why she plays TB. To see the best competition and improve her game.

 

[GOINGDEEP]

We have lost a few on purpose when we were "head hunting". Maybe someone ( team ) had been running their mouths and we wanted to settle it on the dirt. Sometimes that meant losing so we could catch them in the loser bracket. BUT, the ingredients had to be perfect before we would do it. Only if the bracket was set up we'd play them the next game, we wouldn't just lose and "hope" we played them a couple of games later.

Couple of things here:
I always let the girls decide if that's what we wanted to do.
We made the losing game fun. Played players where they wanted to play as oppose to where they are good at playing. ( Like my DD would play SS, she sucks there as a LH. Someone who wants to pitch, but isn't a pitcher. Someone wants to catch, who isn't a catcher. My power hitter always wanted to slap, so these were the games they could. )
These were mostly in-state tourneys, where the rivalry is high between teams.

The year we did this was my most favorite year in this game. We recruited 18 players from 11 high schools. Due to the distance between us we usually only carried 11-12 in the actual tournaments, we had our core group and then the others filled in when applicable. We got girls who were not happy with their former teams and basically wanted to beat them.........bad!! Funny thing is when we came up with this "idea" we were skeptical of how good we would perform under this format. When the smoke cleared it was our most successful year ever. We played all over and against teams from 27 states, winning percent was .785, out scored opponents 256 to 96.

Where I tie all this into the OP is, I was amazed just how good a team can be when they're HUNGRY. When you purposely drop down to face weaker teams or have the fear of getting beat, you're not doing your team any good........you're sending the wrong signals. Also you'd be surprised how much you can learn from playing a better team.

 

[canyonjoe]

In this situation is not doing everything you can to win equal to losing on purpose.

If you know you need to win to get into the gold bracket but still throw number 3 and move players around instead of playing
your A team wrong?

Either way though, once you put your lineup on the field you try to win. If you have good players a few changes in the field often doesn't make that big of a deal anyway.

 

[Rocketech1]

I agree with most of you that you should not be playing to lose under any circumstances. I believe it sends the wrong message to the players and is not in the spirit of the game.

I remember one of the first tournaments my DD took part in. In their 3rd game, her team was playing a powerhouse team with an ace pitcher who had not given up a run in the first two games, in fact no opposing batter had even put the ball in play against her, she was that dominate.

In the 5th inning after striking out pretty much every batter, one of our best hitters gets a single, and steals 2B. Our next batter hits a single up the middle and drives in a run (back to back hits against the best pitcher in the tournament). Our players go crazy like they had just won the world series. We ended up losing something like 10-1 but our team felt like winners because they had done something that no other team had done which was score on this team.

So the point of the story is that you may be over matched but can have small victories within the game and learn valuable lessons even in defeat. No need to lose on purpose in an attempt to not face tough competition.

 

[BB875]

I know we are talking about two different complete levels of ball, but this is my favorite softball quote:

What I love about the game is that the game doesn't know who is supposed to win.
--Sue Enquist, coach, UCLA


I bet an awesome thread would be for players/coaches/parents to share the embodiment of that quote... I personally have so many memories of come from behind victories or winning games against the "buzzsaw" teams everyone fears. One of the best compliments I ever received as a coach was years ago when I just started a new 10U team. We were not good at all. The home plate umpire after an unmemorable game said we were a great bunting team... That meant the world to me because we were a team limited by talent, but we were scrappy. We built on that and we beat teams that were way better than us on paper by putting on the pressure.

Never throw a game. Take something positive away, even just a memory...