The State of Softball with Sue Enquist (Jan. 15, 2015)

[3bmama]

$80 was me. I know it's not too bad but it wasn't worth the extra cost of when another league was $40. $300 is robbery. Wow. I have 4 kids, that would be tough to justify for a rec league.

 

[Elk Grove Hurricane]

Maybe "actively engaged" is a better term to use there? And that is the issue in a nutshell.

When I was a kid, all the boys in the neighborhood would get together just about every summer day and pop across the street to play baseball on the grass in front of the middle school. We played with a tennis ball, used trees and bushes for bases (and our gloves for 3B), the street was our outfield, and the house across the street was a homerun. When we didn't have enough for a game (and we'd play down to 3v3), we'd play pickle until we couldn't move. If there were only 2 of us, we'd just go play catch and talk about our favorite players/teams. The younger boys picked up the game from the older boys. This was in the 70's, so not exactly ancient history.

That kind of thing doesn't happen now, at least not where I live. Now we have to schedule "play dates" and try to fit it in between too many different sport schedules, music lessons, extracurriculars, and electronic devices. The only way for them to get the exposure they need to be better players is specialization, private instruction, and a little bit (or a lot) of tiger parenting. Someone else said kids don't have time to just play. I would say that they are not given that time by us parents.

So how do I get my rec girls actively engaged in a sport that they only play during that sport's season, where the majority of the play time is spent standing around waiting for something to happen, where they are coached by a parent who had to be coerced into the job because no one wanted to do it (and if they did want to, didn't take the time to learn how to do it adequately), and then come to me at 12U not knowing how to slide or when to tag up (or even what "tagging up" means)? And then I'm supposed to take 8practices and 12 games and get my girls to love the sport?

I get the ideas of challenging them, making them think, and rewarding them for effort and accomplishment. Been doing that for years. 2 of my best players whom I've coached for 5 years now, and who love to play, couldn't come play fall ball for me because their folks made them play soccer. It felt very much like the parents viewed softball as a "filler" season and not as a future athletic path for their girls.

Someone else talked about the 3 sport athletes as a good thing. I guess I agree, as I played baseball, football, and ran track. But I didn't start playing football until I was already an athlete, where baseball was my passion from the time I was a kid. I think that it is hard to develop a passion for a sport if you're only playing it for a few months at a time and then moving to the next thing. Heck, my DD is more actively engaged with the stupid iPad I let her buy than with anything else, and she's a stellar, gifted musician.

Apologies for rambling - the above was very stream-of-consciousness. Feel free to ignore and move on.

You make some really good points. As to tagging up, etc.: It is harder to teach this rule to girls, compared to you and I, because we grew up watching every possible game, listening when we couldn't watch (do any kids listen to baseball on AM radio any more like we did? I grew up in the Northeast, had my choice of Red Sox, Mets, Yankees, Orioles, Expos (sometimes in English), and Phillies every night!), and reading about baseball every day. My girls, and every one that I have coached or who have been friends with my girls, don't watch baseball like we did. They don't pick up the subtleties of the game like we did, so those are things we have to teach at 12U or earlier when you get so lucky that you have the one kid who lives and dies with baseball (softball, as much as I hate it, is so rarely on that we can't expect girls to watch).
You are spot on about the play dates, and structured this, structured that. But we can't blame the kids or ourselves for that, it's the world we live in. I wouldn't think of letting my DD's go to a park by themselves to play, or ride a bike 3-4 miles home like we did growing up, we now know too much about how things can happen. And face it, none of us have the time to go watch them play at a park every day for 3-4 hours, nor do most of us have friendly enough neighbors where we don't have to worry about broken windows if they play at the street. Times have changed, and the game is hurt by this as much as anything else.

 

[FP26]

When I was a kid, all the boys in the neighborhood would get together just about every summer day and pop across the street to play baseball on the grass in front of the middle school. We played with a tennis ball, used trees and bushes for bases (and our gloves for 3B), the street was our outfield, and the house across the street was a homerun. When we didn't have enough for a game (and we'd play down to 3v3), we'd play pickle until we couldn't move. If there were only 2 of us, we'd just go play catch and talk about our favorite players/teams. The younger boys picked up the game from the older boys. This was in the 70's, so not exactly ancient history.

Wow! This brought back some memories. We typically played in a fenced lot with tennis balls and a taped broom stick. If we didn't have enough to play a game, we would do a modified version of a home run derby. We would each pick a pro team and do our best to duplicate each hitter's style. I would typically pick the Phillies and copy Pete Rose, Manny Trillo, Larry Bowa, Mike Schmidt, Bob Boone, Greg Luzinski, Garry Maddox, and Bake McBride. Honestly, my favorite one to copy was McBride. I tell DD stories about this and she looks at me like I'm crazy. Times are different...

 

[BT3100]

Wow! This brought back some memories. We typically played in a fenced lot with tennis balls and a taped broom stick. If we didn't have enough to play a game, we would do a modified version of a home run derby. We would each pick a pro team and do our best to duplicate each hitter's style. I would typically pick the Phillies and copy Pete Rose, Manny Trillo, Larry Bowa, Mike Schmidt, Bob Boone, Greg Luzinski, Garry Maddox, and Bake McBride. Honestly, my favorite one to copy was McBride. I tell DD stories about this and she looks at me like I'm crazy. Times are different...

Hey you may have grown up where I did!
I grew up in South Philly. Where are you from?

 

[FP26]

Hey you may have grown up where I did!
I grew up in South Philly. Where are you from?

About 2 1/2 hours from Philly towards central PA. Our cable company televised all the Phillie's games. My only other choices were Braves (TBS) and Yankees (WOR). And honestly, I didn't consider them choices

 

[Strike2]

You make some really good points. As to tagging up, etc.: It is harder to teach this rule to girls, compared to you and I, because we grew up watching every possible game, listening when we couldn't watch (do any kids listen to baseball on AM radio any more like we did? I grew up in the Northeast, had my choice of Red Sox, Mets, Yankees, Orioles, Expos (sometimes in English), and Phillies every night!), and reading about baseball every day. My girls, and every one that I have coached or who have been friends with my girls, don't watch baseball like we did. They don't pick up the subtleties of the game like we did, so those are things we have to teach at 12U or earlier when you get so lucky that you have the one kid who lives and dies with baseball (softball, as much as I hate it, is so rarely on that we can't expect girls to watch).

This is so true. As a kid, I listened to the radio and watched baseball on TV whenever possible. I absorbed the "subtleties" from people like Vin Scully and Jerry Coleman. I learned how to keep score before I was 10 years old while going to more MLB games than I can remember. Whenever I had a question, my dad was there to answer it. It's so much easier for a kid to learn the complicated rules when they actively seek the knowledge. I've occasionally found my DD watching ESPN on her own, and we occasionally watch live baseball and softball, but she doesn't have anywhere near the drive to understand that I had at that same age, yet her knowledge is probably better than most 12 year-olds. She has a solid understanding of the rules because of the extensive conversations we've had on the way to practices and ballgames, when she was a captive audience. Watching a ballgame, tracking what's going on, and asking questions in real time is the fastest way to learn the subtleties, but not many kids today seem to have that level of attention.

 

[YOCOACH]

Watching a ballgame, tracking what's going on, and asking questions in real time is the fastest way to learn the subtleties, but not many kids today seem to have that level of attention.

Is it lack of attention or is it more along the lines of more entertainment choices? While growing up, we never had the plethora of entertainment choices that kids have today. My choices in the Summer were basically, riding my bike, playing football, baseball, basketball or swimming in the local lake. If I had some money and could bum a ride, and often times it was a big if, I could play short-hole golf, hit a video arcade or see a movie. I could and had walk to all of those other things. The only other choice was to watch TV which at that time the cable company had 13 channels including our 3 locals or listen to the radio/ play albums. There was no internet, video game consoles for home use, VHS/DVD/DVR players, On Demand Live streaming of shows/new movies, Tablet computers to Skype on, Cell phones to text everybody and their neighbor with and the list could continue on for 100's of items. Back then we were interested in the rules because we wanted to understand the game since often times, that's all we did. Now, our kids are doing so much more than we did. If the kids need to know a rule about a sport, they know they can just look it up on via the internet on their cell phones and while nice to know won't bother to memorize it since they can access it again at any time. It also doesn't mean much because they are playing 4 different sports competitively year round and can't keep every single one of the rules for all of the sports in their heads.

 

[Jojo]

Back when my DD was playing league ball, there was a local league that would put together a good number of teams every year. Our own league would lose players to them every year, just because parents wanted their kids to be a league with more teams.
It was the largest town around with the biggest league.

Fast forward to today, now an extremely large town, population near 90,000. And the city while still allowing Girls Softball, has pretty much given up on the organization of it.
The city pays one guy, and you call him up with an already put together team and he assigns you a field.
So now there is probably 1 8u, 2-3 10u's and maybe an 12u.

I coach a couple of the girls and my other parents always complain that those team are "hit" teams since they are put together by the coach and not the league and it isn't fair for them to compete in league tournaments.
I always explain, it really isn't their fault. It's that way or they don't play.

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

It also doesn't mean much because they are playing 4 different sports competitively year round and can't keep every single one of the rules for all of the sports in their heads.

This ^^^

At the end of spring last year (our 1st in 12U), I asked my girls to come play fall ball with me. Just about every parent told me about how they're committed to volleyball and soccer and whatever. I told them I understood, and implied that maybe now is a good age to start narrowing the sports focus just a little...

I think there's another aspect here: softball/baseball is hard. Hard as in chess-hard. The subtleties of the game start from the start and just get deeper and deeper. I know that other sports will lay claim to the same level of difficulty, but the more I examine them, I don't see it that way. Many, if not most are more challenging physically (though I agree with Ted Williams that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports), but few approach the mental difficulty of this sport we enjoy so much, and none match it. Is there another sport with the equivalent of the infield fly rule?