Where are all the dads?

[Strike2]

You can fill Yankee Stadium with the number of people at our Req soccer fields on a Sunday. My dd played for 4 years before Fall softball started and she gave up soccer. Two of the 3 years they did not have enough coaches. I volunteered because the teams would have been huge. I never played Soccer. The 4th year her coaches were high school students. At those ages, the weekly commitment was 1 one hour practice (same time each week) and one 1 hour game on Sunday morning.

Unfortunately, I don't think it is uncommon that find coaches is difficult.

I coached with a guy in 10U...a former college pitcher...who walked away from softball and took up coaching soccer. He pretty much started from scratch, but became one of the better youth soccer coaches in the area. I know soccer is a complex game that requires skill at the higher levels, but the concept is pretty easy for even toddlers to pick up. At the beginner level, even the most uncoordinated kid can run after a ball and kick it.

Compare that to array of specific skills and knowledge that any baseball/softball player needs to acquire before being able to do more than just stand there. Catching, throwing, fielding, and hitting a little round ball with a bat...it all can be learned, but none of that comes naturally to anyone but the most athletically gifted kids. Even for someone with playing experience, learning to teach it effectively is a challenge.

Add in the cost difference between a soccer ball and all the gear even a beginner baseball/softball player needs, and it explains how soccer has become so popular in many places.

 

[Rolling Hard]

Seems like an increasingly common problem. I see area rec leagues asking for coaching help for older rec teams, and experienced non-parents often step up. I don't think it's a "masculinity thing", it's an apathetic "I don't want to deal with it thing". That, and coaching rec well is a lot of work. From a player standpoint, you're often starting from scratch. The coaches are usually learning along the way and the support many rec leagues offer is marginal, at best. I hired a pitching coach at 10U just to get some promising kids to the point where they might throw a strike. Not every parent has the coin to do that and buy gear and rent fields and batting cages.

When I wandered about the local field on a game night last year, I did see a couple of coaches I recognized as "retreads"...had coached a 16/18U team, but were now working with a younger sibling or even a grand-daughter. Their teams always stand out.

Men are not apathetic. Simply put, society (Universities) have been slowly and blatantly feminizing men over the past 50 or 60 years and this is the result.
If you drop your DD off at the park (late) and then go to Starbucks to chat with friends or play on your laptop and come back late to pick her up, there is something wrong with you.

 

[_MIA_]

Men are not apathetic. Simply put, society (Universities) have been slowly and blatantly feminizing men over the past 50 or 60 years and this is the result.

My goal with each and every lecture is for my male students to have higher estrogen levels when they leave the lecture then when they started.

 

[GunnerShotgun]

Men are not apathetic. Simply put, society (Universities) have been slowly and blatantly feminizing men over the past 50 or 60 years and this is the result.

Yeah I mean look at these men from the 80's. When men were real men.

 

[Shiloh]

Youth baseball is dying, and taking softball with it.

Baseball is too slow, too expensive, requires too much equipment and practice, dedicated facilities, complicated rules.

Soccer, swimming, basketball, football (because it’s 100% school-based) - cheaper and easier. And a lot more college scholarship money in hoops and the gridiron.

 

[Bullseye]

Men are not apathetic. Simply put, society (Universities) have been slowly and blatantly feminizing men over the past 50 or 60 years and this is the result.

That comment is a result of narrow-minded thinking.

 

[_MIA_]

N=1 but my son's 7U rec baseball team has what seems like 100 coaches..looks like a Duke Basketball sideline.

 

[Rick M]

Youth baseball is dying, and taking softball with it.

Baseball is too slow, too expensive, requires too much equipment and practice, dedicated facilities, complicated rules.

Soccer, swimming, basketball, football (because it’s 100% school-based) - cheaper and easier. And a lot more college scholarship money in hoops and the gridiron.

Spoke with our HS AD in advance of softball tryouts this week. He said that in 2003, when they started offering girls lacrosse, the numbers for softball plummeted. He had two theories:

#1: Softball skills are tough, and it’s such a game of individual trial and failure that it takes a toll on the players.

#2: Most parents (meaning dads) have no clue about lacrosse, but think they know everything about softball/baseball. When the kids get good and tired of dad rehashing every at bat and play, they go out for lacrosse and just play.


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[Shiloh]

Spoke with our HS AD in advance of softball tryouts this week. He said that in 2003, when they started offering girls lacrosse, the numbers for softball plummeted. He had two theories:

#1: Softball skills are tough, and it’s such a game of individual trial and failure that it takes a toll on the players.

#2: Most parents (meaning dads) have no clue about lacrosse, but think they know everything about softball/baseball. When the kids get good and tired of dad rehashing every at bat and play, they go out for lacrosse and just play.


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makes perfect sense

thanks for the perspective

 

[NJZoo]

I helped coach my daughter from t-ball through first year 12U (and my son from t-ball through 8U) and loved every minute of it. However, not sure she loved it I was always tougher on her than the other girls and I saw that it was causing some tension, so I stepped away so we both could just enjoy it. I guess the last straw for me was telling her something about her hitting and her giving me dirty looks all season, then the first hitting lesson and her coach said the same exact thing and she was all ears, LOL.