Your community rec league. Likes? Dislikes? What would you change?

[The Grateful Dad]

Looking for ways to increase the numbers of players in our rec league, that at are in elementary school; as well as improve competition in each age level group. HUGE task. No budget. Limited support as of now.

I would love to hear from players, parents, and coaches as to what makes their community rec league a success. What would you change if you were in charge? Etc...

Appreciate any thoughts...

 

[quincy]

I will try and respond to your post but if you are talking elementary school aged players you are talking about 10U and younger correct? How many age groups can you have?

 

[John Kelly]

In our rec league a few years ago we took a fall weekend and hit up the soccer parents during their kids' soccer games with fliers and inviting them to try softball in the spring. We had our best enrollment season ever in the 10u and 8u divisions because of it.

 

[wcsoftball]

Our local league just puts an add in community newspaper and has our schools put a blurb in the school newsletters that go home monthly. I dont know much on the " recruitting" aspect but in our area...keeping them coming back is the problem.
Our coach pitch sb rec league is a success. 11-12 girls per team. Ages 6 - 8. No walks allowed of course..hit or strike out...3 outs or bat thru roster.
I can only tell you what doesn't work on our kid pitch league. 12 - 13 girls on a team. 3 outs or bat roster....no pitching machine, no coach stepping in to pitch if these new little pitchers are struggling. SO....what we end up with is a frustrated little pitcher who has rolled the ball across the plate possibly up to 48 times..that takes approx 20 mins (longer if you have a struggling catcher)....while all the other players on the team are playing in dirt, weeds,ect....you get the picture. On top of that they have high school umps who in an effort to move the game along call the balls and strikes poorly....which is only frustrating the batter who just came off the field of the 25 minute inning! That would turn even the truly interested girls off. So the ones with any kind of talent go to travel ASAP...but what is sad is there is probably some girls out there with very workable talent that hasn't been tapped into yet and never will be found out. Some quit before the season is half over.
I have heard some ideas such as coach stepping in to pitch after 4 balls..the batter either hits or strikes out...only time roster is batted through is if plays aren't made. Others I have heard use a pitching machine after 2 innings. Once you get them there...keep them coming back every year!

 

[Phathead]

Best one thing I have seen concerns All stars and the draft with older girls. Pick\Vote\Draw all star coach before draft starts, this way your not drafting to win league and all star coach job. Then list pitchers\catchers first and let coachs with out one or both pick thru discussion with other coaches. This ensures all teams have one of each. Then start draft as usual. What they are doing is trying to ensure teams are somewhat equal. Last season seemed to work well in older girls as you never knew which team would win, from game to game. I wish they would do the same in younger girls as we had two teams with 3 loss or less and one team with only one win.

 

[quincy]

You need to retain players year to year, this should grow the league’s quality and number of Teams. I am not sure what a good percentage is but your retention rate is a very good indication of how your league is doing.

The importance of having the right coaches cannot be over emphasized. Define your league philosophy and work hard to find and retain likeminded coaches that have a clue about baseball/softball or are willing to learn. For example I never liked local rules that a player needed to play both IF and OF. You hear comments like “Sally is there because she has to play IF for an inning”. There shouldn’t need to be a local rule that players need to play different positions, the coaches should want to do this on their own and work hard to make it happen. (My pet peeves will sneak into my response)

The quality of pitching controls the pace of the game, you need to figure out how to keep the game moving along.

In 8U DD played player pitch with a machine pitch after 4 balls. I still remember the progression of her pitching. Good job you almost threw a strike that inning, good job you threw a strike that inning, etc. For some pitchers the ball rolled over the plate if it got that far. It made for a very slow game for everyone. 10U was not much better because the machine backup disappeared and there was a lot of walk feasts. In both 8U and 10U there were pitchers that could pitch so it can be done.

Under 8U should be coach pitch, 8U I am open to player or coach pitch, 10U should be player pitch with maybe some extra rules to keep the game going. You need to figure out what rules work best for your league that keeps the game moving. Pitching needs to be owned by the League not the individual teams. Setup regular pitching clinics to help the players and coaches, this can be done to some extent without spending any money. The sooner you can turn the game over to the Players and keep the coaches off the field the better but it takes a lot of work.

The ages you are talking about the social aspect is more important to the players than the softball aspect. Your parents and players are your best recruiters. Put ads in the school newspapers etc. I started to steal some of our slow pitch players. There are a lot of strange reasons why a girl should play slow pitch but not fast pitch.

8U and under I would try to keep friends together, 10U start working on getting the Teams competitively equal.

 

[Freak13]

From my experience
Little league/Rec Ball 8U & 6U divisions are the best its all about fun and learning the basics of the game.
At 10U the Politics/Corruption starts with pre season drafts and all stars. For drafts leagues need to limit the number of palyers you can bring to a team to 2 players (kid of Head coach & rear coach etc.) and use these players as the teams 1st & 2nd draft picks. The league also needs to up hold age restrictions.
As for all stars every coach in the 10U & 12U divisions should be required to turn in stats that can be cross checked with score books kept for each game. I know in LL they let all players tryout for all stars but aside from pitching if a player isn't in top 3-4 in offensesive stats for her team the player shouldn't be able to tryout.
I'm not sure how to stop the corruption but from what i've witnessed most Rec league board members only take the position to get there kid on the all star team. Sorry but at 10 & 12u kids need to start learning that hard work is more important than who mommy and daddy are!!
A good league will promote itself within the community.

 

[teammom2]

No advice. Just letting you know your community isn't alone. Our rec league program is pretty much where yours is if not much worse. Girls interested in softball here, start in Tball and then play a year of coach pitch and leave for travel teams. Both my daughter left rec ball after 1 year of coach pitch. Too many "gentleman's rules" and no learning. Sad. There's no interest from the league overseers to make improvements. Good for you for making the effort!

 

[GOINGDEEP]

Our township ran the rec league for years very successfully. They took in the fees and in return kept up the grounds, and utility costs. Businesses chipped in by sponsoring all the ages. Team name was the "sponsor" ( the "Heat", ______ heating and air ). Yea, some had some funny names .

Going to preach now: Importance of including TB players and coaches at young ages.
When we came of age, 6yo and then until 11, the rec league made accommodations for the travel girls. Which really juiced up the entire program in a positive way. During that timeframe no township in the state had as many back to back state champion and world series bound all-star teams than this program had. I again contribute that to the travel girls who lead by example in those young years 8u-10u.

For the most part the travel girls faded out beginning at 12u and were almost non existent by 14u ( league years ). So basically "travel skills" only played a part in the young developing years of 6-12 as far as the league was concerned.

Our last year of 10's a new director came into power, hated the travelball side. ( for the record his DD tried out for several teams and never made it ) He then took it upon himself to split all the TB girls up which destroyed the competitive edge they brought to the league. ( the org has not made it out of the region playoffs since 06 )

The TB girls were looked up to by the kids, and they also took time to help anyone who would ask. Also some parents had bad additudes toward the better players ( go figure ) and only added fuel to the new directors fire.

Sad example:
One night a girl ( 9 and who's mom was a constant complainer of the TB side ) asked some of the TB girls to help her on her sliding and fielding after a game, a few TB girls said they could and began for about 3 mins when the mom came out on the field and grabbed her kid, said "we gotta go home". I was leaning on the fence and just shook my head thinking "that's why your kid will never get any better, and yet you complain about ones who work hard to get where they are".

The league now is a joke, no good players and no decent coaches. So my long winded advice is have open arms for girls who do dual roles as rec and TB in at least the 6-12 age groups. They bring so much to the table for the other kids as role models. ( it was always the rec parents with the bad additudes, I assume a jealous factor )

In our years from 5-11 the league always had between 400-500 players, they have been losing numbers each year since, last year the paper had them at 250.

I drive by those fields everyday coming home from work, saddens me to know a few who hated the achievers were able to drive the whole league in the ground.

 

[GOINGDEEP]

Where have you been PC? Pole barn done yet?