How hard to push, when to back off?

Welcome to Discuss Fastpitch

Your FREE Account is waiting to the Best Softball Community on the Web.

Nov 2, 2015
192
16
At 10U I am a big fan of girls playing multiple sports. Get her into volleyball, basketball, lacrosse. I would worry about burning her out if she is playing or practicing softball 12 months a year at 10U.

Absolutely! However, I'll offer a word of caution with this as well.
Since day 1, we've told my daughter "try it!" If you like it, great. If not, we won't do it again, but at least you tried.
Our problem comes with the fact that our daughter LOVES everything (with the exception of dance - that was a 1 and done)!

So, now, we have pretty much year-round competetive gymnastics, Fall and Spring soccer (if you play club, you can't just do one of the seasons), Spring softball, and Fall cheerleading. Luckily, she chose to put the cheerleading on the back-burner this coming fall, because something was going to have to give.

I think we can make it through 1 more year doing this, but after that she's going to have to make a tough choice. And at 8/9 years old, it sucks that she'll have to do that. The almost "year-round" epedemic in almost every sport is horrible, IMO.
 
Jun 27, 2011
5,089
0
North Carolina
Every kid is different, so it's hard to answer. My kid was never obsessed with softball, so I never had to think about reeling her in, so I'm not best qualified to comment on O.P. except to say that parents should not worry about their kids losing ground, IMO. Best kid that I coached in 10U missed time frequently due to injury, and she once took the fall off to be a cheerleader, but she always caught up. In fact, I'm not sure she ever got behind. The cream will rise to the top. By cream, I mean those with the talent and the enduring desire. In the end, they'll either have had it or they won't. Time is not their problem. They've got plenty of it from age 9-18, so don't get crazy worrying about other kids getting ahead at 10 years old.

My other tip would be for all of us to avoid looking at our kids like race horses. Now that I'm on the other side of the TB journey, dad of a 17-year-old, the more and more that I see that how good my DD is really didn't matter much in the bigger picture. It's what you get out of softball that matters. Went to a high school game last night and on the opposing team was a former teammate of DD's from travel ball, and she's a senior playing her final games. Not playing in college. Solid player, nothing special. I told her and her mom that I can't think of another kid who enjoyed softball more than she did, and I don't know of another kid for whom I am so certain that she played for the right reasons - for herself and those in her dugout and nobody else. Wasn't playing for her parents, or to impress college coaches, or to win accolades. You can see it in her smile when she gets a hit or makes a play in the field. I feel like there was a lesson in that.

There's a cliche that says we get out of something what we put into it. Well, this girl didn't put a ton into it in terms of working on her own, getting lessons, etc. But she got a helluva lot out of it. Not sure the moral of that story, but it inspired another long-winded post. :)
 
Jun 12, 2015
3,848
83
We won't do any other activity at the commitment level of travel softball, but rec programs are less demanding. For the past 2 years DD played rec basketball in the winter. She's tired of it now, and we're going to have her play rec soccer this fall. I've tried to find a rec volleyball program but they all seem to be intense like travel ball. The rec basketball, for instance, was 6 or 8 weeks during the off season for softball. We still had indoor practices but no games. It wrapped up right around the time the tournament season started. You can do programs like that without having to make her choose one thing.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
42,830
Messages
679,478
Members
21,445
Latest member
Bmac81802
Top