Last Season

So my DD decided this is her last season of ball. She's currently 13. I asked why, she said she's starting high school and would like to be more involved in other school clubs and focus on her homework more. Personally I think she is making a big mistake which she will regret. She loves competing and playing the game, however she has been with the same coach for the past 4 years, his practices have become monotonous and she finds them boring. I am trying to convince her to move from TB to house league and Select. This will give her a lot more free time and she would still be playing. Any advice on trying to convince not to throw it all in... I think she's making a major error in judgement.

I think you need to tread carefully here and not try to convince her of anything. Sounds like she gave some sound reasons for not wanting to continue to play. 13 is about the time you start to see some girls start to lose interest and gravitate towards other interests. I don't think there is anything wrong with telling her that you will miss watching her play and that there are other options available such as rec or house league should she change her mind and want to play again, but ultimately you should support her decision. There is little worse that watching (or coaching, or being a teammate of) a player who doesn't want to play and is only there because of her parents.

In my experience (admittedly, secondhand experience) , this kind of thing is much tougher on the parents than it is on the kid.

I do not care if DD quits softball but I know she is not allowed to sit around the house.

Tell her she needs to get a job or volunteer with her time.

I am surprised how many people DD knows, maybe find a Team with someone she likes?

DD took a year completely off around the same age. When she started playing the following year it became her game, not mine, if that makes sense. No promises but if she’s really that ball player inside she’s got plenty of time to return - and remember - softball is a lifelong sport.


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julray said:

So my DD decided this is her last season of ball. She's currently 13. I asked why, she said she's starting high school and would like to be more involved in other school clubs and focus on her homework more. Personally I think she is making a big mistake which she will regret. She loves competing and playing the game, however she has been with the same coach for the past 4 years, his practices have become monotonous and she finds them boring. I am trying to convince her to move from TB to house league and Select. This will give her a lot more free time and she would still be playing. Any advice on trying to convince not to throw it all in... I think she's making a major error in judgement.

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If she loves it she will come back to it. If not then she won't. Either way you should probably just be there to listen without doing an sort of convincing either way. I quit baseball my soph. year in college. It wasn't because I wasn't playing or having an overly difficult time managing school and sports (although that certainly wasn't easy and was easier after I quit). It was because I just wasn't having fun anymore, games and team practices had become something which I dreaded. While I realize I was older than your DD, I never regretted actually quitting (although I regretted the fact that it was my inability to accept failure that more or less led me to hating the game) the team.

My life is full of regrets when it comes to athletics.....I never want to see any kid make the same mistakes as I did. How much does your DD play now? Maybe she just needs some time off. If she has been playing year round Its very possible that has led to some burnout? Maybe she feels like quitting is the only way to get to do other things she is wanting to do?

DD is going through this right now - all of her friends are playing TB on different teams and one of her favorite things lately about SB is being with her friends. She is playing MS right now and will tryout for HS in the spring but she's iffy on doing any other TB tryouts without her friends. We want her to do something however if she isn't doing SB. She is mostly just afraid to do something with people she doesn't know - even though when she started SB, she didn't know anyone and made a ton of friends through SB.
But it's kind of sad for me at least since SB has been part of our lives for 6 years now :/ DH is happy about it since he's always had to be an AC and loves the break from it..

EDITED to add:
She was going to take a break but her hitting coach is coaching the 18U rec team and asked her to play on her team. So she'll be doing 18U rec instead this fall - she's picked up on an 18U rec team when she was in 12U and was able to hit off the pitching pretty well. At least she'll not be losing skills by doing nothing :/ She was asked to play down on the 12U team also but she'd probably be stuck as a pitcher and since she played 14U in the spring, we didn't want her to go down..