- Apr 1, 2010
- 1,673
- 0
When I hear some complain about school ball, my first reply is "what did you do to make it better"? You ran off to play TB 2 hours away instead of developing girls right in your neighborhood, then you complain about the lack of talent in school? The BEST powerhouse schools have feeder travel/AAU type teams that start at the early ages, really large for football and basketball, but it works for softball and baseball too.
Like I said, a successful HS program begins years BEFORE you get there.
Good point, that's another reason to hold my tongue if I'm tempted to start complaining when DD hits HS ball in August.
However, in my defense, I tried to make DD's neighborhood rec team into something more. I'm sure I was somewhat of an irritant to my daughter's rec coaches and the other rec families.
I was the one who lobbied for softball pants instead of a motley collection of shorts (cutoffs for softball, really??? And inevitably some girls would show up wearing flip flops.). Their rec association provided fields for a VIP C tournament and allowed the rec teams to enter for a nominal $50 fee (rather than the usual $250+). Each year, I found out who the coach needed to contact and when, and tried to persuade everyone to pitch in a couple of dollars to sign the team up. I was successful two out of three years, but most of them weren't really that crazy about shlepping their kids to another bunch of games. I thought several tournament games at five dollars apiece was an out-of-this-world deal! DD really liked being in the tournament and wanted her team to play like one of those real C teams. The rest of her rec team seemed content with the yearly rec league and that one VIP tournament--if it didn't interfere with anything else their family had planned. IMO there was never going to be a good match between what we wanted and what the rest of the neighborhood team wanted.
So yes, I admit it. We ran off to a TB team; we probably should have given up and left a year sooner. I don't know if the girls she used to play with will end up resenting her in HS, but we did try... JMO.