What have you tried to grow your league? Our league (of which I ended up being put on the board without really asking as an at large member just because I was helping out so much) has been shrinking as well. It's a combination of not advertising very much and other local girls' sports getting...
I have one kid whose birthday is on the USA Softball cut-off, which happens not to align with her grad year (to put her with that grad year would have been a very normal redshirt in our district, but we didn't do it). I sometimes think of the slight benefit she'd get if everyone aligned with USA...
The bolded is important. Our park authority enjoy speaking out of both sides of it's mouth.
There is no equity! Softball only has .5 turfed fields in our area (half time use of one field) compared to baseball's 10! We want to provide equity!
We have to charge your rec softball program more for...
We only have 2 "events" per week also (either 2 practices or 1 practice and 1 game). Where our all-stars get built up is our house+/select/bridge/whatever-you-call-it program. Basically in addition to regular rec play, girls sign up for Sunday afternoon interleague double headers. The rules are...
We just agonized over this for fall with my 2014 birth year daughter (our rec league just moved 2014s to 10U for this spring). Ultimately we chose to keep her at 8U. A big part of that was the fact that my spouse, as our league's 10U commissioner, strongly prefers to limit play-ups to absolute...
The best 10U coach in our rec league (now onto assistant coaching travel) last spring did a ton of fly ball tracking with his players. His team beat everyone based on their defense throughout the season - not just because of that, but in general because his defensive focus.