Fall REC balancing

The fall season registration is about to close on Saturday. And our numbers are up from last Fall were I struggled to get enough for an 8U team. Now I have too many!!! Sitting at 17 players. Three of them are completely new and the others played either t-ball or softball previously. In the area there seems to be an outages of 8U teams. One league has 6 teams and that is the only one with 8U. In 10U I have 14 players, 12U 11, and 14U 8. Middle school tryouts are next week so the 12/14U numbers may go up.

What should I do with the 8U team? Move some of them up to 10U to make a 2nd team there? Just go with monster size team (not my ideal situation), or move everyone around to create balance throughout?

We are have liberal guest playing rules, I also do not ming playing with 8 players.

Can you have a Team of 9 and 8?

I haven't thought about that. We played a team in the Spring that had players on both teams.

finalcloud said:

The fall season registration is about to close on Saturday. And our numbers are up from last Fall were I struggled to get enough for an 8U team. Now I have too many!!! Sitting at 17 players. Three of them are completely new and the others played either t-ball or softball previously. In the area there seems to be an outages of 8U teams. One league has 6 teams and that is the only one with 8U. In 10U I have 14 players, 12U 11, and 14U 8. Middle school tryouts are next week so the 12/14U numbers may go up.

What should I do with the 8U team? Move some of them up to 10U to make a 2nd team there? Just go with monster size team (not my ideal situation), or move everyone around to create balance throughout?

Click to expand...

Tough call...

I would probably seriously consider having two 10U teams if you feel you have some 8U girls who are capable of playing up. You would want to move probably 6 players up - that way you have ten players for the two 10U teams and 11 on the 8U team. Sounds like they have some experience so this might be your best bet. Also 6 moving up keeps team numbers to a workable size (not too small. not too big)

I would struggle to turn 17 into two teams. No leeway for someone not turning up at all. Ideally you want 11-12 per team.

And 17 on one team doesn't work either..

Either that or go recruit about 6 more girls...

Good luck

Well just like that registration has been pushed to 9/9. There are plenty of girls on the 8U team that could make the move to 10U. Contacting some of the girls who signed up for baseball and see if they are interested in moving to softball.

Separate the girls into 3 groups:

Group A: your die-hards, would play all day if you let them, and whose parents are up to the task. This should be about 5 players.
Group B and Group C: divided evenly by talent. If your Group A has 5 players, then these groups should have 6 each.

Now, when you schedule games with the other cities/leagues, you'll want to schedule them in pairs. In the first game, Group A will play with Group C to field enough players for your team against the other city/league. In the second game, Group A will play alongside Group C, and Group B can go home. You'll always have enough for a game, and you won't have a crazy 17 player dugout. Your die-hards in Group A will get a large amount of games, meanwhile the players in B and C will still get a good amount of playing time. You can even rotate it if everyone wants in on the increased playing time. Week 1 you go A-B and A-C, Week 2 you go A-B and B-C, Week 3 you go A-C and B-C, then repeat.