No Little League this year

dfp01 said:

My daughter (a pitcher) is 13 this year. When she was 9, 10 and 11- we did the Little League rec games& a season of allstars (that went on to the state tournaments & usually lasted almost the whole summer).
..... cut........
I'll take any advice on this. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Sure....

The sooner you stop using the words 'we' and 'I' when talking about this and instead concentrate on 'her' and 'she' the sooner you will get over it. You don't have long to get over it btw - she is already 13.

"we" don't have a middle school team is wrong. "Her" school doesn't have a middle school team
"we" don't have 7 tournaments scheduled. "Her team" has 7 tournaments scheduled.
"we" can't regret anything. "She" might regret it at some point (but I somehow doubt it.)

It may seem a little nit-picky, but it is a vital and very important distinction. I am not innocent of falling into the trap of doing this myself. I try hard not to however I absolutely know it isn't easy.

It isn't your game. It isn't the family game. It is 'her' game and her responsibility and time along with all the other things we expect kids to do - school, homework, other activities, etc, etc. You can provide 100% support in time, money, encouragement, advice, etc, but I have watched a huge parade of kids walk away from sports of all kinds because it was never 'their' game that was being played.

Also it is just softball.

(Note: that doesn't mean she shouldn't be doing something. My son changed sports every 12 weeks for 6 years, but when he was done with one, he moved onto the next because sitting at home doing nothing was never a choice)

We used to live for those little league games as well but I found that by the time dd was 13, she no longer needed to play in the little league because by this time, she had advanced too much while playing travel ball. Although we tried to justify it to ourselves by thinking she could use the extra pitching practice, we ended up missing more games and practices that year because it just wasn't fun anymore at that point because of the level of competition. Maybe your dd doesn't want to play the little league games due to the drop-off in competition.

Good for you letting your DD make the call! That's really what's best for her.

Both of my DDs played LL right thru senior league. I enjoyed it but I think they enjoyed it more. This year DD#2 has aged out so it will be our first spring with no LL. on the bright side, we can work on making her better rather than spending the time trying to make a whole team better. there will be no more conflicts with HS and we can all just focus on (1) team per season! she was sad to come to the end of the line, but she knew it was there and she had a good time right to the end.

Unfortunately, LL used to be a bigger deal in our town than it is now. with AAU soccer taking up both fall and spring (Spring being the "important" season), AAU BBall also takes up fall and spring and Lacrosse has also been added to the mix. LL used to have more teams and a greater span of talent from studs to kids who aren't as gifted but wanted to play. I am a big advocate of playing multiple sports but PLAY THEM IN ONE SEASON! This goes for softball too- we (I was an AC) left a program where the program director made too big of a deal out of playing tournaments in the fall. at U18 you have players in HS who have fall sports/activities going on and you are going to expect them to give you weekends for your damn out-of-season tournaments? I don't think so.