Need help with USSSA forced move

Ksphenom said:

Only 16 active "B" teams in the state and ONLY 6 "A" teams in the state. Nothing like telling girls they worked to hard now softball is at risk and only chance to play on the weekends if a parent wins the lottery.

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How big is the state? What do those other five 'A' teams do? What other tournament associations exist in you area/state?

If there are 6 'A' teams in your state, then I'd talk to the local USSSA tournament directors and get their advice and encourage them to have more 'open' tournaments. That way, you might have 8 teams show up, maybe 2 of them are A, and the tournament director could place the teams in gold and silver, so the better B teams would be lumped with the A-rated teams, and the bottom 4 B teams could play each other. To say the two A teams can't play because this is a 'B' tournament is ridiculous.

The only real point of A and B ratings are to prevent mismatches in tournaments. But every area/state is different, so the local org's have to set up tournaments that serve their particular area. If the local USSSA is holding only A and B tournaments and squeezing out the A's, then that's not good business, nor helping local softball.

As an aside, I've railed here in the past the fact that A and B is a myth. It's absurd to think that the #6 team in your state is somehow clearly better than the #7 team.

A better system would be to have power ratings of all 16 teams and then have high and low divisions in each tournament if there are enough teams. Split them based on their ranking, not their mythical and arbitrary A/B rating.

Most of the tournaments in my area (Mid Atlantic) are either C or Open for USSSA, except for the World Series and states. World Series and States it depends on the age group, but they break it up into C,B,A, plus have an Open.

At least it was early in the season. The team I managed in 10u was moved up from C to B with 2 tournaments left in the season, States and the World Series. We played one game at B in States (lost) due to rain, and then went to the WS.

grcsftbll said:

I didn't know they did that. There are a couple of teams here that are sooo obviously playing down and sandbagging but USSSA never does a thing about it. They move you after one tournament? That makes no sense.

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Will never understand coaches/teams that sandbag and play down. I guess that plastic trophy is just too enticing.

OK04dad said:

Will never understand coaches/teams that sandbag and play down. I guess that plastic trophy is just too enticing.

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There's a team we played recently that's registered C that has a pitcher who'd make most of the A teams around here pretty easily. You can't be a C team with A level pitching. One of their players picked up with us not long ago and her dad said the coach just likes to trophy hunt.

We played a team this weekend that often manages to get grouped with 07 teams in tournaments. The coach's daughter is an 07 and maybe one more but they are mostly 06. They're going to 12U next year and everything. They have 3 very solid pitchers & a catcher who could play A ball easily and they play low level tournaments most of the time so they can win trophies. We played them this weekend and let me tell ya, their girls have no clue what to do with a team that can hit. They mostly just strike out all these first year girls, so their fielders get no game practice. We played them 3 times between the tournament and the fundraiser on Sunday and beat them all 3. Boy are they sore losers, too. I look at their pitchers and that catcher in particular and think what a waste it is to play down all the time. It only hurts their development. It's sad when it's about the coach's ego more than the kids.

I don't get it either.

grcsftbll said:

We played on a team last year that classified as A (per org rules). We were not really A level, lost all the time, everyone was miserable. Parents were uptight and pressuring their kids, kids were freaking out about their intense parents & unhappy coaches. There are definite disadvantages to playing A if you're not really to that level yet. The team disbanded and the girls scattered.

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Sounds like a crappy bunch of parents.

spleen1015 said:

Sounds like a crappy bunch of parents.

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It was the perfect storm of crap. lol.

OK04dad said:

Will never understand coaches/teams that sandbag and play down. I guess that plastic trophy is just too enticing.

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At my very first tournament ever (12u) I saw a team listed as "class C", but their team name included "Elite" in the title. I considered this to be an oxymoron. Unfortunately, it is all about the trophy to some...

A couple years ago we got bumped up a level and were abused, no fun.

Speed of game caused us an Issue more then other Teams players, which were good. We were always a step behind no fun.

If we played same level all year I think we would have been OK, they were so much quicker then us.

Usually USSSA takes forever to bump teams some seasons I've seen teams with 25-0 records against B teams 10-3 against A teams still playing B. I did notice this year in our area they decided to be pro-active and bumped a bunch after 1 tournament in the fall (however 4 of the teams they bumped all went 6-0 will 4/5 run rule victories).

FP26 said:

At my very first tournament ever (12u) I saw a team listed as "class C", but their team name included "Elite" in the title. I considered this to be an oxymoron. Unfortunately, it is all about the trophy to some...

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We have a team in the state called "zombie hunters"...............

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