Frustration with lack of JV games

cvsoftball said:

it all starts at 8U

Click to expand...

There is one rec league in my area, starts at 10U. Before that, they play tee ball and unless the girl is an obvious super athlete, they just get shuffled to the outfield and ignored while the boys get all the attention.

It's no surprise that many girls get bored and quit after a year or two and never find their way to softball (not that girls playing baseball is bad, but they often don't stick with that, either).

It really is all about opportunity for them. We're starting a 10U team at the school this year. It's incredible how much interest there is from girls that age. But for many, if they don't play when young, they think they can't so they'll never take the chance when they get older.

If we had to do it over again I think I would have encouraged DD to play slow pitch through 10U

She did start fastpitch at 8U with modified player pitch.

Tatonka said:

Our school just cancelled the JV season. They were undefeated. Last year they lost one game.

Click to expand...

Why did they cancel?

No coaches, lack of players or money problems or something else?

cvsoftball said:

it all starts at 8U

Click to expand...

What does this have to do with scheduling JV games?

quincy said:

If we had to do it over again I think I would have encouraged DD to play slow pitch through 10U

She did start fastpitch at 8U with modified player pitch.

Click to expand...

I've never seen any slow pitch youth leagues here. It's all fastpitch, but the rec leagues are all coach pitch for 8U and modified player pitch for 10U.

They did get to play today against a team that was pretty close to our level, but they threw a really good pitcher, I was wondering if they brought her down from varsity. We would've hung with them but our catcher couldn't catch anything. DD struck out 8 and 5 reached base. We got run-ruled in the fourth, but they got to play

And the exciting news is we found out there is a JV game Saturday that isn't on the schedule, so they get an extra game!

PEPPERS said:

Why did they cancel?

No coaches, lack of players or money problems or something else?

Click to expand...

The situation really deserves its own thread and I haven't been able to write about it yet. Between V & JV they had 23 girls at tryouts, some were told not to bother, a couple were cut immediately, more than 15 girls left in the last 3 weeks (12 walked off the field during a practice in protest). I wrote about this coach last year, besides just being a really bad coach when it comes to the game, she is just a horrible person who should not be involved with kids. The day that 12 kids walked she fired the JV coach and proclaimed to the few (7 girls were left at that point) that "this is my job for life". She's been placed on leave pending the results of a district investigation. Unbelievable and very sad for the girls who just wanted to play HS ball with their friends.

Tatonka said:

The situation really deserves its own thread and I haven't been able to write about it yet. Between V & JV they had 23 girls at tryouts, some were told not to bother, a couple were cut immediately, more than 15 girls left in the last 3 weeks (12 walked off the field during a practice in protest). I wrote about this coach last year, besides just being a really bad coach when it comes to the game, she is just a horrible person who should not be involved with kids. The day that 12 kids walked she fired the JV coach and proclaimed to the few (7 girls were left at that point) that "this is my job for life". She's been placed on leave pending the results of a district investigation. Unbelievable and very sad for the girls who just wanted to play HS ball with their friends.

Click to expand...

You should take the JV team dude??

WARRIORMIKE said:

You should take the JV team dude??

Click to expand...

Ummm....no. I'm working with a bunch of the kids to keep them sharp for some showcases and tourneys that are coming up after the HS seaso is over. I've never seen anything like this in a HS program. The AD thinks he can get them all together singing Kumbayah next week but he has yet to acknowledge his role in this. He was aware of the issues with this coach in her very first season 3 yrs ago but chose to ignore the problem. I'd be willing to bet if it was a boys baseball or football program action would have been taken much sooner.

Btw - to dbronstein's original point....it makes no sense to me why these JV teams are treated the way they are here in CO. Seriously it would not take a whole lot of time or energy to organize more games and give those younger players (and coaches) the opportunity to hone their skills and gain experience with live competitive action. They pay the same fees, put in just as much practice time, etc.. Let them play!

Tatonka said:

Btw - to dbronstein's original point....it makes no sense to me why these JV teams are treated the way they are here in CO. Seriously it would not take a whole lot of time or energy to organize more games and give those younger players (and coaches) the opportunity to hone their skills and gain experience with live competitive action. They pay the same fees, put in just as much practice time, etc.. Let them play!

Click to expand...

Sorry about the situation at your school, that really sucks. I know our HC is totally thrilled to have enough players for the JV team this year. I'm thinking he could probably do a bit more to get them a few more games, but I don't know what goes on behind the scenes.

And today we lost a game. The school we were scheduled to play on the 30tb emailed our coaches and said they don't have a JV team. DD said our coaches told them they are trying to schedule more games so hopefully they can find a few.

dbronstein said:

And today we lost a game. The school we were scheduled to play on the 30tb emailed our coaches and said they don't have a JV team. DD said our coaches told them they are trying to schedule more games so hopefully they can find a few.

Click to expand...

Not sure this has been addressed yet, but there's a reason this kind of thing happens.

JV teams do not consistently exist from year to year at a lot of schools. A school might have had 30 girls try out in Year 1, so they have a JV team, and then the next year they have 20 try out. No more JV team. But you have to schedule your games before tryouts, so you don't really know that's going to happen. Or maybe the JV team had 10-11 girls, then a couple quit, got hurt, were academically ineligible so now they don't have enough (I'd just pull down a couple bench players from varsity, but some coach might not do that). Or you might have the opposite effect: Maybe the varsity team had issues, so most of the JV girls were called up, and now they can't play JV games if there's a varsity game at the same time.

I know that I'll be scheduling JV games tentatively. I'll just have to tell the coach/AD that I fully expect to have enough girls for a JV team, but if I don't, I'll have to cancel those or try to make them varsity games.