- Nov 29, 2009
- 2,975
- 83
You'll usually lose when you play above your level. A few years ago I had a team that was in all honesty a B level. However we had a schedule of nothing but A, Gold and a couple opens. (My theory was "we won't get better playing low level competition" ) We lost the first 15 games straight. We would compete and stay close but we'd always come up short a run or two. Our first win came in an open tournament against a sanctioned B level team...
Team became disfunctional and parents non stop chatter ate away the team. That season dissolved right before our world series trip. I bought into a B level all sanction tournament in TN... We would have probably killed it there, but the damage was done and 4 or 5 players suddenly couldn't make the trip!
Point is to find a balanced schedule that is challenging yet not so tough they quit on you. The losses mounded up so high that they saw themselves as poor players or "we suck" so what's the point attitudes...
Funny thing is now almost all of them are their current teams stud player several are freshman in HS now and start on the varsity team.
I made the same mistake with a 1st year 14U team. I over-extended them. I told everyone upfront we were playing for next season. They didn't like the constant losing. The team pretty much disbanded after the season was over.