Perils of TB

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Aug 21, 2011
1,345
38
38°41'44"N 121°9'47.5"W
Don't forget the crazy TB coaches who expect their 12U teams to play like the teams they watch on the SEC channel. Pitchers should have pinpoint control. Fielders get to every ball quick and fire perfect strikes across the infield. Hitters bash balls into the gaps while rarely striking out. Baserunners have great instincts and run home to first in 3.0 seconds or less. Then they get made when their kids (and they are kids) don't perform to that level.

And oh, by the way, the coach doesn't teach any of that stuff. He/she expects them to learn it all on their own. He/she just wants to make up the lineup cards and pose with the trophy at the end of the tournament.

I am very open and realistic with parents during tryouts. I will train your kid in the proper fielding & throwing techniques. We will learn proper base-running fundamentals. We will work on proper hitting fundamentals. We will end the season a fair bit better than we started. And, hopefully, it will be an enjoyable year. I have had teams that have won state titles and I have had teams that have went 2 and Q. I don't deal with off field drama. No time for it. Here to coach a team and help all the girls improve.

I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to coach one of these kids in Little League and 12U. She just graduated from the UW this year. You may have watched her make two phenomenal catches in right field during the WCWS. Those types of plays were commonplace for her during travel ball. I don't take credit for her accomplishments, just glad I got to be part of her journey. She is extremely athletically talented. She didn't rely on just that talent. She worked her butt off outside of team practices. Took private hitting lessons and fielding lessons. She had a goal to play, and start, for the UW.
 
Jan 30, 2018
252
0
SE Michigan
Like anything else it's a business. One thing that we (family) learned when DD was 13. We had her tryout at the best org in our area. That day we saw a 14 year old throwing north of 65 mph. At that very moment we knew our DD would never pitch in the SEC. No one going forward would be able to sell me on the idea that my DD was ever gonna be a good as that kid.
Prior to that moment I would have believed anything anyone would tell me as long as it had my DD going to a top 5 school. I don't think I am alone in that regard. I call it perspective. Some parents get it at 13 others at 18.. I suspect the longer it takes the more it hurts. That lack of perspective leads to parents being open to anyone willing to sell them a dream, no matter how outlandish it may seem. And as a parent you need to see it, live and then you understand.
Now don't get me wrong my DD wants to play D1 and several coaches told her when she was young that she would never pitch etc. So there is a certain level of dreaming that needs to occur. But when you combine greed with out of touch parents crazy things happen :)


I am not saying you are wrong at all, I have another perspective. I hear people say similar things at 10 and 12u, "my daughter will never be as good as that girl". I think you can also sell your kid short. I know plenty of baseball players that I played with in 8th grade that were "can't miss studs" and that was their best year ever, while others were not that good then became awesome because of hard work and growth spurts. I played with a guy that was maybe the 3rd or 4th pitcher on the team that year and he ended up winning a College World Series and rookie of the year in the MLB. I also played basketball with a guy in middle school that we called runt for so long he quit playing, and he was decent. He ended up being 6-4 in high school which is 3 inches taller than me, and I was done growing the summer after my 8th grade year. We (11u) have a girl that is way bigger on our team and throws 55 while my short little one barely hits 50, but I am not giving up on her because she doesn't give up, and she throws side by side with her at practice. People ooh and ah over the big girl constantly and my daughter hears it. My DD keeps plugging along and it makes her work harder. She and the big girl are good friends and it doesn't seem to bother her, she just works harder.
Will she play SEC softball? probably not, neither of those girls probably will. The only one selling me a dream is my DD, and it's her dream. She works 5-6 days of the week and If she is willing to put in the time and effort it is my job to help provide the opportunity. That doesn't make me delusional or lose sight of what will probably happen, but that won't stop me from giving her a shot. Once you get to 16u (or if your kid is done growing) it is a little different as you will probably get a good idea of where your kid is going to stack up with the other talent you are seeing.
 

Strike2

Allergic to BS
Nov 14, 2014
2,044
113
There's so much more that goes into making a lineup than stats. I've been on teams with open stats and teams without and I can tell you happier parents are on teams without. If your kid isn't getting the time there is a small chance you're getting screwed by the coach but the bigger one is rose colored glasses by the parents as to their child's ability. I see it all the time objectively when I watch teams and listen to parents in the stands bickering among themselves.

I've managed both youth and men's teams. On the men's teams, I sent out the stats to all every week. The only lineup complaint I ever heard was "you need to move me down until I unscrew myself". While I didn't actively push the youth team's stats, I didn't keep them a secret. Yes, there is more than strict adherence to numbers when making a batting lineup, but there should be some correlation to performance. It does no good to have a fast runner at #1 if they are well under an acceptable OBP average. Recently, I've seen lineups made with more regard to family affiliation with coaches than actual near-term performance.
 
Mar 14, 2017
453
43
Michigan
There's so much more that goes into making a lineup than stats. I've been on teams with open stats and teams without and I can tell you happier parents are on teams without. If your kid isn't getting the time there is a small chance you're getting screwed by the coach but the bigger one is rose colored glasses by the parents as to their child's ability. I see it all the time objectively when I watch teams and listen to parents in the stands bickering among themselves.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

This reminded me of a local team I like to watch. They are great, but the parents are so jealous about who gets credit for the wins that they have 4 score keepers. The truth is they have a stand out pitcher who signed D1 and is a great hitter and she is 80% of the reason they win, but the line-up doesn't have an easy out so the parents all believe their DD is the star.

They have an official scorekeeper who cooks the books for her daughter. She disagreed with the ump who declared daughter's inside the parker a ground rule double because the ball rolled through a gap in the fence. The girl had rounded 3rd & there was no way she wasn't going to be thrown out, but the rules are the rules. She yelled at the ump & crowd I'm still counting it as a home run, & she did in the stats. That's just one example. Her daughter never gets on on an error or a fielder's choice. Everything is a hit for her daughter, but she's a board member so the coaches can't or won't get rid of her as the team's score keeper.

The assistant coach, whose DD is in my opinion the second best player on the team, but never gets and recognition or post season awards, decided to start keeping her own scorebook. So there are two scorekeepers in the same dugout, but wait there's more...

The pitcher's dad, who knows nothing about ball, but was offered an assistant coach position because he brings his daughter with him, keeps the book on Gamechanger so the parents & others can get updates. BUUUUT some of the parents didn't like the way he was scoring things, so there is a second Gamechanger account for the team with the "real" stats.

Crazy stuff, baby.
 
Last edited:

Cannonball

Ex "Expert"
Feb 25, 2009
4,854
113
Last year, my great niece (GN) was the starting SS and hit in the top of the lineup. This year, her team is totally different with new coaches (a bunch of them) and all seem to get their dds to play where they want. GN was playing SS recently and a ball hit off the pitcher's glove. She barehanded it and threw to 1st but the runner was safe. Believe it or not, it was ruled an error on my GN. The next inning, she was removed and has not played SS since. She now sits as the daddy ballers have taken over. In a more recent game, a ball was hit over her head and off the fence. The coach blamed her for the loss in that game because she did not catch the ball. Naturally, you can guess who the pitcher was. This is the experience of a lot of TB people. So, in HS people complain of politics. In TB people, like me, complain of daddy ball. The truth will always be that there are good and bad in each. The truth always is that the lessons of this game are more than just wins and losses.

When asked my advice, and my GN is 10, I told my niece to let her finish out this year. There are a lot of teams that will want her. She is going to learn some valuable lessons this year. In the mean time, she will start hitting with me again and so, she will be ready for tryouts in the fall.
 
Jul 19, 2014
2,390
48
Madison, WI
Often the coach's kids are in the top 9 because they're among the better players on the team. By default they mostly have parents who are invested in the game and their development, and work with them outside of practice. So when you've got the coaches' kids who come to every practice and work 2-3 times a week with mom or dad at home, compared to the kid whose mom drops her off for practice and that's the only time she touches a ball all week...well, that ain't daddy ball. It's one of the toughest things about trying to fairly run a team where you have a child on the team. Someone's always going to think the coaches' kids get an advantage. I will say that on our team, it seems to be almost the opposite. I know my kid has to work harder to get equal treatment because her dad knows what she's capable of and won't accept less. Really though it applies to all the girls once he gets to know them. He can be tough on all the girls he coached last year who stayed with us because he knows what they can do when they give their full focus.

Some truth to this.

My DD 1 briefly played on a local team, which was just kids their kids knew, not part of any organization. The two best pitchers were the HC's DD and the AC's DD. Two girls on that team played in college, and one of them was the HC's DD. So the coaches' kids really were that good. The coaches didn't play favorites, they were harder on their own kids than on the other kids.
 
May 13, 2013
99
0
Same with DD. She loves being challenged, and the thought of playing ball at the highest level has always intrigued her. We've played as a pickup on some lower level travel teams once her regular teams season was over and shes had just as much fun on those teams than the ones she practices with 3 times a week and travels across the west coast with.

We're kind of at the crossroads right now also as the career path she wants to take doesn't bode well with D1, or even D2 for that matter. However she still somewhat entertains the idea of playing at that higher level and it pushes her. Were still first year 16s however and the current travel team were on is falling apart due to unhappy parents and our pitching getting decimated with injuries. So now we're at the point of stick it out and support the team through the summer, or doing what I'd consider more critical in not wasting an entire summer getting crushed on the field and opting to get picked up by a stronger team as we've been asked to join a couple of high level teams who have already qualified for the major events.
 
Jul 15, 2016
115
18
Didn't we all get into this softball thing for "fun"? Fun for all the DD's and parents alike. Its astounding how quickly people lose sight of that. Just as astounding is the way parents will compromise everything they say they stand for what an earlier post described as $5 piece of plastic. I couldn't agree more. Between this and the team jumpers that quit after 2 tourneys because they couldn't post a Facebook pic of their kid with a trophy just makes me crazy. I was talking to an acquaintance this weekend and he was giving me all the reasons he pulled his DD from their current team. Oddly enough, he was selling me on trying out for this team in the fall.
 

Ken Krause

Administrator
Admin
May 7, 2008
3,911
113
Mundelein, IL
I am very open and realistic with parents during tryouts. I will train your kid in the proper fielding & throwing techniques. We will learn proper base-running fundamentals. We will work on proper hitting fundamentals. We will end the season a fair bit better than we started. And, hopefully, it will be an enjoyable year. I have had teams that have won state titles and I have had teams that have went 2 and Q. I don't deal with off field drama. No time for it. Here to coach a team and help all the girls improve.

I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to coach one of these kids in Little League and 12U. She just graduated from the UW this year. You may have watched her make two phenomenal catches in right field during the WCWS. Those types of plays were commonplace for her during travel ball. I don't take credit for her accomplishments, just glad I got to be part of her journey. She is extremely athletically talented. She didn't rely on just that talent. She worked her butt off outside of team practices. Took private hitting lessons and fielding lessons. She had a goal to play, and start, for the UW.

You're obviously not one of the ones I was referring to! Sounds like you do a great job (as many do) of working with the girls and teaching them what they need to know to improve and advance. Thank you for that!

I'm clearly not anti-lessons, because that's what I do now - teach lessons. Haven't coached a team in four years or so. When I did coach teams, I didn't expect my players to know anything we hadn't gone over. I felt like that was my responsibility, as I'm sure you do. For those who wanted to get better faster, lessons were important too, whether from me or another qualified instructor. All too often these days, however, I feel like the expectations are out of line with the level of play. Players have to be cultivated, just like flowers, if you expect them to blossom. Glad you're doing that.
 
Dec 6, 2016
70
18
Here's my take on daddy ball.

I'm not a coach, I don't want to coach and I will never be a coach. I fully understand the countless hours a coach puts into running a team. Making the lineups, the hours of preparation for practices, putting up with complaining parents, throwing endless batting practice...I could go on and on, but you get the gist. It's another full time job for these volunteers...and I stress volunteers.

So, IF i was a coach and putting in all this time/money/effort, I can promise you one thing. My daughter would be getting A LOT of playing time. Yes, I'm the parent that gets this. How do we choose a team? We choose the team where the coach's daughter isn't playing the same position as my daughter. No worries!
 

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