Completing a roster, help?

[Lothar241]

I am a new manager of a 14u town based team. The travel teams (now 8u-14u) were formed to give the girls an opportunity to take a step beyond recreation and all stars.

I was an assistant coach as a dad last year. The season was a disaster. However, I am pleasantly surprised to see great the turn out for girls that are interested in joining the team this year (we did not advertise outside of the district). Last year's manager stepped down, so that may be part of the reason.

I now have an "unfortunate" situation. I have too many girls to roster for 1 team, and not enough to field 2 teams. I will need to bring in a few girls from outside the district because we don't have enough pitchers and catchers. I found a catcher I really like, but she is from out of district as well. We will have 2 pitchers coming in from outside the district to try out.

We discussed creating a "taxi squad" where girls that need some work can practice with us, but would not play in games (of course that would not be charged full fees either). It would give the girls a chance to improve, and we would have a ready source of players if we were short for some reason. I want to roster as many as I can, but it also would not be fair to families who invest money and time and not get enough playing time.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any stories,comments, suggestions?

 

[marriard]

I was going to write a big long response but in the end it boiled down to this:

It is travel. Pick your best squad of 11 or 12 from the available players (including out of towners) and move on. If there is another manager for the girl's that don't make it, then great - offer to help and direct any other players you discover to him. If not, well if the girls that don't make it really want to play they will find another team.

It was a mental change I had to make as well when I moved from rec to travel.

 

[SCDad]

Ditto for the last response. Keep 11 or 12 so the ones who make it get to play a lot. Keep the ones who don't make it on file to call as pick-up players when several regular players have vacation, or for some reason do not show for certain tourney's.

The biggest adjustment as players get older is teams get bigger (15 or 16 players) and playing time gets less. At 14U it is one of the last age groups to keep the player numbers down. Team chemistry is much better when everyone plays more. You are better able to keep the best players because of the increased playing time.

Out-of-district players should be welcome (especially the good ones). If the talent level is the same, go local. Be mindful of the needs of the good out-of-district players. They will usually miss a few practices, but can make a good team great.

 

[Sparky Guy]

Ditto to Marriad also. The best way to let those who didn't make the cut go is that you took the girls who you felt were the best fit for the team. You would have liked to take everyone but it would be impossible to do that. It was a tough process to make decisions yadda... yaddaaa....

There will be those who are disappointed and those who thought their DD was better than one or two you chose for the team. You'll never make them all happy. You have do what is best for the team. It's a no win situation either way. Someone will ALWAYS think you're wrong.