Determining if a team...

[RADcatcher]

I feel like you're just reading whatever you want to read, despite what's actually on the screen. But, you do you. I'll go back to helping to scrape together strikes in a tiny town with a $20k average household income, 60 HS athletes spread amongst 5 sports plus their respective travel seasons, with the nearest pitching instructor 40 minutes away. And we currently have...12 high school players, 11 middle school, and....6 in 12u, I believe.

But we're so blessed that HS will bring in probably 4 or 5 new ones (that I'd rather "discard," ya know...but we don't turn any willing participant away) with 0 experience who we'll scramble to teach how to throw and catch and explain what an inning is, and how many balls and strikes you get in the 4 weeks we'll have between the first official practice and our first game with the second-best team in the region. At least one of them will get up to bat and not even realize when they've struck out.

And then we lost our #1 and #2 pitchers to injury and transfer. They were also our #1 and #4 best hitters. We only had 4 who hit over .350 to begin with.

The 6 or so girls who aren't playing other sports all offseason have been working voluntarily, twice a week since June. Not playing travel...just practicing to keep up with travel-player loaded school teams. We have one HS player who plays travel. The rest play inter-squad 5 on 5 (coaches or parents or MS kids filling in the other spots) with coach pitch when they aren't drilling over and over. And then the other starters, (who play other sports and have done zero softballing since May) will show up almost completely seized with rust, so we'll scramble to get them as many reps as possible and pray they'll hit .300.

And I'll continue to do 3x per week pitching and hitting with my own kid in addition to the two team practices. And I'll continue to be available to open our batting cage to any kid, any time. Oh, and continue to have an open pitching instruction day once a week...I forgot about that one.

Oh also, we'll work on the field. Probably end up just filling in the low spots with clay and turface because who has money for rehabbing the slope? Hopefully a dog doesn't get out there and dig holes all over the infield again. And then there's the deer pooping everywhere. And the dugout fridge compressor died. But there aren't any free drinks in there anyway.

Oh and we'll have to fundraise again...in the town with the $20k household income.

I have a whole journal about how it all started, and all the follies and absurdity along the way, and the tiny victories among it in the parent section of DFP if this wasn't enough evidence of how we discard players.

Appreciating the effort

 

[PJR202]

You're somewhat correct. I'm reading past your personal accolades. It's commendable. But I'm equally not interested. That's not going to be my reality.

I am taking exception to the notion that you should not play without a pitcher at a certain level. It's nice to have. I'm not arguing the validity of the game being pitcher dominant for sustained success as far as wins and losses goes. I am still going to advocate playing the hand one is dealt the best you can, and not just folding and giving up.

This is what my community is willing to do, and that's what we'll work with. That's the price we have to pay to participate.

Cheese and rice...Those aren't aren't personal accolades. Those are the steps and responsibilities I and some others decided to take because our kids wanted to play, and we didn't want to watch them suffer. I had never coached before. I wasn't even a good baseball player.

We don't have dominant pitching. There are no classes in this state for softball--it's districts and regions. We have SUFFERED at all levels just to get to a .500 high school season and a MS team that went 5-10. We've walked batter after batter after batter and had home stolen more times than I'd care to admit. We've given up 30 runs in an inning, and more run-rule games than I could ever recall. We've had girls crying on the field, in the dugout, and at practice. My post was to show what we've been willing to do just to not be the worst team in the region. We have no dominant pitching. We get the ball in play, minmize walks, and get a few strikeouts on a good night. We're lucky to have strikes at all this season, and really we still aren't certain that'll happen.

You act like you're in some unique, dire situation that no one can understand. I'm not saying you don't put in work and I won't presume to know how much, but very few towns are working with less than we are. We just want to see our kids be able to play at a reasonably competitive level and learn some good life lessons along the way. I look forward to the day my daughter is hassling her own kid about practicing because she saw what it takes just to show up and feel like she had any idea what to do...to feel empowered to make something out of very little because she saw her parent and the other parents refuse to just leave their kids hanging and showing up and not being able to even give opponents a game. We fight for them so they can fight for themselves. Our ultimate goal isn't to win a state title. It's to beat the teams on our level and go the distance with most of the teams above our level, and maybe beat one here and there.

 

[Nuwin]

I would even go so far as to say that if you don't have a pitcher who can throw 50% strikes or better, you may as well not even have a team.

That was your opening remark. That is not encouraging at all. That's telling people to throw in the towel on even having a team, let alone a tournament.

Why didn't you take your own advice? Instead, sounds like you bet on the kids, and put in work to help make it happen. Basically what I am arguing for. It's a wonderful story that isn't told if you instead forgo having a team based on your current state of pitching. Tryouts for us are largely a waste of time in the sense you're making the team anyway because of the numbers game alone. But it still puts the kids in that environment to perform and be evaluated. We keep playing the games because nothing simulates that the same. Tournaments are managed different from a friendly, or generally league, so it's still exposure. Still lessons to be learned.

I don't feel the need to say what I do or don't do for the team or community because it doesn't matter. Nobody cares, and you're right, we're not unique. I'll will say I'm not going to be a pitching coach to make it happen. And if I know a pitcher is in another sport or activity, I encourage that, knowing it is potentially detrimental to the softball team. We don't live or die on wins and losses alone. We're not suffering either. Suffering is a choice.

 

[PJR202]

That was your opening remark. That is not encouraging at all. That's telling people to throw in the towel on even having a team, let alone a tournament.

Why didn't you take your own advice? Instead, sounds like you bet on the kids, and put in work to help make it happen. Basically what I am arguing for. It's a wonderful story that isn't told if you instead forgo having a team based on your current state of pitching. Tryouts for us are largely a waste of time in the sense you're making the team anyway because of the numbers game alone. But it still puts the kids in that environment to perform and be evaluated. We keep playing the games because nothing simulates that the same. Tournaments are managed different from a friendly, or generally league, so it's still exposure. Still lessons to be learned.

I don't feel the need to say what I do or don't do for the team or community because it doesn't matter. Nobody cares, and you're right, we're not unique. I'll will say I'm not going to be a pitching coach to make it happen. And if I know a pitcher is in another sport or activity, I encourage that, knowing it is potentially detrimental to the softball team. We don't live or die on wins and losses alone. We're not suffering either. Suffering is a choice.

I'm talking about school ball. School ball exists whether you have pitching or not. We didn't get 50% strikes that first/worst season. Knowing that, I would not take a non-school team anywhere without having it.

 

[Nuwin]

Well then to each their own cause I'm not talking school ball. Nothing was implied about age in the OP. But if you're going to keep challenging why I do it, I'm going to keep telling you. But I hope to inspire others to not give up, more than having any notion of changing your mind. Seems a bit chicken or egg knowing if you're ready if you don't ever try. Try -> Fail -> Practice -> Try again. Over and over.

There is a lot of apathy with school ball around here. I was so football obsessed in my youth that I never gained perspective on how the other sports actually worked at that level. It was an eye opener.

But maybe I'm just starting your process at a younger age. Maybe we'll build enough survivors to elevate the team a bit. I've seen the community rally around any team that makes a competitive run. But football excluded, HS sports are out of sight, out of mind if you don't have a kid on the team. The parents that are there, are way more chill than the are for travel ball.

And we're probably way more aligned at the high school level. I asked at one point if it was worthwhile for me to do an arm circle throwing BP to my DD. The overwhelming answer was yes. I'm at a level where I could comfortably get rocked by bad, older hitting. LOL. But I'm in the zone way more than 50%! So I likely agree that with older players, the bar of just finding the big box called the zone half the time so your defense even has a chance to get an out is quite low and easily obtainable.

 

[RADcatcher]

I don't feel the need to say what I do or don't do for the team or community because it doesn't matter. Nobody cares,

Well since you're coming from that perspective and there are people that come from the completely opposite perspective...

I'm going to guess that a tournament format and preparing to have a level of competency wouldn't matter to you either while it matters to others.

 

[Nuwin]

I'm going to guess that a tournament format and preparing to have a level of competency wouldn't matter to you either while it matters to others.

I'm not going to put a bottom of the barrel C team in a A level tournament. Yes it matters. We're going to pick the most appropriate level for us.

I'm not deterred by losing at 10/12U. I'm not going to withhold a variety of competition formats because we're not great. We're going to play. We're going to evaluate, try to improve, and play again. And we'll keep doing it until get good enough to repeat the process at a higher level or age out. I'm going to be honest with them about their ability, and how and where they can improve. But I'm not going to take the game away from anyone. That's not the team I coached or the market I served.

 

[RADcatcher]

I'm not going to put a bottom of the barrel C team in a A level tournament. Yes it matters. We're going to pick the most appropriate level for us.

Glad there are events at different levels.

 

[daywalkerdad]

You can start going to tournaments whenever you want.

It is going to cost. 400+ entry fee, insurance, travel, etc. For some reason we need a t shirt from every single tournament.

To make it worth your while you need some form of resemblance of actual softball. If you you are walking in the run limit every inning cheaper alternatives are probably the way to go.

Maybe best to go observe, then decide?

 

[Cannonball]

... and back to the OP. The question of whether a team is ready to enter tournaments is so vague. I don't think my area is special and we have all levels of tournaments each weekend in my area or within an hour's to hour and a half drive. If any coach wants to play either in upper-level competitions or lower "local tournaments," we have choices and both serve their purpose. In fact, I would suggest that a mix is in order at the lower levels and often your team will run into comparable teams in both competitions.

IMO, entering tournaments is critical to the development of teams at any level. My dd's first TB coach wanted to play one or two tournaments each month. Many were "local." For better competition, my dd played on an older team that played in St. Louis most weekends. (10U and First year 12U for her first team.)

Also, didn't most of your daughters play 3 team friendlies early on? Those are very much like a tournament. For my dd, again, those type of games made her experience beneficial and let her know what was out there per teams and player abilities.