Explosion of new teams

[Rambler34]

What gets me is people buy into these "promises" organizations sell them? We have one here that is exploding with teams popping up everywhere. No real history and only one team the guy had coached has ever had real success. No idea why anyone would want to pay him $1500 to play for the summer. Now he probably has 10-15 teams spread over two states so I am sure the majority of people can see why he is expanding so much. Even at ten teams with the average roster size being 12 he would collect $180,000. Basically the fees of 4 or maybe 5 kids on each team would cover tourney entries and uniforms. That's still over $100G going to the org ran buy one person.

Our team is in a large org that will not expand and only allows one team per birth year. Not all of our teams have it this good but we pay for uniforms and travel only. Our two fundraisers cover everything else. This summer we had close to $10,000 in entry fees and not a single parent put a dime toward that.

 

[fuzzy2651]

1) The best is that a day after the last tryout an organization advertises that they need just one more pitcher to complete the team! I mean come on...either you have enough for a team or don't have a team.
2) I have seen so many teams pop up on Long Island I cant even keep track

Oh yeah, the local softball boards have been full of teams advertising their need for pitchers and SS this week. Half of them are new teams too.

 

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

Well put me in the boat of starting a team for my daughter to get some playing time. Because she doesnt want to quit cheer no team in our area will accept her. Because she also likes softball and doesnt want to quit what am I to do? The orgs in our area are money grabs and the coaching she would get i could give her myself.

Anyways I view it as temporary solution and a temporary problem. hell it could change as soon as this winter.

 

[justanotherguy]

One thing I don't understand is when you have a team that has a LOT of pitchers, why some of these pitchers don't go looking for greener pastures. This past season we played one team that had a freaking unreal pitcher. They were 12u with maybe 2 13's so they were playing 14u. One pitcher on that team was crazy good. She was rather little and was throwing upper 50's and had a solid changeup. She only pitched twice that weekend. The team had SEVEN pitchers. 'Grats to the coach for giving them all circle time, but we would have bent over backwards to have that girl and she would have gotten a LOT of circle time. We're always looking for a good pitcher. We've got one good pitcher, our #2 you just never know who will show up, and our #3 is that really slow pitcher that trips up good teams. If we had an ace, we'd be one of the best teams in the state. Still scratching my head over that. There's another team as well that has 4 very solid pitchers but not much else. I'm sure it comes down to friends and being content where you're at.

 

[fuzzy2651]

One thing I don't understand is when you have a team that has a LOT of pitchers, why some of these pitchers don't go looking for greener pastures. This past season we played one team that had a freaking unreal pitcher. They were 12u with maybe 2 13's so they were playing 14u. One pitcher on that team was crazy good. She was rather little and was throwing upper 50's and had a solid changeup. She only pitched twice that weekend. The team had SEVEN pitchers. 'Grats to the coach for giving them all circle time, but we would have bent over backwards to have that girl and she would have gotten a LOT of circle time. We're always looking for a good pitcher. We've got one good pitcher, our #2 you just never know who will show up, and our #3 is that really slow pitcher that trips up good teams. If we had an ace, we'd be one of the best teams in the state. Still scratching my head over that. There's another team as well that has 4 very solid pitchers but not much else. I'm sure it comes down to friends and being content where you're at.

Well I think they are probably content where they're at, but they could have looked around and yeah their DD could have been a starting pitcher getting the majority of the innings, but what if the rest of the team wasn't that great? It kind of negates moving. Sometimes teams stockpile pitchers just so no one else can have them. Having a solid 1 and 2 with a 3 or 4 to pick up a few innings here an there is plenty. I'm just glad my DD never wanted to pitch haha

 

[Agbracing]

One thing I don't understand is when you have a team that has a LOT of pitchers, why some of these pitchers don't go looking for greener pastures. This past season we played one team that had a freaking unreal pitcher. They were 12u with maybe 2 13's so they were playing 14u. One pitcher on that team was crazy good. She was rather little and was throwing upper 50's and had a solid changeup. She only pitched twice that weekend. The team had SEVEN pitchers. 'Grats to the coach for giving them all circle time, but we would have bent over backwards to have that girl and she would have gotten a LOT of circle time. We're always looking for a good pitcher. We've got one good pitcher, our #2 you just never know who will show up, and our #3 is that really slow pitcher that trips up good teams. If we had an ace, we'd be one of the best teams in the state. Still scratching my head over that. There's another team as well that has 4 very solid pitchers but not much else. I'm sure it comes down to friends and being content where you're at.

Some pitchers are not all about the amount of circle time. They do not want to carry the load and miss out on developing and playing at other positions. Good pitchers understand it takes a staff to go deep in good tournaments. As a pitchers dad I would have zero interest in a team that does not have pitching already in place that can win games. Battling for mound time makes them work harder on their craft then just being the clear number 1.

 

[HasBeenorNeverWas]

Well put me in the boat of starting a team for my daughter to get some playing time. Because she doesnt want to quit cheer no team in our area will accept her. Because she also likes softball and doesnt want to quit what am I to do? The orgs in our area are money grabs and the coaching she would get i could give her myself.

Anyways I view it as temporary solution and a temporary problem. hell it could change as soon as this winter.

Good point. I'm not all about my 9 year old playing one sport year round. I don't want to burn her out for sure and I want her to be able to experience other sports andactivities. Another reason I was worried about putting her on a travel team.

 

[vicimus]

That's fine as long as she doesn't have aspirations to play D1 in college. My DD played both field hockey and softball at the club level year-round since she was 8 yrs old, plus played field hockey, softball, and basketball for her MS for 3 years; however, since she has the dream to play D1, we told her she would have to choose 1 sport upon which to focus when she got to HS, since she was competing with other girls who have only been focusing on one sport year round for years and would have very little chance of making a D1 team otherwise, since she wasn't born athletically gifted as some.

After taking an honest self-assessment of her current skill sets in both sports and factoring in her target list of colleges, she finally choose to focus on softball, but if it was up to her, she'd still be playing 3 sports. That said, her field hockey skills definitely helped her softball footwork. ;-)

Good point. I'm not all about my 9 year old playing one sport year round. I don't want to burn her out for sure and I want her to be able to experience other sports andactivities. Another reason I was worried about putting her on a travel team.

 

[Hawk_]

I think it's a couple different things:
Money - So of these big programs charge a crazy rate to be on the team, uniforms, ect.
Starting out with a rec team - A lot of younger teams form out of a Rec All star team. "let's keep this rolling" type thing. (This fizzle quickly cause they aren't as good as they thought)
Egos - Parent doesn't like how the last coach was and doesn't want to get rejected in try outs so they just start their own thing.

I will tell you why me and my assistant started up ours: Both of our DDs were tired of playing rec ball with girls who didn't have their skill level. He approached me about my DD and we brought together 8 girls very quickly. Pick up a couple more pitchers and catchers and here we are. We have gotten approached by several organization about merging with them, but honestly for 10u I don't see the point currently. We are focused on getting better not winning and when they are ready we will either merge with a bigger org or just go try out. We know it's not long term but it was a good way to get our feet wet without spending a fortune or jumping headlong into a major org.
We focus more on practice than games, practicing two to three times a week and playing 1 maybe 2 times a month.

 

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

That's fine as long as she doesn't have aspirations to play D1 in college. My DD played both field hockey and softball at the club level year-round since she was 8 yrs old, plus played field hockey, softball, and basketball for her MS for 3 years; however, since she has the dream to play D1, we told her she would have to choose 1 sport upon which to focus when she got to HS, since she was competing with other girls who have only been focusing on one sport year round for years and would have very little chance of making a D1 team otherwise, since she wasn't born athletically gifted as some.

After taking an honest self-assessment of her current skill sets in both sports and factoring in her target list of colleges, she finally choose to focus on softball, but if it was up to her, she'd still be playing 3 sports. That said, her field hockey skills definitely helped her softball footwork. ;-)

Making the decision in HS is one thing. Forcing that choice at 10 yrs old is disgusting.