Extending safety of players discussion

[RADcatcher]

From the Bountiful Looong Thread about Pitch counts and the consideration of safety of players....
➡This is not about Pitch counts
➡ This is about all players!!!
Seeing there is a tournament this weekend in Palmdale where it's expected to be 111°

Is there any weather conditions that you would not let team or daughter/ players participate?

Could be any weather conditions freezing, mud, wet, extreme heat or humidity....
Considering the length of time could be many hours day after day.


Have you pulled your daughter/team from playing for safety?

Do you think tournaments should be shut down because of this?

( schools have some standard set.
How about travel?)

 

[_MIA_]

From the Bountiful Looong Thread about Pitch counts and the consideration of safety of players....
➡This is not about Pitch counts
➡ This is about all players!!!
Seeing there is a tournament this weekend in Palmdale where it's expected to be 111°

Is there any weather conditions that you would not let team or daughter/ players participate?

Could be any weather conditions freezing, mud, wet, extreme heat or humidity....
Considering the length of time could be many hours day after day

Have you pulled your daughter/team from a playing for safety?

There have been tournaments DD played in where the schedule was modified due to high heat index (shortened games, etc.) Not sure if that really does much other than show that they are "doing something"

 

[uncdrew]

I've certainly told coaches to take my DD out of games she's pitching when it's painfully obvious she's completely gassed.

... and left those teams at season's end.


This was due to some crazy tournament schedule that had us playing 6 or 7 games in one day. That kind of crap really needs to stop.

 

[Cougars]

regarding heat, a lot has to do with the schedule.

We played in Florida a couple weeks ago. It was 'only' around 90, but with Florida's 700% humidity, the "feels like" was 105ish. The pool games and beginning of bracket had a great schedule (both for heat management and free time). We played 1 game Sunday, 2 Monday, 1 Tuesday, 2 Wednesday. We were eliminated after the 2nd game Wed, but even with a win, that was the most we would have played.

For the team that beat us (and the other teams starting Thursday in the losers bracket), they would have had to play 6 straight games, back-to-back, to win the championship. To me, given the heat/humidity, that's a scheduling failure by the director. (Even if it's 70 degrees, 6 games in a day is a failure).

I do understand the trials of the losers bracket. Also trying to please teams that sign up/get hotels/vacation time for a 6 day tournament", and then not wanting a schedule that could eliminate them in 3 days. Hard to please all sides.

 

[CoachCeetar]

well one thing we could do is support "Green New Deal" type stuff, globally, to combat climate change that's going to make this worse.

But absolutely there should be hard protocols for some of this stuff, because coaches, tournaments, towns, etc, will NOT whether through ignorance, uncaringness, or simple peer pressure from others that are ignorant or uncaring, cancel stuff without a rule or protocol to lean on.

A lot of us saw this recently in the northeast, with the Canadian wildfires blowing through. We were very reluctant to cancel a simple 3rd/4th travel practice even though the sky was on fire, it took a bit of nagging from concerned parents for us to realize "yeah, maybe that's the right call.." And it was. It's dangerous to spend 2 hours breathing smoke. I was out for hours that day for other things we didn't cancel, and I'm not a person with allergies or breathing problems and it affected me for days afterwards.

put protocols in place. Heat index, AQI, temperature, whatever. You can have a slding scale.. but have it there. Like, above 100 everyone gets an extra few minutes between innings, or between innings 3-4, or whatever. If it goes above 110 maybe you cancel. Same on the other end. Has the temperature plummeted to 45 degrees? Give the pitcher 2 extra warmup pitches. Is it projected to be 45? try to move the game 20 minutes earlier, etc.

And again on the town/state side, invest in the fields. This is my pet peeve as I'm getting into this, these fields are in terrible shape. The grass isn't grass, the dirt is half inch of dirt on concrete. I know it's a pain to rake leaves in the fall, but those trees provide shade. We're a small town, so there aren't a lot of us, but each of the travel teams was given a pop-up tent, just to be able to help out and keep the girls out of the sun a bit.

 

[_MIA_]

well one thing we could do is support "Green New Deal" type stuff, globally, to combat climate change that's going to make this worse.

Not the place..

 

[Agcy]

Some local limits:
- HS - Real Feel is above 40°F
- College - above freezing (this is just a suggestion as they still played one game it was hovering around 30°)

 

[Nuwin]

We pulled a team for lightning last year. My tolerance is much less than those in charge of trying to keep schedules uninterrupted.

We were mathematically defeated by time and run limits anyway. I felt a minor amount of guilt taking some ABs away, until we were all at least in our car before the gust front came through with everyone else still out on the fields. The rest weren't so fortunate.

Can I talk about pitch counts if it is to quantify catcher workload? Innings and games are not all created equal as a measure of work... lol

 

[LEsoftballdad]

Local league games were canceled last month due to smoke from the Canadian wildfires. The air was so bad it was dangerous to be outdoors.

Other reasons not to play include excessive heat or temperatures below 40 F. We had our county close all public fields in the summer of 2019 because it was supposed to reach 105 F, so the tournament that weekend was completely scrapped. We have had several HS games in late March get canceled because of cold and wind chills below zero.

Obviously, unplayable fields are a big no-no. We had one 14U event canceled when they put the teams on a field with a 40' pitching rubber cemented into the ground. None of the coaches would put their pitchers in a position to land on the shorter rubber and hurt themselves. When we asked the tournament director why the town felt it necessary to cement the rubber to the ground, we were told, "They keep getting stolen."

 

[Northball]

...When we asked the tournament director why the town felt it necessary to cement the rubber to the ground, we were told, "They keep getting stolen."

That's a new one. Who knew they would be a hot item.