I know it's not what you want to hear, but even having a JV team can be something of a luxury, and while there's no replacement for game experience, if you have that many girls who have never played before (I know how that goes), a Freshman year of mostly practice and a handful of games isn't so bad. It's better than not being able to play at all.
That leaves 12 to 14 games for JV. If they don't play at the same time as varsity (which I've only seen 4 times in 4 years) they usually only play 5 innings. Sometimes it's only 3.
The team that is not ready, let's play a game and split the players up. I get half or yours you ger half of mine.
While I think our JV program was run much better than the one you describe, the bottom line is the biggest benefit for our JV team was they got to practice and scrimmage with our varsity players. Most JV teams are bad...really bad, so unless a school is STACKED, the competition you face in JV game will seem like REC ball.
But I don't really care how bad the JV team is as long as the girls are developing their skills and getting ready to move up to varsity when the time comes.
So what's the level of play like in the Denver public schools?
In Chicago, it's pretty bad overall. There are maybe a dozen schools with good teams (and even the top 2-3 of those get creamed when they leave the city for the state tournament). There were 81 schools in the various CPS conferences last year, and half of them have varsity teams that a good 10U travel team could beat (not exaggerating; our first-year varsity team won games 23-0, 22-5, 20-10 against some of these teams). I'm wondering if other big cities have similar issues with quality of play in school ball.
Sounds like in your situation, the coaches just might not have the time for too many JV games. I know one concern I have if I can't find another coach for JV is what to do on JV game days. I'd like to spend time practicing with the varsity, but we may not have enough coaches to go around (at least 2 to go with JV to their game, plus a couple to run practice). And of course I'm a control freak who wants to be everywhere at once. I'm not sure I could handle missing a JV game or missing a practice to be at the JV game.