Just posting to vent a bit.
This year, our middle school team had 21 girls sign up. I put a limit of 15 on the roster. I never want to cut players, but we've had 15 most years and even that is difficult to manage. In our league everybody bats, but getting everybody enough playing time is tough, and quite frankly, getting 1-2 ABs per game isn't making them a whole lot better.
One of the girls we've decided to not carry on the roster played with us for a couple years at 10u, but opted out last summer. She's one of the youngest in this group (some of her classmates are still 10u, but based on her birthday, she has to move up for the league we're in). Objectively, she did not deserve to make the team. She's not particularly skilled, missing a full year clearly hurt her development, and though she always wants to play it doesn't show up in hustle/effort on the field. She's also only in 5th grade, and this team is 5th-8th graders (we play in a pretty low level rec league where it's not as crazy as it sounds). The final decision was between her an a new 8th grader who is probably at about the same level, but our goal is to get these girls ready for high school, so she wins the tiebreaker.
Back to the girl we aren't keeping: She's a good kid, and I know her mom pretty well. She's the president of the PTO (we'll see if "politics" is a thing at our school!). We really do want her around, and we want to keep working with her. The last thing I want is to discourage her from playing. So I told mom that she was welcome to practice with us. She would be able to sub if we're ever short players (I'd probably have her sub even if we had 10 or 11 for the game because why not?). And if she commits to it this year, she has a spot on the team next year even if we do tryouts.
In all, I think we came up with a fair, reasonable plan that balances what's best for the team and what's best for her, but there is nothing fun about this. I don't want to cut a 10-year-old girl from a team. Cutting a junior in high school who doesn't have what it takes isn't easy, but I won't lose sleep over it. But this sucks, and I really hope in the future we get exactly the number of players we want for this level so we never have to have tryouts again.
I hope I handled everything the right way, if there is a right way to tell a kid she isn't quite good enough right now.
Oh, and now I have to go tell another girl (whose sister is on our HS team) that she also isn't good enough. This is an awful day.
This year, our middle school team had 21 girls sign up. I put a limit of 15 on the roster. I never want to cut players, but we've had 15 most years and even that is difficult to manage. In our league everybody bats, but getting everybody enough playing time is tough, and quite frankly, getting 1-2 ABs per game isn't making them a whole lot better.
One of the girls we've decided to not carry on the roster played with us for a couple years at 10u, but opted out last summer. She's one of the youngest in this group (some of her classmates are still 10u, but based on her birthday, she has to move up for the league we're in). Objectively, she did not deserve to make the team. She's not particularly skilled, missing a full year clearly hurt her development, and though she always wants to play it doesn't show up in hustle/effort on the field. She's also only in 5th grade, and this team is 5th-8th graders (we play in a pretty low level rec league where it's not as crazy as it sounds). The final decision was between her an a new 8th grader who is probably at about the same level, but our goal is to get these girls ready for high school, so she wins the tiebreaker.
Back to the girl we aren't keeping: She's a good kid, and I know her mom pretty well. She's the president of the PTO (we'll see if "politics" is a thing at our school!). We really do want her around, and we want to keep working with her. The last thing I want is to discourage her from playing. So I told mom that she was welcome to practice with us. She would be able to sub if we're ever short players (I'd probably have her sub even if we had 10 or 11 for the game because why not?). And if she commits to it this year, she has a spot on the team next year even if we do tryouts.
In all, I think we came up with a fair, reasonable plan that balances what's best for the team and what's best for her, but there is nothing fun about this. I don't want to cut a 10-year-old girl from a team. Cutting a junior in high school who doesn't have what it takes isn't easy, but I won't lose sleep over it. But this sucks, and I really hope in the future we get exactly the number of players we want for this level so we never have to have tryouts again.
I hope I handled everything the right way, if there is a right way to tell a kid she isn't quite good enough right now.
Oh, and now I have to go tell another girl (whose sister is on our HS team) that she also isn't good enough. This is an awful day.
around here its kinda just after school sports with your friends for a few weeks.
