Hello! Advice needed

[Jpjames89]

Hello. Thank you for letting me join here. I have always enjoyed coming here and reading similar situations that I am going through with my two daughter's softball journeys. And now, I am in need of some advice.

My daughters are 9 and 10 and this is their first year in travel ball, 10U. I was initially going to wait for them to get 2 more seasons under their belt before they joined travel ball but an opportunity came up and they wanted to join. When I talked to the coach, I made it clear of my reservations about playing time. I have heard all the horror stories about travel ball not having a guarantee on playing time, not like rec. But he assured me that it will be even playing time. Fast forward to now and they have played 3 tournaments, a total of 10 games (these are 1 day tournaments). Both girls and one other girl on the team have started every game on the bench. Every game. My 9 year old has had a little more playing time when one of the starters was out on one of the tournaments. My 10 year old has had 3 at bats in 10 games, where some girls are getting 4 at bats a game. When they see the field, they are stuck in the outfield where nothing is hit to them. For reference, they have played and practiced at first and second base. They have gone through multiple games without even sniffing the field. And it isn't like they are going to hurt the team. The team keep losing 17-0, 12-1, so on, with my daughters on the bench.

Is this normal? I understand they are probably the least experienced players on the team, I get that. But how can they get experience from sitting on the bench most of the games. They are 9 and 10. When I reached out to him, the coach gave the typical response. "I try to keep it even but playing time is also earned and there are things they can do to earn it." "As a coach my job is to make sure the girls continue their love of the game." Well he is failing at that because my daughters are starting to think they are not good enough. They are ticked off and are clearly seeing favoritism. And as far as earning time, they have been there every practice and game, doing everything that is asked of them. But a new girl joined the team a week before the tournaments started, and she has played every inning.

Should I contemplate pulling the girls from the team? What should I do? What is the appropriate way to approach the coach again about this?

 

[Sonerai]

Sorry to hear about your experience. Travel ball experiences vary great depending on the type of team, level of skill and the coach. I am sure you are going to get a lot of advice and some of it may be conflicting. One question you are going to get for sure is, how many girls are on the team? Team sizes at 10U tend to be smaller to allow for more playing time. Personally based on my experience, I think 10U is too early for many to move to travel ball. Rec gives girls so much opportunity to play and get better especially if the league is run well with spring and fall seasons along with select and all stars. Let them play and have run at that age. Starting travel ball too soon can negatively impact their enjoyment of the game as it can get too serious. Whether you play travel or rec, they will have to work on their own outside of practice to get better. If you aren't doing that as part of travel ball they will continue to struggle. Pulling them is a choice you'll have to make with your daughters, but at this age prioritize enjoyment and having fun!

 

[Jpjames89]

Sorry to hear about your experience. Travel ball experiences vary great depending on the type of team, level of skill and the coach. I am sure you are going to get a lot of advice and some of it may be conflicting. One question you are going to get for sure is, how many girls are on the team? Team sizes at 10U tend to be smaller to allow for more playing time. Personally based on my experience, I think 10U is too early for many to move to travel ball. Rec gives girls so much opportunity to play and get better especially if the league is run well with spring and fall seasons along with select and all stars. Let them play and have run at that age. Starting travel ball too soon can negatively impact their enjoyment of the game as it can get too serious. Whether you play travel or rec, they will have to work on their own outside of practice to get better. If you aren't doing that as part of travel ball they will continue to struggle. Pulling them is a choice you'll have to make with your daughters, but at this age prioritize enjoyment and having fun!

Thank you for responding. The team has 12 girls. At times, it feels like they are only on the team to fill it out/help pay for the fees. I agree about rec. Like I said, I wanted them to wait a bit longer but they had the desire. In hindsight, it seems to be a mistake. And the girls do lessons every week outside of practice. They are dedicated, just not given the opportunity.

 

[Orange Socks]

3 AB's in 10 games is unacceptable. DD's former 18U Gold team had 16 players on the team and everyone played and batted at some point or another during the weekend. This coach is only interested in keeping his better players in the game so they have a better chance at winning. Sound like it's not working and I bet this coach doesn't have very much experience. You can easily get all the kids in every game. In my all my head coaching days I never sat a kid an entire game, unless there were extraordinary circumstances.

I am not sure how many more weekends I would tolerate this. IMO, 12U is a good starting point for TB most kids.

 

[Rolling Hard]

BEFORE, joining any travel ball team ask a lot and lots of direct questions. But if there is a decent rec ball league stay there unless your DDs are super stars. Team is getting blown out tells me that joining this team was a big mistake. If your DDs are going to play softball you should own a bucket of balls, a tee, a bownet, and the correct bat size for each girl. teach yourself how to throw front toss. Do not throw slow with big arc. Try to throw flat pitches.

 

[ODorr]

I will share a little of our experience over the last few years with travel ball at the 12u and 14u level which will potentially still apply to your situation.

If you’re girls tried out for the travel team and won a spot, it must have been because they had something going for them that other prospects did not. Generally, a roster of 11 is kind of in the sweet spot unless you want to bulk up on pitchers. 12 can work too. But, when there are too many girls on the roster, there’s a potential for imbalanced amounts of diamond time for all the kids when coaches are parents, or there are parents who are friends of coaches, and a plethora of other political reasons. (Lots of other posts elsewhere on that stuff and not what I’m focusing on here).

But there are some basic questions that you must ask yourself about your own kid:

1. Attendance: Did you show up to every practice on time and show up for every game on time?
2. Skill: When they were at the plate, did they have productive at bats? Were they able to field the ball reasonably well and get the ball to another player reasonably well and reasonably on target consistently?
3. Do they listen, learn, and execute on instruction?
4. Do they look like they’re having a good time during practice while they’re laying it all out there on the field?
5. And do they get along with the other girls and staff?

If the answers to the questions are all positive, your kids are heartbroken about play time, and you’re being realistic about your own kids, then leave – your kids will love you for it in the end. I’m speaking from personal experience (read on).

A couple of things.

1. They’re 10 years old – they need to have fun while both getting diamond time learning the game and MOST IMPORTANTLY learning to love the game. Find a different travel team at a lower level (think C rather than B) -OR- you can take the travel season off and wait to see how it goes while playing rec for another season. They are young and you’re not going to miss out on that much at that age in travel and you’ll save boat loads of money to spend on development activities. See number 2.
2. If you take the travel season off, spend the extra money on getting individualized instruction on fundamentals. I know they’re just 10, but trust me, we would have avoided SO MUCH heartache these last 3 years with lack of playing time etc. if we just would have done the work 4 years ago. We took all last season off - we quit travel and got on a program. 6 hours a week of fielding, throwing, hitting, catching, and 2 hours a week of conditioning plus every days. Bear with me - my daughter is much older – I know that’s insane for your 10-year-old but I’m leading up to something. See 3.
3. Do A LOT of research in your community about the different travel coaches and organizations. When you’re getting instruction, ask the hitting, throwing, etc. coaches about reputations. Then double check that by talking to other parents, schools, or even local vendors if you can. Most coaches don’t really develop players that much – try and find one that does. Finding a good coach who is FAIR and knowledgeable is challenging. But they are out there!

Steps 1-3 are EXACTLY what we did this last year. We were going through the EXACT scenario that I described – she was a decent (not stellar) player, she wasn’t getting play time (the only one), when she did play, she was in the outfield even though she’s an infielder, and no amount of “check ins” with the coach helped. We also found out that the coach had a terrible reputation. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t well respected for how he treated players – we just didn’t know beforehand.

So, I thought I was crazy (my daughter is perfect after all! ) and I needed a sanity check. We took our daughter to 2 former D1 coaches who are local and they both evaluated her for an hour. (Keep in my mind we’re not even thinking about college ball – we were looking for a truly professional evaluation and we were open to direct honest feedback). They acted as an independent-no-skin-in-the-game consultant, and we got the feedback we needed. The former head coach of a relatively high ranking D1 program said, “She has a lot of raw talent, offensively she’s ok but she needs work on her arm and glove. Get her into a program with Coach X at Facility Y, and we’ll let her guest play this summer on our regional team while she’s working on that stuff. Fundamentals over innings! Better to take a season off and get that all straightened out now. That way you can avoid a lot of pain.”

I can’t tell you how valuable that was. In an hour my daughter got more feedback/instruction than we/she had in all of her practices combined for a year with any former coach. She probably wasn’t having a lot of productive at bats, her glove probably wasn’t that great, her technique on throwing might not have been good enough - at least for that one travel team we were on with a coach who may not have known what the heck they were doing.

We put in 4 months over the summer working on the things that we could control - working on fundamentals and guest playing. She tried out for a different travel team in the fall – 60 girls showed up for 2 spots. She was first pick. She now plays every game, her at bats are productive, she’s starting first base or catcher – and she’s thrilled, confident, and having fun.

I’m not suggesting that you put your kid on a program like that – it was extreme - even for 14u. But our daughter really wanted it and she volunteered to her parents that it was totally worth it and she wants to do it all over again this season except while actually playing on a team. If all she wanted to do was play rec, we wouldn’t have gone to boot camp.

There are two ways your child can learn to love the game. By playing on a rec team where the at bats and diamond time are built in – nothing wrong with that at all – I’ve seen rec teams absolutely destroy travel teams! And/or, when they decide that they want to take it up a level, by being prepared enough to meet the expectations of the travel program and the coach of YOUR informed choice. Either way, they will be happier for it and that makes the most difference.