Question, as I know very little of LL roster rules. How big of an area are you speaking ( miles ) when you say "best girls from their district"?
Little League World Series Championship tonight at 9pm Central....
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Question, as I know very little of LL roster rules. How big of an area are you speaking ( miles ) when you say "best girls from their district"?
Oh you took that the wrong way. I have no doubt all the girls are from the same town. All I was saying is they all play travel ball as well. Not the every girl must play a certain number of innings and the pitching restrictions that are put on the girls in the LLWS. Those teams for the last two years that won are good team no doubt all from the same town, but they are also A travel ball players in IMHO.
Right Soupy. Take for example a town the size of Springfield, IL. We had a very large, popular league - at the Majors level. We knew who the 11 year olds were that would be All Stars the next year. Of course, we could have been off by one or two, but we had 12 of the best that were going to stay with the league.
A coach opened his church gym to us, and we practiced for 12 months. It was open to everyone and anyone could have come and it certainly wasn't called Little League practice. But all of us were LL coaches. (I coached boys, at this point.) We made it the furthest in the state that anyone had ever made it, before we were eliminated.
But, someone would also have to control how the All Stars are selected. At that time, coaches could name them, or the All Star coach picked them.
A coach opened his church gym to us, and we practiced for 12 months. It was open to everyone and anyone could have come and it certainly wasn't called Little League practice. But all of us were LL coaches. (I coached boys, at this point.) We made it the furthest in the state that anyone had ever made it, before we were eliminated.
But, someone would also have to control how the All Stars are selected. At that time, coaches could name them, or the All Star coach picked them.
Goingdeep,
Baseball this year has dropped 3rd stike.Finally catching up to the girls.I say it all the time(to myself of course).Learn how to hit.Watched most of the games in the last 2 days.New Mexico girls flat out hit the ball.I know around here alot of 12u all star teams would have big troubles with this team.Takes alot to reach this level.
Baseball this year has dropped 3rd stike.Finally catching up to the girls.I say it all the time(to myself of course).Learn how to hit.Watched most of the games in the last 2 days.New Mexico girls flat out hit the ball.I know around here alot of 12u all star teams would have big troubles with this team.Takes alot to reach this level.
This is almost exactly what we did with the girls that won it last year from Sterling. Except we picked those girls when they were 7. We groomed them there 8,9,10,11,12 year old seasons for the most part together. We put them in all kinds of travel tournaments and practice them all winter long. Our league typicly had 3 teams and when the girls played their league stuff during the week they were split up on 3 different teams. and the coaches or parents from the travel team all coached these teams. I would definalty say we were an A team in travel for our area but a town team for the most part all the same. With that said for our team to compete with the big dogs of the travel world that were playing by different rules (considering player selection) wasnt something we could have done at an elite level. Now in order to compete at that level you have to do it. I would say that probably 75% of the girls that play in the Little League World Series are travel kids so i dont feel as its an unfair advantage. Now at your district/sectional/state tournaments thats another story. Some of those teams are strictly Little League kids.
Really? I guess I just don’t know enough about A ball, the young lady for the Southwest team was hitting 54 MPH pretty consistently with a 45 MPH change up and a pretty solid screw & curve ball. For 12U, I would think that was pretty darn close to A, I sure don’t see any B pitchers around here throwing that, maybe in 14U, but not 12U.
The key to LL, is travel ball. I'm from the town that won the LL world series in 2009 & 2010, both of those teams were travel teams that got together and played little league with the intent to win the LLWS.
- May 11, 2012
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GOINGDEEP I really dont know in terms of miles. The district they live in is the same area of space a HS would use to fill enrollment of about 2000 kids. Maybe 2-3 square miles??? IDK lol.
It really isnt that big of an area. Albuquerque has A LOT of different LL districts in the metro area. The metro area itself( including surrounding areas) has a population of about 1 million. So while NM itself isnt a very largely populated state. ( Probably around 2.5 million). Albuquerque metro area has about half of the entire states total population. Maybe a little less.
I will say this. The pitcher from here ( Stein) had the worst game I have ever seen her play ( pitching and hitting). Ive watched her in some club tourneys and in a quite a few LL/All Star games. She looked tired or something????. Never seen her lose control like that and her balls werent moving like they normally do. Still.......GREAT player. Lots of people only dream of having an off day like that. I know she can pitch it in the 54-58 range pretty consistently. She has some things to work on( like all players) but I would bet my bottom dollar that she will play D1 softball in 5 years. Not sure if it will be at P( they may depend on how much growing she will do to her 5'6 frame) but that bat and her overall ability are very good. Right on par with other girls I have seen land up being D1 players. I think in All Stars here she hit something ridiculous like .860 I know going into that Championship she was batting about .680-.700 in the World series tournament alone.
It really isnt that big of an area. Albuquerque has A LOT of different LL districts in the metro area. The metro area itself( including surrounding areas) has a population of about 1 million. So while NM itself isnt a very largely populated state. ( Probably around 2.5 million). Albuquerque metro area has about half of the entire states total population. Maybe a little less.
I will say this. The pitcher from here ( Stein) had the worst game I have ever seen her play ( pitching and hitting). Ive watched her in some club tourneys and in a quite a few LL/All Star games. She looked tired or something????. Never seen her lose control like that and her balls werent moving like they normally do. Still.......GREAT player. Lots of people only dream of having an off day like that. I know she can pitch it in the 54-58 range pretty consistently. She has some things to work on( like all players) but I would bet my bottom dollar that she will play D1 softball in 5 years. Not sure if it will be at P( they may depend on how much growing she will do to her 5'6 frame) but that bat and her overall ability are very good. Right on par with other girls I have seen land up being D1 players. I think in All Stars here she hit something ridiculous like .860 I know going into that Championship she was batting about .680-.700 in the World series tournament alone.
All the girls play in what is considered just league play. This is with all the girls that sign up for their town teams some leagues have as many as 7 or 8 teams some as few as 1. The teams that have just a few normally travel to the bording towns and do interleague play. These games mean nothing they are used to develop kids and NORMALLY used to move kids around and have fun. According to Little League you have to schedule 12 of these games in order to be eligible for the post season. For the post season you typilcy choose an All Star team from all the girls in your towns boarders and you go play all stars. The tournaments in IL are set up with ditricts first, the winner moves on to Sectionals, the winner of sectionals moves on to State. If you win State you advance to Central regionals which is a tournament between allt he State Champs in your region anywhere from 6 to 12 states. The winner there represnts their region at the World Series.
I think for towns under 25,000 people your fine you have one Little League program in your town. But i think the way Little League is setup if you have more than 25,000 then you have to break up the town in sections so a girl in one section of a big town cant play in the postseason with a team from another area of town they have to live in a specific boarder. So it truley is as close as a commuinty team as your gonna get. We played in a grand total of 19 games in our All Star season. Last year At the World Series they told us it was something like a 16,000 team tournament across the world. Pretty crazy if you look at it like that!
Good for them on the D3K. I can't comment on the softball side as I missed the games. I just grew tired of field dimensions and the no lead off rule in BB, and could not stand to watch the catcher jump up 100 times to fake a throw with the runner 6 inches off the bag.
I know the LL org does not care much for travel ball. Even have an article on their site pretty much saying so. I also know TB baseball people show no respect for LL. The best major team in LL BB couldn't hold a candle to a good major TB team and would probably get spanked by a good AAA or AA team.
Around here we have rec or travel A/B to choose from, if we had LL I'd probably put those players somewhere in the middle.
Brother says the LL team area is either 25-35,000 in population. ( he thinks, neither of us are for sure As that has been many years ago ) So that can be an advantage or disadvantage. 35,000 would mean I could choose a team from our whole county. 35,000 in Memphis ( down the road ) would only be a few city blocks.
I think this is why the hostility between TB and LL. It is rare, but possible for a small area or town to produce a full roster of good players. LL players use that as a crutch to defend the league because of the restrictions. TB people dislike LL because it's a nationally televised tradition of the sport. Even though 90% of the same division of TB vs LL, the TB team would mercy rule the LL. TB people just can't realize why ESPN would cover "said" event over a national TB tourney and it blows their top.
I do enjoy this time of year on the baseball forums. TB parents over there are going nuts.
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