- Nov 1, 2008
- 223
- 0
Just to give some background on the situation, we live in a small community. Our youth sports association joins with several other small towns and communities within about a 25 mile radius in order to have enough teams to fill up the schedule. Each community usually fields one or two teams per age group.
In the 12U age group, our youth sports assn. has about 22 girls registered to play this year. Initially we had 17, but had a few more sign up before we started practicing.
We feel as though we need to divide them into 2 teams. Obviously, 2 teams of 11 each would be a bad idea since there are always gonna be about 2 or 3 who won't show up for a game, especially the games that are the farthest distance from us.
One suggestion is to take the 4 girls (maybe) who will pitch this year and ask them to attend every game and divide the remaining players. Of the 3 coaches, i am the only one whose DD pitches. Should we go ahead and have the other 2 coach's DDs attend in uniform as well? This would give us 15 girls for each game IF they all show up. If/when some of the girls don't show up, we'll still have 12-13 and won't have to worry about forfeiting any games. This will also ensure that each girl gets more playing time than she would on a team with 20 something girls.
This is basically the same problem we ran into last season when the school year ended. Several had quit altogether by then and many of the girls left for vacations so we ended up with 2 teams of about 8 girls.
So what we are left with is one team that is so large it is a logistical nightmare to ensure equality. Or we divide the girls evenly and risk forfeits. Or we divide them as suggested above and risk being accused of "playing favorites" by having the coaches' kids and pitchers play for both teams.
Does anybody have any ideas on how to manage this?
In the 12U age group, our youth sports assn. has about 22 girls registered to play this year. Initially we had 17, but had a few more sign up before we started practicing.
We feel as though we need to divide them into 2 teams. Obviously, 2 teams of 11 each would be a bad idea since there are always gonna be about 2 or 3 who won't show up for a game, especially the games that are the farthest distance from us.
One suggestion is to take the 4 girls (maybe) who will pitch this year and ask them to attend every game and divide the remaining players. Of the 3 coaches, i am the only one whose DD pitches. Should we go ahead and have the other 2 coach's DDs attend in uniform as well? This would give us 15 girls for each game IF they all show up. If/when some of the girls don't show up, we'll still have 12-13 and won't have to worry about forfeiting any games. This will also ensure that each girl gets more playing time than she would on a team with 20 something girls.
This is basically the same problem we ran into last season when the school year ended. Several had quit altogether by then and many of the girls left for vacations so we ended up with 2 teams of about 8 girls.
So what we are left with is one team that is so large it is a logistical nightmare to ensure equality. Or we divide the girls evenly and risk forfeits. Or we divide them as suggested above and risk being accused of "playing favorites" by having the coaches' kids and pitchers play for both teams.
Does anybody have any ideas on how to manage this?