Number of players on a team

[FP26]

Our goal most years was 12. That was for 12u, 14u, and 16u. It really didn't become a problem until 16u when other commitments started to take them away from tournaments certain weekends. We found ourselves getting pick up players to cover certain weekends. Luckily we had a group of players that was willing to play for us whenever we needed help.

When we moved to 18u we lucked into a really nice situation. We had 2 girls that decided they did not want to play travel any more, but were still planning to play high school ball. They were willing to play for us any time we needed help. We kept those two on our roster and had 13 full time players, for a total of 15. Whenever we were short, we called one of the 2 high school players to fill in. We never showed up at a tournament with more than 12, but also didn't have to stress over finding pick up players. They were built in.

If any of you ever get involved with 23u, make sure you have a big roster. We had a roster of 20 and still had trouble fielding a team certain weekends. Things get very interesting when you have college graduates with full time jobs as part of your team... Or active college students with summer internships... Saturdays were especially challenging because several of our players had jobs that required they worked Saturdays. So we would often have a few different players between Saturday and Sunday. 23u was a lot of fun, but was quite challenging from an administrative perspective.

 

[_MIA_]

The bigger the roster, the more parents I have to try and stay clear of..

 

[salderman#19]

A lot of this argument is influenced by the level of team you are talking about. If you are on a team that is traveling to a different state every weekend, you're much more likely to run into conflicts, and need larger rosters. If it's the more typical B or C team, a smaller roster will work, especially because of the shorter and/or no travel. Maybe Player A can't be there for the Saturday part of tournament, but is good for Friday and Sunday. Extreme example, we had a player last season that had a family conflict for a morning pool play game, but made the afternoon game. Obviously, that doesn't work if the tournament is a plane flight away.

Our team will travel out of state approximately once a month. We're based in North Carolina and we plan on traveling to Atlanta a few times, Nashville a few times, Richmond, and Alabama. Like I said, it's once a month and the other weekends will be played in North and South Carolina as long as we find good tournaments. Because we have sent out "travel weekends" to all the families, hopefully conflicts in attending will be minimal.