Rec Leagues Practices&Games/Week?

[stox]

Hey DFP,

I wanted to ask other members how often events (practices and games) are held for their rec softball leagues (8u or 10u)? For us, it's just one practice and one game (2 events) per week in season. Our league's all star teams are getting smoked by other leagues that do 3 events per week.

It's not only that they play more, but I have anecdotes of good players have moving to cross town leagues to seek higher levels of play.

What's crazy to me is that our baseball league is miles ahead. They actually separate each age groups into two separate leagues (top half play in one league, and bottom half play in another). Their baseball all star teams routinely win tournaments. It's night and day.

As a parent of only girls, it feels like our softball league is just an afterthought and a place for parents to park their daughters while they put the bulk of their attention on their son's development.

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[marriard]

We run perhaps the best rec league in the area. 2 scheduled 'events' as you call them... either 2 practices, 2 games or 1 practice, 1 game.
No one moves across town for better rec competition... they move to travel teams (where we also run the best travel org in the same park.)

We make our 8U/10U travel players play rec in the Jan-April season - but an age group up. So 8U travel players play 10U and so on. It makes the rec league work well and they all get to play all over the field. We don't actually do all stars

If you don't like what is happening in you rec league, get involved. These league succeed when people who care get involved.
100% they will let you be president of softball if you want it

If you are a joint baseball/softball rec org (i.e. rec is run by the same people for both which is common in Little League and Babe Ruth orgs) then softball is absolutely a second thought. Way more people care about their son in baseball. We fought to get it separated a decade ago and it was the best thing we ever did for the girls.

 

[CoachCeetar]

Hey DFP,

I wanted to ask other members how often events (practices and games) are held for their rec softball leagues (8u or 10u)? For us, it's just one practice and one game (2 events) per week in season. Our league's all star teams are getting smoked by other leagues that do 3 events per week.

It's not only that they play more, but I have anecdotes of good players have moving to cross town leagues to seek higher levels of play.

What's crazy to me is that our baseball league is miles ahead. They actually separate each age groups into two separate leagues (top half play in one league, and bottom half play in another). Their baseball all star teams routinely win tournaments. It's night and day.

As a parent of only girls, it feels like our softball league is just an afterthought and a place for parents to park their daughters while they put the bulk of their attention on their son's development.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

We're in a small town, it's struggle to field full travel teams, which are really just an extension of rec. We're the same coaches, etc.

our current plan is to practice 2x a week (this is 10u, 3rd/4th grade) from roughly next week until mid April when the season starts and we're probably going to try 1 practice, 2 games. But often rain, scheduling, crappy fields, etc will nix the practice, or have us playing 3-4 games in a week.

You gotta practice more than that though, imo. Especially early. Especially if you've got new kids. You want to get their timing set, get them all roughly at least swinging a somewhat 'normal' swing, conscious of getting the ball to first, and back to the pitcher (which means deadball in our league) Especially if they've never done kid pitch before. Getting their baseline skills up, the rust off, the instincts honed a bit..all that's gold once the game speed shows up. It also allows coaches to know who can actually hit, field, catch and at least occasionally have them in optimal positions.

We make our 8U/10U travel players play rec in the Jan-April season - but an age group up. So 8U travel players play 10U and so on. It makes the rec league work well and they all get to play all over the field. We don't actually do all stars

If you don't like what is happening in you rec league, get involved. These league succeed when people who care get involved.
100% they will let you be president of softball if you want it

I like that playing up in rec idea.

But definitely second the 'get involved' thing. Everyone's volunteers. no one knows what they're doing. (this goes for literally every sport, every town thing, girl scouts ,etc. ) There's probably like one guy that found something that worked well 20 years ago and now everyone just does that. At the very least, if they have org meetings, show up and ask "Hey, can we do this?" questions.

I've got 11 girls on my 1st/2nd "8u" team. Really all first graders. I had to beg a third parent to help coach, which is kind of the minimum for this, you need a pitcher, a catcher, and someone to make sure the on-deck hitter has her helmet on. Really just need bodies that can say "Yeah, I can be at practice and feed them balls to hit, tell them to run to first, etc. " If you've read even a thread here, you probably know more about how to hit/pitch/field than most rec coaches that are just sorta "well I watch MLB and played little league 30 years ago so..."

 

[stox]

Thanks for the replies. I'm currently coaching a team right now and don't mind getting more involved. Just wondering whether someone will scoff at the idea of practicing twice a week plus a game vs only once (rec baseball already does 3 events during the spring).

I'd like to try and level up the softball league but wonder if parents would hate being forced to send their future MLBer's little sister to an extra practice. Many families with multiple kids are already spread thin as is.

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[earlg3]

No one moves across town for better rec competition... they move to travel teams (where we also run the best travel org in the same park.)

I've seen many girls move associations within a rec league to a better team for a variety of reasons (coaching, playing time, quality of teammates). I've also seen girls move rec leagues to be able to play up, because some places forbid it regardless of skill level.

 

[CoachCeetar]

Thanks for the replies. I'm currently coaching a team right now and don't mind getting more involved. Just wondering whether someone will scoff at the idea of practicing twice a week plus a game vs only once (rec baseball already does 3 events during the spring).

I'd like to try and level up the softball league but wonder if parents would hate being forced to send their future MLBer's little sister to an extra practice. Many families with multiple kids are already spread thin as is.

Everyone's spread thin. And in my experience, everyone's playing a game of chicken with each other for scheduling "Sure, I'll get the softball schedule out as soon as I see what soccer is doing, or baseball, or cheer....as soon as the town opens the fields, etc etc"

Worry about "little sister to an extra practice" is unserious stuff. Nah, the attitude should be "we need X practices, starting Y, to get these girls to be competitive. Let their older brothers figure out a carpool to games if it conflicts" 2 isn't a lot, and being clear about schedule is everything. If kids can't make everything that's fine, but at least the option exists for them to get their reps in.

 

[Orange Socks]

Why don't you call for another practice on your own? That's what I did even if we did it at a random park with a big patch of grass. If it had a back stop, it's a bonus. We had one field practice and usually 2 games a week. Sometimes we would go 4 events a week.

 

[4Martini]

Thanks for the replies. I'm currently coaching a team right now and don't mind getting more involved. Just wondering whether someone will scoff at the idea of practicing twice a week plus a game vs only once (rec baseball already does 3 events during the spring).

I'd like to try and level up the softball league but wonder if parents would hate being forced to send their future MLBer's little sister to an extra practice. Many families with multiple kids are already spread thin as is.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

My daughter’s team added an optional 3rd event practice. It really helped the kids who wanted help. About 2/3 of the kids would show up. A lot of times it was at a random park by the coaches house because we couldn’t get fields. When it started raining it was the only practice because if the fields were playable they had make up games going on at practice times.

 

[Sweet Lou]

Back when I coached our rec league our season looked like the following -
We had 4 weeks of practice where the league gave us 1 hour of dirt time during the week and one on the weekend.
During the season there were no league scheduled practices as fields were dedicated to games.
Games were typically 1 week night and 1 saturday game a week with a total of 14 or 16 games (i forget which) plus playoffs.

What I did as a coach -
Extended the presason practices to 2 hours. We'd arrive 30 minutes before dirt time for warmups and or hitting, us our 1 hour of dirt time to work on infield, move to the open grass for the last 1/2 hour as the next team took the dirt and worked on outfield or hitting.
During the season we'd typically do 1 practice a week which would be voluntary and depending on the year and team I had we'd get roughly 5 to 10 kids depending on their level of interest in rec softball and how many wanted to play summer all-stars. That practice would "float"and could be any field we could find on a weeknight, signing up for the league's batting cage, or a Sunday practice when competition for field space was mostly non-existent.

You mostly get out of the season what you put in in rec softball.

 

[Northball]

Thanks for the replies. I'm currently coaching a team right now and don't mind getting more involved. Just wondering whether someone will scoff at the idea of practicing twice a week plus a game vs only once (rec baseball already does 3 events during the spring).

I'd like to try and level up the softball league but wonder if parents would hate being forced to send their future MLBer's little sister to an extra practice. Many families with multiple kids are already spread thin as is.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

I'd encourage you to get involved. Your place sounds like mine where there isn't a softball culture, it's just an afterthought. Someone needs to grow the culture, that's what I'm doing here. It's definitely an uphill battle with new challenges all the time, but when I compare now to what we had 5 or 6 years ago when I started helping, WOW!