Life is all about and full of people wanting to win easy than lose tough.
Totally classless sandbagging
- Thread starter dbronstein
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- Jun 12, 2015
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From the other team's perspective I really don't get it. I don't understand wanting to play in a situation like that. Our old team did that at a low level tournament last year because the coach didn't like a coach of one of the other teams and wanted to show him up. We swept through scoring something like 56 runs and allowing 6. It felt...gross. My DD's BFF's team was playing there and we stomped them, 18-0. It felt pretty terrible. We should never have been there. To me (also to my DD), it is not a good feeling. She told us afterwards that she never wanted to play a tournament like that again. We got the cheap piece of plastic but it wasn't a good win. Not sure what their girls get out of it, when they do this.
Now that we switched teams, and our entire team is first year 10U and much less advanced, from that perspective, I say bring it. We mostly play high level tourneys and get our butts whooped but man, they sure are improving quickly. When you play teams that are more experienced than you a lot, you grow in leaps and bounds. But I also get that a lot of kids and parents don't care about that, they just want to play a game with teams roughly equal to them and have fun. That's why overall, even though we don't mind playing tough teams ourselves, I don't think it's right for more advanced teams to intentionally sign up for tournaments they know they'll win easily. Just doesn't seem right to me.
Now that we switched teams, and our entire team is first year 10U and much less advanced, from that perspective, I say bring it. We mostly play high level tourneys and get our butts whooped but man, they sure are improving quickly. When you play teams that are more experienced than you a lot, you grow in leaps and bounds. But I also get that a lot of kids and parents don't care about that, they just want to play a game with teams roughly equal to them and have fun. That's why overall, even though we don't mind playing tough teams ourselves, I don't think it's right for more advanced teams to intentionally sign up for tournaments they know they'll win easily. Just doesn't seem right to me.
Thanks. Makes sense. Just wondered if league play was a requirement. Then, I'd go easy on them. But if there are other practical avenues to be 'eligible,' then yeah, not classy.
Until the tourneys start changing their entry... this will ALWAYS go on. As long as parents rate teams not by the development of the girls, but in the hardware they win even if they win garbage tourneys 2 levels below where they should be.... this will go on...
I always want my kid to be challenged with like competition... win or lose. Going and stomping out some team that had no chance is a waste of my time.
In Ca we have western B nationals... A teams will change their schedule to be eligible for early B tourneys to go kill rec all star teams, and get a bid to nationals...then go, and get RAILED by the so cal teams...whats the point?
I always want my kid to be challenged with like competition... win or lose. Going and stomping out some team that had no chance is a waste of my time.
In Ca we have western B nationals... A teams will change their schedule to be eligible for early B tourneys to go kill rec all star teams, and get a bid to nationals...then go, and get RAILED by the so cal teams...whats the point?
Agree with your post, although on the subject of 'B' national championships, they don't work. Except that they can be a lot of fun, so they are worthwhile. But there is no way to establish a true national baseline for what a B team is. What is a B team? Unless it's some geographical limitation, I don't know how to define it. There's probably never been a big national B tournament ever run where the best few teams weren't defined as sandbaggers by most of the teams entered.
- Aug 12, 2014
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Here's the update. There are two other tball teams in the league for the same reason. They divided the league into upper and lower divisions, and our coach chose the upper division, because the lower division has teams where half the players have little or no experience so he wanted to play with better teams. He didn't realize that three of the five teams in the division would be tball teams. The other team is right at our level - a good rec team. We're 0-6-1 so far, but we're getting a lot better. Our girls have finally caught on to all the "sneaky stuff" the tball teams do - trying to take second on a walk, stealing home on the throw back to the pitcher, etc. and we're playing the same game now. We still can't hit the tball pitchers very well.
We finally played DD's former team for the first time tonight. As usual, we had one bad inning but otherwise held our own and lost 8-0. DD pitched the last inning and only gave up 1 run. She struck out one of her former teammates so she was pretty pumped about that. She reached on a dropped third strike in her only AB.
The league is running a midseason tournament this weekend, only one of the tball teams is playing. There are a few teams from the lower division, so hopefully we can get a couple of wins and give the girls some confidence.
We finally played DD's former team for the first time tonight. As usual, we had one bad inning but otherwise held our own and lost 8-0. DD pitched the last inning and only gave up 1 run. She struck out one of her former teammates so she was pretty pumped about that. She reached on a dropped third strike in her only AB.
The league is running a midseason tournament this weekend, only one of the tball teams is playing. There are a few teams from the lower division, so hopefully we can get a couple of wins and give the girls some confidence.
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