Tournament Game Scheduling; VENT!

[Rambler34]

We played in a 3-day tournament this weekend (16U). Our Saturday pool game schedule was reasonable; games at 9:00, 12:30, 4:00 (one game break in between). Came in second in our pool and had our first game Sunday at 10:00. These were seven-inning bracket games. We won our first game and the girls were on fire! Because we won, we had to play again immediately (12:00). Girls had a 10-minute break maximum with barely enough time to go to the bathroom, much less quickly eat a snack. Most didn't even do that (mine didn't because she is a catcher and was warming up the pitcher for the next game). Girls played pretty tight for the first few innings and then things got away from them and we got run-ruled. If we had won, we would have had a break, but since we lost, we had to play again at 2:00. Girls leaked oil the whole game and had zero energy. They were exhausted and hot (did I mention it was 95 degrees?) and just fell apart. We were eliminated from the tournament.

The families had an entire barbecue cookout ready to go, but we had no time to eat. I think that the scheduling for this tournament was crazy. College players don't even play three seven-inning games in a row with no break. We were almost destined to be eliminated based upon the schedule we drew. 16 out of 26 teams in the tournament were eliminated on Sunday. Why not stretch the games out a bit if you've got three days? Or not play full seven-inning games with that many teams in the hunt? Especially given the forecast for brutally hot weather?

Just venting. Our girls are not robots and they need time to cool down, nourish themselves and rest. Please take note, tournament directors!

Last year at TC Nationals in Atlanta we were stuck playing four games back to back. We did it to ourselves by losing to a team we had no business losing to in our first bracket game. Mid-July Atlanta heat plus 7 innings games with no breaks are rough. We survived the first three including one that went extra innings but ran out of gas in the second inning of the last game. To make matter worse our #1 pitcher shut down in the first game with a sore forearm and our #2 had left for the day because her grandfather passed. Our #3 threw 18 straight amazing innings before she was exhausted.