Well tryout season is in full force around here! Our team has 5 players who age out, 3 who left for others teams in organizations so that left us with 4. Now we're trying to rebuild our team basically from the ground up, luckily the 4 we still have are the better players from our team who have also been the most dedicated. As far as tryouts for our team, the players we have had to tryout so far are pretty much in the beginners catagory so we may be hitting a couple tryouts for other teams ourselves. In our area private teams are the stepping stone for big organizations so it gets hard for us to find good players this time of the year.
Tryout results
- Thread starter Michael N
- Start date
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I was really shocked this year in our area. The politics have just run wild and crazy. New organization popping up purposely to take a stab at another organization. Coaches taking teams from one organization to another but only letting a few kids know what was happening. We had one coach fold his team (this was after tryouts and commitments) because his daughter made a different organization. Kids were made promises and then just left hanging out to dry. Now I'm sure this happens every year to some degree, but this season, it has been epidemic around here.
My DD tried out for a team, young 18u (older 16u's) that was suppose to be "college-bound" kids. My kid is intending on playing at the next level. We've been visiting colleges, talking with coaches, and all of that. She has three college that told if she goes there, she's on the team. Cool. She had such a good tryout that parents were coming up to me talking about how she was crushing the ball, throwing hard pinpoint throws, etc. And we didn't even get a call. They put her on the lowest of the 16U teams. She was heart-broken to say the least. And then we found out there are kids on that team that aren't going to college, really?
We went to another tryout. She had an awesome tryout. Great throws, crush the ball batting, good speed. We had 3 coaches fighting to get her on their teams. An 18U and two 16U teams. The organization's president got involved. It was an extreme opposite situation from the other tryout. She picked the 16U team because the coach intends on keeping this group together through 18U which is what we were looking for. It should be a good competitive team. So mission accomplished there.
We went to another tryout between those two. But I just scratched my head in amazement at the circus going on. I really found it very disappointing with the stories I had heard about all these girls getting duped by organizations. Where's the commitment, honor, trust from the people running these things. We talk about life lessons being taught in sports but wow, really?
My DD tried out for a team, young 18u (older 16u's) that was suppose to be "college-bound" kids. My kid is intending on playing at the next level. We've been visiting colleges, talking with coaches, and all of that. She has three college that told if she goes there, she's on the team. Cool. She had such a good tryout that parents were coming up to me talking about how she was crushing the ball, throwing hard pinpoint throws, etc. And we didn't even get a call. They put her on the lowest of the 16U teams. She was heart-broken to say the least. And then we found out there are kids on that team that aren't going to college, really?
We went to another tryout. She had an awesome tryout. Great throws, crush the ball batting, good speed. We had 3 coaches fighting to get her on their teams. An 18U and two 16U teams. The organization's president got involved. It was an extreme opposite situation from the other tryout. She picked the 16U team because the coach intends on keeping this group together through 18U which is what we were looking for. It should be a good competitive team. So mission accomplished there.
We went to another tryout between those two. But I just scratched my head in amazement at the circus going on. I really found it very disappointing with the stories I had heard about all these girls getting duped by organizations. Where's the commitment, honor, trust from the people running these things. We talk about life lessons being taught in sports but wow, really?
- Nov 8, 2010
- 19
- 0
DD completed her tryouts a couple weeks ago and is eager to get the fall ball season underway with her new team. We knew well before Nationals that we would need to leave the old team (independent and not associated to an org.) once the season was over. There were issues all around that neither DD, DH nor myself wanted to continue to deal with. The coaching staff was little more than adult supervision, stats were being altered and cooked in order to paint a few players in a better light than what they deserved and when push came to shove games were lost repeatedly because of 1-2 girls.
Like some of the other posters here, we were a little disappointed with the number of available spots, so to speak. DD is moving up to 14u this year and several teams in our area have disbanded leaving a pretty big void for quality teams in that age group. I know some have disbanded because most of the girls were done with ball altogether and some because thier coaches were done with it as well. More interesting than that has been the number of whole teams that have completely jumped ship from one organization to another.
In the end DD tried out for 4 teams (2 teams in her birth year and 2 teams a year older) and got offers from 2 (one from each age group) and chose to go with a whole new to each other team under an existing organization that is made up of girls with all the same birth year so there won't be any holes to fill next year. The fact that they are all new to each other really excites me. While I know they have an up hill battle in learning about each other and gelling as team there is no bagage from last year, everyone starts fresh and everyone has to prove themselves. At this age the girls have pretty much decided to pursue softball exclusively yet still very much eager to learn. We have a pretty light fall schedule with only a couple tourneys and more focus on training and conditioning through the entire fall/winter season so that they can come out in the spring firing on all cylinders.
Like some of the other posters here, we were a little disappointed with the number of available spots, so to speak. DD is moving up to 14u this year and several teams in our area have disbanded leaving a pretty big void for quality teams in that age group. I know some have disbanded because most of the girls were done with ball altogether and some because thier coaches were done with it as well. More interesting than that has been the number of whole teams that have completely jumped ship from one organization to another.
In the end DD tried out for 4 teams (2 teams in her birth year and 2 teams a year older) and got offers from 2 (one from each age group) and chose to go with a whole new to each other team under an existing organization that is made up of girls with all the same birth year so there won't be any holes to fill next year. The fact that they are all new to each other really excites me. While I know they have an up hill battle in learning about each other and gelling as team there is no bagage from last year, everyone starts fresh and everyone has to prove themselves. At this age the girls have pretty much decided to pursue softball exclusively yet still very much eager to learn. We have a pretty light fall schedule with only a couple tourneys and more focus on training and conditioning through the entire fall/winter season so that they can come out in the spring firing on all cylinders.
