USSSA Team Classifications

[Rick M]

I love it!
For years "A" level teams in PA and NJ would register as "B" and smack everyone around.
A lot of trophy hunters in this neck of the woods. What that left was a small list of 10-15 "A" teams who would play each other every weekend. Most figured it out and decided to play USA or PGF

I wonder if this has more to do with the change than the actual level of competition. As others have said, just because a team has a bunch of second-year players doesn't make them A-level. But from the USSSA point of view, it must be hard to hold an A-level tournament when there are only 10 teams that registered as A in the whole state. It will be interesting to see if those teams who were forced to move up continue to play USSSA.

 

[BT3100]

I wonder if this has more to do with the change than the actual level of competition. As others have said, just because a team has a bunch of second-year players doesn't make them A-level. But from the USSSA point of view, it must be hard to hold an A-level tournament when there are only 10 teams that registered as A in the whole state. It will be interesting to see if those teams who were forced to move up continue to play USSSA.

We stopped playing USSSA once we got to 14U. In our area there are no real "A" teams playing 14U USSSA. I just took a look at the list of 14UA team on USSSA site and most are not very good at all.
"A" teams in our area have moved on to playing PGF qualifiers, memorial day madness in Chambersburg and USA qualifiers.

 

[badmonkey]

I guess I get this at 12U and 10U, but once you reach 14U, if you aren’t playing A level, why are you wasting your time and money?

Because some girls love the game, but aren't exactly D1 material?

 

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

IMO i fyou have a power ranking of 1000+ then you should definitely be moved up.

You see it in KS really bad where C/B teams sandbag pretty hard and refuse to move up. But hey, those trophies are cool

 

[Vertigo]

Just looked at USSSA of PA - if you are C you move up to B unless you are moving up an age bracket (ie 12U to 14U). Otherwise you stay at your current level. I think that is very fair. We haven’t been in USSSA tourneys for about 3 years but I’m glad to see the improvements.

 

[Strike2]

I'm not sure it makes much difference classifying "A" or "B" until you get to the end of the season with a state championship or "national". "C" teams often have their own tournaments, but I rarely see regular season tournaments broken out by "A" and "B" classifications.

 

[Rick M]

Just looked at USSSA of PA - if you are C you move up to B unless you are moving up an age bracket (ie 12U to 14U). Otherwise you stay at your current level. I think that is very fair. We haven’t been in USSSA tourneys for about 3 years but I’m glad to see the improvements.

Thanks, I'm not too familiar with the C-level teams so I wasn't able to tell if this had effected them as well.

 

[badmonkey]

IMO i fyou have a power ranking of 1000+ then you should definitely be moved up.

You see it in KS really bad where C/B teams sandbag pretty hard and refuse to move up. But hey, those trophies are cool

Saw 55mph pitching in 10C this year in KS. DD took one in her arm and went down like a sack of you know what, had a dugout full of 8 and 9 year olds crying. Moved to B, and then 12B in the Fall and haven't seen pitching like that since.

The kid is a special athlete, but the dad having her play C with that talent needs to give his head a good shake.

 

[flash277]

Just looked at the bigggest USSSA tourney we played in this year. 68 teams, 6 A teams in total between 12u, 14u, 16u, 18u.....Everyone else was registered B team. My DD been on a B team for 5 years, and we never played in a B only tourney, Some A's, very rare to see a C team (although plenty of B teams should be classified as C)

 

[Vertigo]

Here in my area we have a few teams notorious for playing B level tourneys where they dominated but were finally forced to move up to A. What they tend to do now (they are 16U) is play USSSA 18U B tourneys (competition is really not that great) or play at a nearby non-sanctioned facility that just holds Open tourneys. You’ll also see guest-players galore there. Just makes you shake your head, especially since you’ll see them post on FB how they dominated the competition.