There are many other coaches out there who very upset with my daughter's coach because he is having his team play up a division. They are 11U. For those of you who do not know softball, the divisions are 8U, 10U, 12U, 14U, 16U, and 18U. Girls can play 2 years in each division. Within each age division, there are 3 levels, A, B, and C (A being the highest, C being the level just above recreational ball). My 11-year-old is playing her first year in 12U. However, they are a very good team and do not find much competition in the 12U division. Therefore, he is registering them for a lot of 14B and 14A tournaments. They are doing well in the 14U division and getting better by playing up.
Here is the problem....there are some good 12U teams out there, but when we enter a 12A tournament there are often 12B teams that sign up and they do not give us any competition. And when you are paying $400/tournament you want to play some quality games. My daughter's coach feels that playing up is where we need to be. I totally agree with him, as do the other parents. However, there are lots of 14U coaches who do not like to get beat by a bunch of 11-year-old girls. We are beating teams of 8th and 9th graders when our girls are 5th and 6th graders. I am sure it is humiliating for some of these older teams to lose, but playing down and killing teams isn't doing us or them any good either. Our philosophy is that we would rather play up and possibly get beat by older teams, than play down and not learn anything.
What are your thoughts?
At $400 a tournament I would play up too because being older, they might have more experience that your kids can see and learn from. Just wondering, can the teams sign up to play any age catagory?
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how the adults in the crowd including the coaches fight so hard for their kids isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI made a post on here but it is now gone> I hope that I am doing this right?
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