Playing up (School Ball) ???????

[Cannonball]

As an aside, and I don't know any of you or those HS programs. In the conference that I have coached in for the last few decades, multiple D-I pitchers have come from the conference. Another few will graduate either this year or next. Our out-of-conference schedule has our players playing against multiple other D-I pitching recruits. Per defensive and offensive production, we have exceptional players throughout our conference. I'd suggest that the HS coaching in our area is above par though there are some unqualified coaches. There are a couple of posters here that can verify or disagree with these assessments.

Practice, at least in the program I work with, can be intense. It also has fun built into it. For example, we have a scavenger hunt at the St. Louis Zoo each year. The coaches make up whatever clues or information the players have to find. Prom is a big thing in our program and so each year the girls get together at the Prom to take a team photo. IOWs, there are a lot of good things happening.

Still, if your experiences are so bad, you as a parent have to worry about injury and poor reps. HS ball should be a positive experience both in development and competition.

 

[kibadbo]

Are there competitive JV conferences? My kid plays against schools that are 2500+ kids and nobody can field a half decent JV team.

 

[angispeds]

Why so many game suspensions? Weather?

Yeah we’ve had the worse season of weather in her 4 years. We’ve lost 6 games to weather in one way or another. Just crazy town.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[JoeBob]

DD's plans next year are to spend the high school season doing extra conditioning and to take extra fielding and hitting lessons, and her travel team works out twice a month for dark season. Her TB coaches told me they like the idea of her taking some time off so she'll be ready to go for the late spring and summer.

I think if our DD decides to take the year off next year this is probably what we would do as well.

 

[JoeBob]

HS ball should be a positive experience both in development and competition.

The competition locally isn't bad. There is nothing really positive about the HS experience in our district. The coaches remind me of the little league coaches of the 90's mean for the sake of being mean but not really teaching anything. The ONLY positive thing our DD has come away with is how to work through adversity. The problem is instead of teaching or correcting the girls they just yell or have them sit the bench when they make a mistake. Well except for the older girls, if they make a mistake they keep playing.

 

[Greatdaytobeawildcat]

As our second year of HS winds down, it’s definitely a mixed bag.

Jamming in 20 regular season games in 5.5 weeks is a grind. If you have a team where significant percentage of the roster has to double roster with JV, it’s borderline insanity. Fortunately grades didn’t suffer, but mental state definitely did.

Half of our games were against college commit pitchers, half our games were against essentially 9 girls plucked from the cafeteria that morning. There’s also a weird in-between category where the pitcher is a D1 commit, but the other 8 girls are below average, and you get an extra inning 1-0 game.

New coach this year – much better about emptying the bench in blowouts / potential blowouts, not obsessed with padding stats for all-conference players, and giving P2 and P3 starts against weak teams. Willing to shake up lineup, but definitely some questionable strategies (bunt, steal decisions, etc.). No real “coaching” i.e. development of players, but I don’t really expect that out of high school.

No reliable stat keeping.

If I were king of our state board, I’d cut the regular season games to 15. I’d remove the 12 after 5 mercy rule (which leads to just insanely long 20 (plus) to nothing games) and shrink it to 15 after 3, 10 after 4.

Huge class of girls coming up from 8th grade will alleviate the JV double roster situation next year, so should be much better from that perspective.

 

[NJZoo]

Are there competitive JV conferences? My kid plays against schools that are 2500+ kids and nobody can field a half decent JV team.

One of the top schools in our state has a powerhouse JV team because the varsity coach only takes 2-3 Freshman and Sophmores onto the varsity team. So the JV team is stacked and mercy every team they play - they would prob be over .500 against a varsity schedule.

But they are the exception. Most JV teams I have seen would be dominated by a 12B team. Missed pop ups, watching the ball roll by, I even saw a girl throw a ball from the outfield underhand. Then again, I have also seen some very bad varsity play. I think the better 12A teams we've played would beat 75% of the varsity teams we play.