I'd love to share my DD's story but to keep it short when she was 12 years old they never let her pitch. Would tell her "we'll get ya in soon" Soon never happened. That dismissiveness built a fire in her that could never be extinguished.
Tonight her team sits at 15-1 and takes on the #1 Longhorns and she may get a shot in the circle. I can honestly say without a shred of doubt that if DD was given shots to pitch at 12's by that coach that she may never have built that desire to prove everyone wrong. She tells the young girls she works with that at 12U she was given a box of darkness and later learned that that too was a gift. Gifts come in many packages. Sometimes it takes years to see that.
And that involved a whole lotta playing time to get there. Practice only gets you so far in terms of "getting better".