My DD had to play varsity starting in 7th grade just so the school could field a team, however, it would have been better for her to play JV and get more ABs anyway. I know it helped my son in baseball.
It was great out yesterday, DDs school ended up with 23 kids registered, half are 7th and 8th graders. It appears like we won't be trying to cram the entire season into May this year.
Practices start Monday, it's going to be a rough year, but it will hopefully be the schools first year with a JV team. The highschool only has maybe 400 kids, but including 7th and 8th graders we had 24 girls show up to the interest meeting. 3 experienced travel ball girls, 2 are freshman...
Interesting, up here there are a few 3 team and 4 team tournaments that happen on friday night and saturday. Never full days off, just early release depending on how far they have to travel.
If my daughter could show a reasonable ability to take care of them, I'd go with 100%. Instead she gets knock off pit vipers from amazon that run $25-$30.
100% ~ $150
Oakley ~ $200
Pit Viper ~ $100
goodr ~ $50