8U Playing Time

[tim_s]

run, don't walk, away from this team

 

[dothekindthing]

I am totally with @Sonerai on this. I recommend 8U/10U Allstars in the summer while doing Rec league in season. Also, playing other sports during those seasons as well. TB at the younger ages are a recipe for burnout for families and the kids, not to mention inexperienced coaches that think they are coaching an 18U Gold team.

I remember parents on DD's 18U team were burned out and they were ready for it to be over. These were families started young and only did softball. DD played all of the in season sports into HS. She would say, I can't wait for Softball to start up. Distance makes the heart grow fonder.

The thinks they are coaching 18u is exactly where we are.

Lots of loudly yelling at girls but the instruction is always “figure it out” “fix it” “do it again and you are going to run” with very little actual instruction.

The practices consist of two coaches daughters and two other infielders taking infield while they use all of the other girls for baserunning for 20-30 minutes at a time. Just constantly running the bases from home and getting in line and doing it again. 90 plus degree weather. We sat thru 47 minutes (yes we timed it) of the coach hitting ground balls to her daughter and the other coaches daughter while they flipped the ball to each other from 2nd and SS and made two girls be the pitcher who would then sprint to home to back up the girls throws from second to home. The pitchers finally got tired of just sprinting back and forth and started snagging some of the hits to 2nd and SS and the coach said to stop trying to catch the balls and to let them go thru. prior to this those two girls (coaches kids) were playing first and third and our defensive strategy was built around them for those positions…we spent practices where infield would field a ball and regardless of where any runners were the girls were instructed to always throw to first and then first would throw to third. The coaches would tell the infield to always throw to first so a baserunner would run to second or third in front of the fielder…force outs on bases….throw to first!!!! We could not understand it until they moved their daughters to 2nd and SS and the focus became getting these outs at 2nd only. If the outfield isn’t running the bases they are playing left or right field and sprinting to back up throws to third and first only. Right field is told to run in and back up throws from left field to second base instead of the first base player. The head coach has done zero work with outfield…often giving that to assistant who throws tennis balls in the air and the girls catch them with barehands…this is done in the corner of the outfield (not even in actual positions)- no work on throwing in runner situations, etc.