- Dec 28, 2008
- 386
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Our girls were told to stay on base during overthrown balls or bad pitches.
Not sure how one team in your league can be loaded with travel players and others have none, but I'm guessing that your HS coach isn't threatened by travel ball teams which is why so many of the girls are playing travel ball. While many other HS coaches actually make it known that they don't want "their players" to play for another coach and they "make examples" of those that do by berating them and benching them if they make even 1 small mistake.
Why should your teams players have to accept and tolerate a lack of training and effort, or coaches getting paid for a job they really aren't equipped to perform just to put an extra check in their account, or 4 sport players "dabbling" in softball who aren't willing to even put enough work in to avoid being humiliated on the field over and over? At some point those other players have to see what softball looks like by players that "LOVE" the sport and put the work in to improve in it. I understand that not every girl and their family can commit to travel ball either due to time or finance, but there are clinics/camps year round that they could participate in if they want to improve and compete. If errors don't cost them runs, and pitches that can't even be caught don't cost them runs they won't have the incentive to work harder to avoid those things. They will just collect their letters at the end of the year, go play the next sport and come back the following year to drag the sport down again.
If the league rules don't have mercy rules and the team wants to avoid running up the score, then simply have the players step off the base while the pitcher is on the mound. Get out of the inning and then come back and attack offensively again the next inning. It's not fair to force great players to "dumb down" their game because the opposing teams can't field a team that can compete. I don't like to see teams lay down once they get on base because they won't be used to being aggressive once they get to the post season.