High school sb

[nixxy311]

So I get softball tweets that randomly come up under the Softball topic and one I saw yesterday was a player in TX who had a 4 HR game. So I ended up looking up her HS and found it in GC to see what the game looked like. The score was 22-0 and I guess it was called after 3 innings - her team also had 11 walks. This same team had several other blow outs. I know people have said that HS SB is just not the same level as TB but in my experience we have some really good HS teams out there. Teams rarely get blown out in our county or class. We will have teams get run ruled but I don't think I've seen anything like that score. We have players on top TB teams that we play against so it's always been fairly competitive.

Is it a state thing? Just curious why the big difference? Do a lot of TB girls not play HS? We play in the fall so it's weird to me seeing HS's playing now because this is our TB season. We have girls that play with teams out of state where they actually won't even get to play any tournaments until other girls are finished so I would think some girls want to play TB so they don't play HS?

 

[radness]

Talent level is all over the place here in California.
Some completely stacked teams play against completely beginner teams.

And not all Fields have home run fences so regardless homerun doesn't necessarily mean over the fence.

 

[Cannonball]

One reason that this can happen is conference affiliations. For example, we have a conference here that is comprised of several very high-level HS teams, and that conference has schools of 2,000 or more. That conference is a major conference in the state for basketball and football. However, in that conference, one of the schools is an inner-city school and they don't have players who play softball. Therefore, that school fields a team that gets blown out every game until they stop fielding a team. The conference my school is in doesn't have a weak link like that. One of the teams has recently won a state title but all of the conference schools are highly competitive with each other team.

 

[nixxy311]

Our school is in the top class in the state (based on school size) so we have to play top teams a lot. But there are teams in lower classes that still field really good teams. We have over 25 high schools in our county and maybe 3 of them do not field SB teams. And there is usually at least 1-2 really good TB players on each team that I know of. When we play against good TB teams I do tend to look up certain players to see what HS they go to

I did recently look at a game between a Vipers and Lady Dukes team and it was super close and 1/2 of the girls on both teams are from our county :/ Even more funny is that they had girls from the same high school playing on different teams.

 

[Cougars]

In TB, for the most part, teams are able to schedule games/tournaments against similar teams in terms of talent level. Blowouts still happen, but I'd say for the most part teams find their "level".

In HS, schools are in conferences, and there can be more "luck" in what kind of talent is on the team. In my daughters school conference, you have teams that are 100% full of TB players, and other schools where they are working hard to find enough players to have a single varsity team (no JV, freshman, etc.). Those teams wouldn't play each other in the TB world.

One extreme example I saw on another message board is a private school in Chicago. Roster has 8 Beverly Bandits on it. They walk off the bus knowing it's likely a win.

 

[Nimrod]

So I get softball tweets that randomly come up under the Softball topic and one I saw yesterday was a player in TX who had a 4 HR game. So I ended up looking up her HS and found it in GC to see what the game looked like. The score was 22-0 and I guess it was called after 3 innings - her team also had 11 walks. This same team had several other blow outs. I know people have said that HS SB is just not the same level as TB but in my experience we have some really good HS teams out there. Teams rarely get blown out in our county or class. We will have teams get run ruled but I don't think I've seen anything like that score. We have players on top TB teams that we play against so it's always been fairly competitive.

Is it a state thing? Just curious why the big difference? Do a lot of TB girls not play HS? We play in the fall so it's weird to me seeing HS's playing now because this is our TB season. We have girls that play with teams out of state where they actually won't even get to play any tournaments until other girls are finished so I would think some girls want to play TB so they don't play HS?

Below is a sampling of scores from your state on a random date last fall. It's not a state-by-state thing. These blowouts and crazy games happen all over the country. Happens in all sports. Some teams have full starting lineups of travel players; others have no travel players and some players who have hardly played softball.

Your DD likely plays for a large school in a region/conference that happens to be pretty good and balanced. Then it's up to the coach to schedule out-of-region opponents that will produce competitive games. Otherwise, you're going to have occasional mismatches.

 

[_MIA_]

In general in 2022, in the sports of baseball and softball, how good a school is going to be is highly correlated with the average income of the households which make up the school more so than school size. Basically it has become what Lacrosse was when/where I was growing up (we only saw Lacrosse players when our baseball/basketball teams would travel up to Boston to play private schools) with the difference being the poorer schools just didn't bother to play Lacrosse.

 

[nixxy311]

Below is a sampling of scores from your state on a random date last fall. It's not a state-by-state thing. These blowouts and crazy games happen all over the country. Happens in all sports. Some teams have full starting lineups of travel players; others have no travel players and some players who have hardly played softball.

Your DD likely plays for a large school in a region/conference that happens to be pretty good and balanced. Then it's up to the coach to schedule out-of-region opponents that will produce competitive games. Otherwise, you're going to have occasional mismatches.


View attachment 25292

Out of that sampling we have played 2 of those teams (the team that won) and only 3 in that sample are from our county. The Parkview/SG and CG/Mead - I didn't even think SG or Meadowcreek had teams
CG recently got moved into our region (they did a reorg this year since some new teams got moved into our class) so I'm curious how those games will go. Sadly I don't even recognize some of the other schools - except Lowndes who we'd never play in SB since they are at the bottom of the state. We do play them in FB and they are pretty good.

I guess we're lucky/unlucky enough to play in an area of the state where just a ton of good players come from.

 

[Orange Socks]

Some schools will always have a wealth of talent and others will never. Even if they are only 2 miles away from each other. I have seen several teams that had a group of talented kids and they win their district and make some noise in the playoffs. Once those kids graduate, they suck. Teams are one pitcher and a couple of key bats away from making the playoffs.

In my local school district there are 4 HS. 1 Highly Wealthy, 1 Not as wealthy, 1 very poor, 1 very mixed. Those kids that play in the rec league and make it to TB are usually attending or transferring to the wealthy schools.

 

[murphdog]

Where I am what division you are in is by school size. Most of the towns in our “conference” are small.
Total enrollment in our HS is under 500 (roughly 120 per trade) and most of the surrounding towns are similar and there is also a large amount of private high schools local enough to be choices.
DD’s freshman year there were 5 TB players, but her senior year there were 11 TB players.
Historically they are usually good in conference play but rarely go much further.
Her senior year with a full lineup of travel players they won states but haven’t even come close since.
This year they have a lot of low level TB players do it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.