- Apr 8, 2013
- 192
- 0
At 10u, I would much rather have my daughter on a team with 5 pitchers and she only gets 20%-30% of the circle time, vs a team with 2-3 and she's getting 50% of the time. Just this past fall we played in several tournaments that were 6 games in a single day and one that was 7 games over two days. We started 10u with 6 pitchers, but almost never had all 6 available at the same time due to either injury, illness or sometimes one of the pitchers just wasn't with it and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn that weekend. For spring, 2 have moved on to get more circle time and we added one more so we are now at 5. I am good with my daughter being one of five at this age.
Maybe I'm over protective, but at 9 years old I do not want my daughter throwing more than 100-120 or so pitches in a day. She gets tired and loses effectiveness, causing her mechanics to breakdown, which can lead to bad habits. And our coaches agree with this. Keep in mind she's 4'9", 70lbs. Now as she gets older, bigger, stronger - then we can talk about whether or not she is getting enough circle time. Also, none of our team's players play one position only so when the other pitchers aren't pitching they are playing in the field, so it's not like she's riding the pine if she's not in the circle. 10u is way too young to limit a girl to one position, in my opinion.
We've played in tournaments where we got knocked into the loser bracket because we ran into a stud pitcher early on, and then faced them again later in the day after several more games and easily beat the same pitcher because she was throwing her 250th pitch of the tournament by then and was just gassed. I was amazed at how many 10u teams would ride a little 9-10 year old girl for 5-6 games a day. Our area (north and central Georgia) seems to have quite a few of these teams. I think it starts with a parent who wants their kid to get more circle time so they build their own team around their precious, and struggle to get enough quality girls to complete the roster and pitching staff. These teams are never the established travel ball clubs in the area. They advertise that they need players and are going to play an "A" schedule. And when you go to their tryout they have maybe 1-2 A players show, a few Bs, and lots of Cs. We tried out for a team like this and politely declined after we were told that 8 of the 15 or so that showed for tryouts would be offered a spot on their "A" team even though there were may 2 that could play at that level. That's just my observation of the situation though, I'm sure everyone has their own opinion.
Maybe I'm over protective, but at 9 years old I do not want my daughter throwing more than 100-120 or so pitches in a day. She gets tired and loses effectiveness, causing her mechanics to breakdown, which can lead to bad habits. And our coaches agree with this. Keep in mind she's 4'9", 70lbs. Now as she gets older, bigger, stronger - then we can talk about whether or not she is getting enough circle time. Also, none of our team's players play one position only so when the other pitchers aren't pitching they are playing in the field, so it's not like she's riding the pine if she's not in the circle. 10u is way too young to limit a girl to one position, in my opinion.
We've played in tournaments where we got knocked into the loser bracket because we ran into a stud pitcher early on, and then faced them again later in the day after several more games and easily beat the same pitcher because she was throwing her 250th pitch of the tournament by then and was just gassed. I was amazed at how many 10u teams would ride a little 9-10 year old girl for 5-6 games a day. Our area (north and central Georgia) seems to have quite a few of these teams. I think it starts with a parent who wants their kid to get more circle time so they build their own team around their precious, and struggle to get enough quality girls to complete the roster and pitching staff. These teams are never the established travel ball clubs in the area. They advertise that they need players and are going to play an "A" schedule. And when you go to their tryout they have maybe 1-2 A players show, a few Bs, and lots of Cs. We tried out for a team like this and politely declined after we were told that 8 of the 15 or so that showed for tryouts would be offered a spot on their "A" team even though there were may 2 that could play at that level. That's just my observation of the situation though, I'm sure everyone has their own opinion.