Rec league competitive guidelines?

[RADcatcher]

Let's call it like it is
Rec ball created the *beginning of the who's the better player selection processes by having teams like all stars and select.
Setting a standard early on of the competitive march for a title/ label.

 

[AnonymousTroublemaker]

Travel ball is a HUGE audience & market.
This is why it exists and has torn apart City Leagues.

Market... It makes money. I don't know exactly how much isn't coming from family of players. Audience? Please... what percent of the audience do you think isn't either direct family or possibly a scout?
Either way my ascertainment of why rec ball is declined is different. It's because these things that are happening and allowed in rec are anti-competitive. These things happen in younger age brackets, people sour on it, they feel obligated to join a travel team. If you fix it then people don't feel obligated to move to travel. That's why I'm asking the question. Any solutions?

 

[RADcatcher]

Market... It makes money. I don't know exactly how much isn't coming from family of players. Audience? Please... what percent of the audience do you think isn't either direct family or possibly a scout?
Either way my ascertainment of why rec ball is declined is different. It's because these things that are happening and allowed in rec are anti-competitive. These things happen in younger age brackets, people sour on it, they feel obligated to join a travel team. If you fix it then people don't feel obligated to move to travel. That's why I'm asking the question. Any solutions?

Wouldn't ignor the amount of people that are involved with travel ball and the massive amount of viewers watching college ball now. But you can if you want.

Either apply or ignore the competitive nature of people is up to you. These are the reasons why things have taken the direction of softball it has gone.

Possibly you can appreciate that at least in travel ball there are all different levels of softball that people can participate in.


Specifically about City leagues I know people move on from them because they do not like all the controlling factors that are involved with them. People like the freedom to be able to do what they want with their teams in travel ball. Like it or lump it is the truth.

Glad there are people that take interest in helping rec ball. But the probability is that one plan for rec ball will not fit for everybody.

 

[AnonymousTroublemaker]

Wouldn't ignor the amount of people that are involved with travel ball and the massive amount of viewers watching college ball now. But you can if you want.

You can't just lump in the college audience with the travel ball audience. It's not the same.
I also don't think looking to improve rec ball ignores the competitive nature of people. If done properly, it should fuel it. It's about making it more competitive, not less.
Anyways, it seems you're just here to embrace things as they are and not offer solutions. Good luck with all that.

 

[The Man In Blue]

I forgot to actually tell you what we did to try to keep things even in rec ... Mind you, our system was not perfect and there are changes I would have made had I stayed around.

1.) NO pre-made teams were allowed. I hated turning kids away, but over the years I had multiple teams contact me about playing in our league "so they could practice for travel ball next year." Nope.

2.) Teams were re-drafted every year.

3.) The coach received his daughter on his team and could name two assistant coaches, whose daughters would also be on the team. We had to add a provision that the assistants had to attend a minimum number of games. If they missed too many, their daughter could not play for that head coach next year (and could get moved to another team in season).

4.) Sisters were placed together (if in the same age group). Any other special requests for "paired players" had to be approved by the Board (e.g., cousins or neighbors who needed to carpool).

5.) Our drafts were blind drafts. This is something I would change. Back in the good old days, this was fine and typically worked out. Towards the end, it wasn't working out so well. The kids of the "competitive" coaches would have already played basketball or soccer or something together, so they already knew the athletic kids.

6.) Late registrations were "backfilled" in draft order.

Of course, with any system you start to have people trying to game it. The assistant coaches were the one that was big when I took over. There was not a number limit and no attendance requirement. Teams would have "seven" ACs, six of whom would never show up. We also saw coaches telling players they would let them know when to register late, so they could skip the draft and be placed on a certain team. If we found out that was happening, we would ban the player from that team and they would go to the next one.

Another big change I made was bringing in a pre-season pitching clinic that was available to every team. After the draft, we told coaches how many spots they had (minimum of four) and they could send whoever they wanted. We tried the totally open format (which I liked), but realized we had to balance it by teams. Some coaches told all their players, some told none of their players. Again, we had to control it centrally.

@RADcatcher , I think you make a great point about the freedom coaches get with travel ball. That also goes back to the base point I have made in the past: is it about the kids or the coach? The coaches I saw leave rec and go to travel were NOT done so for the kids. Every time the coach took his whole rec team to get their arses stomped and girls ended up quitting. When my daughter made the jump to travel, we told her she had to do it on her own. She was playing travel while I still ran rec for a short time, but the two things stayed distinctly separate.

The piece we never accomplished was what we working to build: a two-tiered system. Rec games and all-star/travel/elite/whatever you want to call it that would give more of that freedom. We recognized that (back then) both markets existed and believed it could be done. We got tired of fighting the egos on both sides and gave up though.

 

[RADcatcher]

You can't just lump in the college audience with the travel ball audience. It's not the same.

A large portion of the college audience is the travel ball audience and participants so I added it.

I also don't think looking to improve rec ball ignores the competitive nature of people. If done properly, it should fuel it. It's about making it more competitive, not less.

Develop the players better

Taking a look at why people leave rec ball can offer you perspective on how to improve rec ball. From these reasons,

Definitely think the Rec season is so short that it's hard for people to do anything constructive developing players.
People are not making a long-term commitment.
While other people are going to travel making longer term commitments.
That separates 2 groups of people you're dealing with.

Perhaps the solution lies in creating a longer season for rec ball so people are actually putting in time to develop and then compete against each other

Since rec ball has such a short season maybe they should have an
*Developmental only season
where they don't play games just have good developmental practices.
That might sound peculiar but at the same time it could create better players if they start that at the younger ages. Removes the competitive 'we have to win mentality' at least at beginner levels. Teach the game.

 

[schwabach]

My town - population around 40K - has a rec program that works well for grades 2 or 3 through 8. I suppose there are around 400 kids at each grade level. Overall the rec program gets about 350 kids. Each year, we hold tryouts. The tryouts are to assess skill levels - everybody is makes a team. All of the coaches observe the tryouts and submit ratings which are then pooled. After results are consolidated, we hold a draft and we end up with, theoretically, balanced teams. It's not perfect because there are always a couple of players head and shoulders above the rest, but it works pretty well. The important thing is that everybody understands that this is to introduce girls to softball and that parent coaches to try to keep their Jenny Finch fantasies in check.

I think the important thing is for parent coaches to not lose sight of the goal of developing softball players as opposed to creating teams that can slaughter the competition.

We also have a town travel team made up of the best rec players.

Over time, the girls who like/are good at softball tend to find private instructors and may join a travel team. Come 9th grade, rec ends. The better players play for the high school at the rest give up the sport.

 

[marriard]

I am wondering what sort of guidelines other towns/leagues have to prevent team stacking for rec ball. I read a couple of other threads and see that it's a fairly common problem. I would like to hear what you have seen implemented that has worked (as well as can be).
We are in a multi-town rec league. What we've seen is towns essentially create an all star team with two other teams who's best player is worse than the primary team's worst player. It's frustrating because we destroy these other teams, neither teams involved in these games are having much fun. Then, conversely we can also get destroyed by the all star teams, again, not much fun for either team in non-competitive games.
The league has rules against this practice such as travel ball player/involvement limits and requiring travel ball players to be split evenly. It seems to not really be enforced... adults want their kids to have rec ball trophies.
I have a couple thoughts that I want to bounce off the forum to see how feasible you think they are. Or, if you have things you have done/seen done with success or tweaks you would recommend. Our area now has low participation rates for older girls because of this and other things (not rotating, forcing poorer batters to bunt/slap instead of developing them, etc.). Maybe it's a pipe-dream but I would love to see larger agencies (ISAA NSA) recommend reform around these things.
1. Create a point system based upon previous year stats and have roughly equal points among a towns players. I think with Game Changer frequently used it should be possible to look at batting stats like slugging, OBP, errors, ERA etc. from the previous season to divy up girls.
2. Force mid-season trades based on records (I imagine granting 4 players protection but allowing you to pull other girls like when pro teams with expansion drafts while sending some girls back).
3. Banning any towns that have allowed obvious stacking from tournaments.
4. limit of one bunt in fair play per girl per game
5. Require travel girls to play one outfield inning per game
I'd love to hear feedback and ideas. Thanks everyone. (This is my first post but I've read the forum all the time. The people here are great. I know the focus is mostly on travel but poor rec ball is possibly one thing holding the sport back).

Is this one league where there is rules across the league, or are you just playing other towns because you don't have the numbers to have your own rec league division? Because in the second scenario, there is very little you can do except to just not play games against towns who stack teams and just arrange more games against closer competition.

 

[BucketDud]

Another thought about the appeal of travel ball over rec ball. In all the suggestions and scenarios above it is about making the teams relatively even. And that is generally accomplished by drafting. But then the player (and parents) has no choice in the quality or type of coach they get.

One of the best things about travel ball is ability to pick a coach that fits what you believe will help your child develop best. Not just for the sport, but for life in some ways. Every kid is different and certain personalities/styles work better for them. And that may change as they get older.

I would bet everyone here at some point benefitted from great youth coach growing up, but maybe also had 1 or 2 that didn't help you progress or worse made you leave that sport behind. With rec ball that is more luck of the draw.

 

[uncdrew]

How far are these towns apart? Is it possible to do a skills assessment/draft for the whole league? Our 10U division had about 12 teams, 12U 8 teams and 14U 2 teams-we did a Coop with another league and schools that had MS teams. But we always did a draft to spread out the talent.

Coaches kids were slotted based on skills assessment by the other coaches.

Yup.

We do a skills assessment, including pitchers and catchers. Then divvy out the girls, make sure the pitching/catching is as fair as possible. We stopped honoring the "these girls have to carpool together" requests, as they were wildly abused (sadly).