To coach or to join. Asking for guidance

[quandofloo]

I have posted a few things about this situation I am in with my 9 year old DD. She moves up to 10U this year and we are trying to decide how to handle TB.

I coach her travel basketball team and have coached her rec league teams. I know almost all of the families in our town with daughters that play TB. I put out word around All Star time, early June, that I would likely be starting a TB team for girls from our town this fall if there was interest. I specifically did not recruit anyone, just told some of the parents that I know. I reached out to the parents of girls that are not playing TB currently to guage interest and found that I would only have 4 or 5 girls without recruiting.

I was also asked to have my DD tryout for one of the better organizations in my area. I know the coach of our age group and his family well, I have coached his daughter a few times. It is a well run organization with a coach that I absolutely trust so we were planning to go that route.

I got a call Friday night from the dad of one of the girls that I did not reach out to. She played basketball for me last season. He asked me if I was putting a team together because his daughter and one other girl were not sure that they were going to play with their team from last year again. The team is from a community 30 minutes away, so they felt like outsiders last season. I told him that I wanted to but I didn't know if we would have the player. He and I spoke for a while and came up with a list of players to approach that could fill in a roster. With the two of them and one other that I spoke with over the weekend I would be at 8 girls before having to make calls for more.

Sunday, I spoke with the coach of the existing team's wife at my DD's pitching practice. She was as sweet as always and offered to help us get the team going if we went that route but was very clearly unhappy that we might not try out for them. I told her we would be their Saturday either way, but she was pretty clear that they wanted my DD to be there.

I really don't know which way to go with this. If I coach a team then I can keep all of my girls together and be involved with the kids that I love. If I don't coach then my DD goes to play with on of the better organizations in our area and with a coach I trust to teach her. My DD will be happy either way. She either gets to play with all of her friends and likely struggle as we learn the game or go to a competitive team that will win more with a few girls she knows.

How do you make these decisions?

 

[InsidePitch]

At 10 you have the luxury of time on your side so DD can play with her friends. I wouldn't worry too much until second year 12s or maybe even 14s as long as your daughter is getting better. A lot of 10s won't be playing by 14 and from experience, they make new friends on new teams.

 

[canyonjoe]

If you think the coaches are good, I think it's in your DD's best interest to play for someone else for some time. If you always
play for your dad, the comment will come up that you are only playing because your dad is the coach. You can always start a 12U team if that doesn't work out in the future.

 

[starsnuffer]

Your post was way too full of the word "I" for me to realistically consider you as a good candidate to coach your daughter at this point.

-W

 

[quandofloo]

Your post was way too full of the word "I" for me to realistically consider you as a good candidate to coach your daughter at this point.

-W

And yours was way too void of useful information for me to care.

 

[WaSpeed02]

Your post was way too full of the word "I" for me to realistically consider you as a good candidate to coach your daughter at this point.

-W

Funny enough, "I" tends to come up a lot in first person narratives.

Speaking of which, 99% of the time "I" love reading your posts, starsnuffer, but that was a bit too snarky for "me". Just sayin'.

 

[Easton33]

Which will benefit her more in the long run? You will probably ask yourself this same question every year until you do it. Might as well get your learning curve over and done with. Let her play with friends which will probably be her high school teammates. Good luck with your team!

 

[Jr10234]

At 10u, do it! If at 12u your team is lacking in skill, depth, development, by all means hand over the reigns; this early on in her life, if she wants to play for you and you have some softball knowledge, go for it.

 

[Sparky Guy]

And yours was way too void of useful information for me to care.

I know EXACTLY what starsnuffer meant. Reading your post it sounds like you are worried more about you being able to coach. Your own words say how great the established program is and how great the coach is. You have a perfect opportunity to put your DD in a position to advance her skills while giving you all kinds of extra time to work with her and help her. Yet you still push the idea of starting a new team with a REAL unstable foundation. Not a good way to start something new.

Not to sound snarky, but the impression resonating from the post was it was more about you wanting to coach and less about your daughter. Step back and let go. You will find out your DD can do fine under another coaches tutelage.

 

[sluggers]

I go with Sparky and Starry. The same question pops up about three or four times a year, and the guys who have been doing this for a while try to discourage a newbie from starting a TB team.

TB isn't rec ball. The time commitment by the parents of players is about 50X times more. A typical TB team will go to a tournament starting Friday evening. The tournament will end on Sunday afternoon. Basically, the entire weekend is lost, and the parents lose every weekend of June and July. Then there is a mid-week game and one or two practices. The team has to practice in the off-season. Despite what the parents tell you now, you will find that some parents will not do it.

TB is to rec ball what college basketball is to a game of horse. You have no idea what kind of skill level plays TB. In my experience (which is about 30+ years), the rec teams lose by 20 runs or so when they play a TB team. You are basically taking a bunch of rec league kids and putting them on a TB team. It isn't going to be pretty. You might not win 10 out of 60 games next summer. Quick story: I helped start what is now the largest TB organization in Illinois. We had people who had coached TB before. The first year, our 16U team did not win a game. (They do quite a bit better now...)

Finally, you didn't say anything about what you know about softball. Do you know how to pick up a softball? If your answer is, "That is a stupid question," then you don't know the game. There *IS* a specific way to pick up a softball.

In TB, everything has to be precisely done. So, a coach has to know every little intricacy of the game. Kids who played in college rarely know the intricacies of the positions they didn't play.

And, by the way, who is going to pitch?

Everyone here knows how much fun it is to coach. We all love the kids. But, loving the kids means you do what is best for the kids, not what is best for you.