Travel Ball Question - I need advice, PLEASE HELP!

[NorthMS]

Put your DD on an established TB team this year. Don't try to start one. With your lack of experience in TB and the girls lack of experience in fastpitch, the odds are extremely slim that it will go as you plan.

One pitcher is not enough. Say your DD does what she says and becomes a good pitcher. What about your #2 and #3 pitchers? Who will catch? You need at least 2 catchers.

Good luck to her and do get her in TB if she has the drive you mentioned.

 

[texas4life]

Yes you are a little crazy but you have to be to run a travel ball team. If you have the support of the players and parents I say go for it. The sooner the change to fast pitcher the better for all the girls. It will not be easy and the best way to get the girls use to it is to throw them into it. I would try to find other fast pitch teams in your area and ask the, if they would like to scrimmage so your girls can get some real life experience on the field of what they are coming up against.

 

[GoCaboNow]

DD sounds fairly similar to your situation. She has a late August bday. Has played a few years of, frankly, pretty bad rec teams. She actually had a hitch in her throwing motion that when she fielded a ball she would come up and wait to make sure the player on base was ready, AND to determine WHO was on base so she knew how soft to throw it...Last fall, she had just turned nine when a competing league we play against invited her to join their team for 10u fall ball, mostly comprised of ten year olds that played 10u/AAA in the spring. She LOVED the faster nature of the game. Stealing, better live pitching and much more competitive games. It took her a while to adjust to live pitching, over machine pitch, as she wanted to swing at EVERYTHING.

Our team was not very good but they were competitve and the kids really enjoyed softball at this level. Fall ball was 4 double headers on every Sunday in September. Just enough to expose her to the game, but not so much to beat her down for her first participation at competitive ball.

Coach ended up using her a lot for pitching. She was not fast at all. But, her 25 mile per hour, beginning level step and push style, put the ball around the plate a lot compared to our other faster, but much more wild, pitchers we had. She knew she cheated death getting out of the season without getting pounded. but it did giver her the incentive to really work on her pitching over the winter and go from an extremely slow beginning pitcher to a extremely fast beginning pitcher.

That exposure gave her a taste of what she needed to work on to be a player at this level. Now, she is much better off because of it.

 

[sluggers]

I gotta go with NorthMS on this. Find an established team for her to play on. Learn how the whole TB thing works, and then reconsider next year.

Your DD sounds like she will love playing TB. Several of the other girls on the team will hate it. TB is not for everyone.

You are going to have some kids (and parents) who will sign up for the team without really understanding the commitment. When it finally dawns on them what travel softball is, their interest level will decline, and you could be in a lurch.

E.g., your team will lose a lot of games. Your DD probably won't care...my DD#1 didn't care (she wanted to win, but she wasn't going to sit around and cry about losing games. She loved playing.).

But, their are some parents and kids who will get tired of it, and then whine about the team and softball.

 

[JAD]

Our 8U REC leagues are coach pitch or a hybrid kid/coach pitch, so it is essentially slow pitch. 10U TB is when FP really starts, so the sooner you can get your DD started on pitching lessons the better. As far as the team getting stomped into a mud hole....just prepare the parents for the worse and hope for the best. There are some tournaments specifically designated as C-level or REC All-Stars. Those should offer games against teams at a similar level. I was also a big fan of tournaments that had run limits per inning for the younger age groups, and a couple of sanctions let us use 4 outfielders at 10U. Run limits are great for developing pitchers without turning games into one inning 20+ run walk-a-thons.

 

[amandablockson]

Thank you all for the advice! I should probably have mentioned that my son also plays TB, so we know that whole gig, my main concern was the age/talent gap.


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[amandablockson]

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