Having a good softball birthday ? Does it make a difference ?

[wpaguy]

a quick question for a topic . At what point does having a good softball birth day stop being an advantage ? When my daughter was in 10u a couple years ago , the teams that a high % of girls in 5th grade or that tuned 11 say in Jan-March seemed to be the elite teams . Fast forward a couple years , the top teams in 12u seemed to have more 7th graders , that tuned 13. So my question is at what point does having a good softball birth date stop being an advantage? I was looking up info on this years 12u pgf nationals found this link below. most of the players to watch have 2021 grad years ? just guessing most of these 7th graders turned 13 early 2016...My daughters team had 1/2 6th graders and 7th graders, they were a pretty good team winning 80% of there games. We had 4 girls with late November and December birth dates ...Just cant help to wonder what they would have done next year if they were born 4-6 weeks later ????


http://www.flosoftball.com/article/...utm_content=Video&utm_term=PGFHypeVideo72016:

 

[mike_dyer]

Q: Having a good softball birthday ? Does it make a difference ?

A: No.

 

[backstop09]

At 10U, maybe. But after that, no.

 

[Fairman]

Actually it does and there is nothing you can do about it.

My older daughter has a February birthday and was able to play 18u TB after her freshman year of college.
My younger daughter has a late November Birthday and was not able to play 18U after her freshman year.
This meant that my younger dd was physically and mentally a year older when she was pitching to college players than her sister.
Her strength, stamina, skill, mental makeup and competition had a full year extra of maturity before she played her first collegiate game.
It made a tremendous difference in her success.

Malcolm Gladwell in one of his books tracks successful hockey players and finds a tremendous number of their birthdays grouped in the fall for this very reason.

 

[coachjwb]

Fairman ... you make a great point that's kind of the other side of this original post. I think the original post was more about what difference does it make in travel ball. I think that fact that my DD had an October birthday meant she was playing higher aged (i.e., 16U) travel ball sooner than most of her high school teammates, which gave her an advantage in HS ball. There were times she missed out during the summer playing with some of her school friends, but in the end we both thought she benefitted from that experience.

 

[wpaguy]

Fairman, my DD also has a late November birthday. I think by playing in 14u and 16u by 9th grade will help her in the long run. But still makes me wonder sometime what if ?

 

[Fairman]

Your dd isn't giving up as much to play-up as someone that was born in February. It is hard to explain but school age and softball age are not the same thing. It is certainly easier for a late birthday to play up than an earlier one; the jump just isn't as big. She will get entire extra season of maturity (usually as a stud) on any team that she plays on. She will be more physically advanced and ahead of players in her own grade. If she can handle it then by all means play-up.

(Jeff that advantage continues on through College.)

 

[wpaguy]

I think I follow you , but just in case I'm not choosing my words right . See scenario below :


Player 1 has a 11-15-2003 Birthday , will be in 7th grade and has to play 13/14U next season.
Player 2 has a 1/15-2004 Birthday , will be in 7th grade but will still play u12 next season

Player 1 is a Young 13u player and player 2 is a old u12 player for the 2017 season

In my opinion , player 1 will benefit more down the road come 9th grade / High school ...But Player 2 has a better shot of being a Stud in say 10u and 12u and playing on more elite teams ? Only exception to this would be if you areon a very good team that plays up anyway , so really I guess there would be no advantage

 

[FastBat]

My dd has a November birthday. One day I watched her 12u game, on the next door field, there was a 10u game being played with her classmates. I noticed the 10u game was much slower paced, while her classmates were considered the "studs" (so a benefit was her classmates may play with more confidence?), I was amazed she was able to hang with the bigger girls and had already made the transition to the 12 inch ball from 40 feet. It then occurred to me, she will be in HS when the 12u players will be Juniors and she will be a freshmen. But, the 10u players would be freshman and those girls would truly be her competition. I can't help but think that college coaches have put that together too. But, I have always been told, "your dd has a bad softball birthday," I guess in 10u and perhaps to 10u coaches, but there seem to be more benefits as they get older.

 

[FastBat]

Player 1 has a 11-15-2003 Birthday, will be in 7th grade and has to play 13/14U next season.
Only exception to this would be if you are on a very good team that plays up anyway, so really I guess there would be no advantage

I will add, if player 1 is on a very good team that plays up, the benefits are still great. They just have to continue to remain confident.

My 11 year old/going into 6th grade, pitched against a couple of 14u teams the other night. When we got to our car, she asked, "Did I do good?" I said "Yes, of course. Why?" She said, "They hit me." I said, "those girls are in eighth and ninth grade (possible starting 10th grade), you are just starting MS, you're fine!"

My point is, mentally it is tough for kids to play up, if she was still playing 10u with her classmates, she would feel like she was a stud. Maybe, it's best this way. But, I like the playing up regardless of birth year, IDK? I guess, I will eventually find out, if playing up is a good thing.

 

[alborules]

My dd has a December 2001 birthday and has played with one of the best 2000 teams in Ohio since she was 11. Half the team is 2 grades ahead and the remainder 1 grade ahead. It took her that first season to catch up with the skills of her teammates, but now nobody would ever know. She has always been a very good athlete, so she was challenged and stepped up to meet that challenge.

In this case, her birthday means 3 things to us; 2 good and 1 bad: 1 - she has way more experience in top competition than nearly all of the in going HS freshmen in our area; 2 - she is getting looks from college coaches sooner than most other girls her age; 3 - she may have to find another travel team in the next year or two as her teammates leave for college and her travel coach drops down to take another group of 12u's.

I have another daughter that has a late November birthday. She is not the driven athlete that her 2001 sister is. I simply move her down in competition to see if she's a late bloomer. She can still play softball where she has fun and develops. She doesn't even need to be an athlete if she decides she wants to do other things.

It's not the birthday...it's the what the athlete has inside. IMHO

Allan Abel

 

[wpaguy]

My dd has a December 2001 birthday and has played with one of the best 2000 teams in Ohio since she was 11. Half the team is 2 grades ahead and the remainder 1 grade ahead. It took her that first season to catch up with the skills of her teammates, but now nobody would ever know. She has always been a very good athlete, so she was challenged and stepped up to meet that challenge.

In this case, her birthday means 3 things to us; 2 good and 1 bad: 1 - she has way more experience in top competition than nearly all of the in going HS freshmen in our area; 2 - she is getting looks from college coaches sooner than most other girls her age; 3 - she may have to find another travel team in the next year or two as her teammates leave for college and her travel coach drops down to take another group of 12u's.

I have another daughter that has a late November birthday. She is not the driven athlete that her 2001 sister is. I simply move her down in competition to see if she's a late bloomer. She can still play softball where she has fun and develops. She doesn't even need to be an athlete if she decides she wants to do other things.

It's not the birthday...it's the what the athlete has inside. IMHO

Allan Abel

Well said . Playing tougher competition will only make the better in the long run. Also your comment about getting looks earlier from college coaches is a big plus. In fact my DD went to a D 2 camp this past spring , head coach was quite surprised she was only in 6th grade. Several of the older girls kept asking what HS team she played for her ...That gave her a big boost in confidence

 

[coachjwb]

(Jeff that advantage continues on through College.)

My DD played in college 4 years and did well, but I don't think she had an advantage since she had not played travel ball on an A level team ... which I guess is a good add ... you can't control when you were born, but you can control what travel teams you play on and how hard you work on your game!

 

[FastBat]

My dd has a December 2001 birthday and has played with one of the best 2000 teams in Ohio since she was 11...

What about socially? Was she able to make friends with teammates and enjoy playing up socially?

 

[CARDS]

The only disadvantage for my DD was she was born Dec. 22nd so she got screwed with people wrapping christmas gifts in birthday paper...
Over the years I have seen a ton of younger kids play up a year sometimes two and pass in skill their older teammates so I think age is just a number not an indicator of talent.

In our case mine literally grew up on a ball field playing with girls a few years older than her. She started playing t-ball at 3, slowpitch at 6 fastpitch at 9 and by 12 she was playing vs. Varsity HS girls and it was off from there.

 

[coachjwb]

Jen ... good question about the social aspect of playing with older girls. I think for the most part that there should not be an issue if players are playing with girls that are within 1 year of their birth year. There can be exceptions to this, as you keep in mind that the 1 birth year could mean 2 school years, and this is definitely something that parents should keep in mind re: girls actually playing up a year ... in this case, there could be 3 grades different. Of course this happens in high school when freshmen often play with seniors.

While someone 3 grades younger (at whatever age) may have the skills to compete at this level and earn the respect of teammates, that doesn't mean that she will feel comfortable socially or, unfortunately, that she might not find herself hearing a conversation she's not ready for. When my DD was 14, she played one year for a local 18U travel team and while she got through the summer OK without being scarred or anything, I know she found herself hearing some conversations that made her pretty uncomfortable ... though this could have been much worse if that locally based team was travelling and staying places overnight. Part of the reason we did it is that we knew and trusted the coaches very well, and most of the team was comprised of players who would be her high school teammates that coming school year.

 

[alborules]

What about socially? Was she able to make friends with teammates and enjoy playing up socially?

She was reserved for a month or 2 because she was actually 10 in September of 2012 when the team started practicing and most of the girls were already 12. That was the most difficult time for her and our family, as we didn't know if it would work out ok. I mean she still believed in Santa and thought a "period" finished a sentence. Everyone on the team treated her fine and would routinely forget that she was so young. On the field everyone saw that she worked her tail off and wasn't to far behind them in talent, just behind in size and strength. By Christmas of that year, she was routinely texting all of her teammates as they were her friends...she got a phone on her 11th birthday. By the summer of 2013 when we were at ASA/USA 12u nationals in Chattanooga, we were trying to pry her away from her friends/teammates so we could do family excursions.
My dd had no problem with the social aspect of playing with older girls. I don't know if that is normal or just the way it worked out in this case.
The pictures below are of 12u ASA/USA and 14u ASA Eastern Nationals.