Rerun, you are going to hear every excuse in the unwritten book but I'd like to share my feelings on the matter.
The main reason I would ever play an invited sub player was because I did not have 9 of my "paying to play" regular roster players expected to be in attendance. I need to explain before you judge me.
If we knew in advance that the girl/girls had a scheduling conflict and they told us they couldn't be there, leaving us short, I would go looking for whatever number of girls needed to bring our roster to 9-10.I know others will scream that playing with your softball team is the most important thing in the world. That the commitment to team supersedes anything else in life. In our rural area, the kids and families DO have a life beyond the "game" and if we are to field a team at all, we need to be mindful of it. If you believe college coaches frown on this you are extremely mistaken. They are looking at the big picture and noting that family and education trump playing softball. That's because head coaches in-particular are mentors first and understand their roll. I know this after years of being involved in the NFCA, which includes the best college and travel ball coaches in this country.
As a part of the tryout process, we ask on the player information sheet if there are any weekends the kids would be unavailable to play. Some actually know they have other commitments, even as far as a year in advance. The staff would evaluate the individual's needs and it would be considered before making her an offer to join. We were making a conscientious decision to work with her------not against her.
Players get hurt, Players quit. Players may have family emergencies. Players priorities may change over a year's time. All things we cannot predict a year in advance. You simply have to deal with it. However; if we are made aware she cannot perform for any reason which puts the staff in a position to temporarily replace her and she comes anyway, the sub will get the playing time. Getting subs, especially last minute substitutions, can be a nightmare. I am not going thru all that only to tell them the situation changed at the last minute and we don't need her. If I ask a kid to come because we need her-----she plays.
Again, I bring up my "A" list for alternative players. This list is normally comprised of players that attended tryouts but were not selected as roster players. Another reason is they may be players that were unable to play due to not being able pay the annual fee. They were never promised anything. They would be invited to attend practices and even offered a chance to attend weekend tourneys, but no promise of playing time. If invited to travel they would be assigned a uniform and offered to warm up with the girls and sit in the dugout during games. They would turn the uniform back in after the weekend. You'd be surprised how many were willing to do this without expectation, simply because we were honest and upfront with them. That gave us access to a pool of sub players in the event we needed to go fishing, pun intended. lol.
We never went fishing to recruit a player from another team. Sure, we wanted a quality player if a replacement was needed simply because we felt like we owed that to the rest of the girls. Most of the time we had that player in our back pocket from our "A" list, unless it was a specialty position such as a catcher or pitcher. Bottom line, we didn't steal players. We stayed loyal to our regulars throughout the season. We worked to set a good example and keep our moral compass focused on the ones that had been loyal to us. I have found having a team that gels together can generally outperform teams consisting of individual talent led by a staff with ulterior motives.
To summarize, there are going to be times when a sub may play instead of a regular. For us, there was always a sensible reason. If you're dealing with a staff that is picking up players and sitting "pay to play" players just to win, you really should re-evaluate the message being sent and judge that staff for their motives. They'll scream "team team team" from the top of their mountain if it fulfills their own "in the moment"agenda. A true team will win together as well as lose together. They'll still be together when it's over.
