Lenski, I will agree with you that the quality of play accross the board must be higher at HS division in SOGFSA, than at 12U and 14U, since there are so fewer teams thus it is not quite as watered down. I know the Anderson-based SOGFSA HS teams anyway are based mostly of Turpin and Anderson girls that mostly play on their respective HS teams. But, our 14U-B team creamed SOGFSA HS teams in scrimmages. At 14U in SOGFSA, we had umpiress no-show in 3 of our 14 games. Not good. We had to pay player's dads to ump games, just to get through the season at times. At Pastime and Rivershore, the umps are there no matter what.
The other downsides to playing SOGFSA HS instead of select league play such as what you see at Pastime or Rivershore, is that the SOGFSA HS teams I am aware of are always having to call 14U players to see if they can fill in for games b/c many of the girls either have jobs, or would rather spend time with their boyfriends, or just don't feel like playing on a given day... so they no-show. My DD was called almost every week to fill in on the Anderson-based HS teams, and she was in 7th grade at the time. In select ball, I at least know we will be playing an opponent that can field a legit team.
Lastly, the rec league fields we played on were horrible, as they were often local rec parks that had no dedicated maintennace crew during potentially bad weather. Playing at Pastime or Rivershore, you KNOW where your next game is, b/c it's the same locale every week, as opposed to trying to find a new field locale several times per week in rec ball. We did get to play on some HS fields in rec ball, but that was usually only b/c we re-scheduled rain dates on these fields instead of the crummy rec fields that were originally scheduled. One good example is Sycamore HS... we were originally scheduled to play at a local park, but the game was cancelled by the Umpire at the bequest of the local Parks director b/c there was a CHANCE of rain that day, and he couldn't find anyone to drag the field if it did rain. It sprinkled for about 10 minutes that day.. yeah, our parents were not happy. So I recommended to the opposing coach that he request the use of Sycamore HS's field, and he happily worked it out, and we played the next day in a little rain with no issues. Sorry to be so long-winded, but I just found SOGFSA too hard to swallow after awhile. Just my 2cents.
Happy New Year!
