Competitive?

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MD - I agree. A and B is probably all that is needed. I think in most cases the coach could decide which category his team should be in. A little peer presure from OFC if someone plays below level. Also lets a brand new team start as a B if necessary and advance to an A during the season. I don't see how you could actually enforce a rule. I guess you could put in suggested guidelines, for example if you won X% of your games last year, you should be in A. That way if you dominated the B division, you would be recommended to advance to the A level.

However, if the TD's designated their tournaments themselves - in their title - That would go a long way towards keeping A's out of the B's. What top 10 team wants to brag about their class B championship?

 

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I think that the so called watered down talent beeing spred over more teams trend is ending. Seems the better players are looking to play together and the cream will rise.

 

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Pardon me for being another newbie horning in -- my dd just made her first 12U team at tryouts last month, and we haven't even gone through a tournament season -- but just from reading posts here at OFC, it seems travel ball is nothing but the wild west where anything goes.
How can anyone expect to create order out of all this chaos? Just about anything can happen when the sport is operating in a vacuum -- aside from the OFC there seems to be little as far as it comes to organization. There's all these different alphabets USSSSA (is that enough S's?), ASA, NSA, and goodness knows how many others competing with each other, mostly it sounds like to shake-down travel teams for fees for poorly-run weekend tournaments.
Has a model, like the college baseball's Cape Cod League, ever been tried? They are select teams of college baseball stars formed into teams and play regular schedules.
The talk about rating different teams is a great idea, but what happens when teams break up and re-form in another guise? Do these new (old) teams get ranked at the bottom for the new year?
What would be nice would be to have somewhat stable teams that could be ranked, and then following a season, could move up or down toi the different classifications based on their record.
Uhh, sorry, I hope somebody's still awake after this diatribe.

 

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I was just wondering if I am being selfish for taking my dd from a team of her friends and putting her on a top notch team I just wanted the best for her and now her old team and coaches are upset. I didn't do it to make anyone mad I just wanted her to take advantage of a great opportunity.

 

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If she is happy with the move to a more competitive team, that is really important. She will make friends there as well. We did the same thing this year for the first time and it was by our dd's choice. We will drive a lot farther to practice, but I think it is for the best.

 

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Will put my two cents in on this one.

ASA does classify "per written code" the difference between "A" & "B". Now having said that - it is up to the local commissioners to classify teams. The "B" program is supposed to be for the teams made up of all recreational players from within one local recreation league. The "A" program can be any team that has tryouts and pulls players from anywhere.

Going back to a previous post with 'ranking' teams from the past season's tournament results is tricky. You have the issue of how many of those same girls are on the 2009 team that played with the 2008 team. Penalize the new 2009 team for the success the '08 team had with different players on the new roster?

One solution and it would be a paperwork nightmare is to 'classify' players much like the adult program does, but that still would be tricky. Let's say Team A played and won 90% of the tournaments entered in 2008 - in 2009 all those players would then be classed at the "A" level. Limitations on the lower levels (B, C & D) would be that no more than X # of those players could compete with a new team without bumping that team to a higher classification. So if 4 of those now classed "A" players went to another team, that team would automatically be classed as an "A" team.

LILron - you are correct that the number of teams at the "competitive" level has diluted the talent base. That has been going on since teams started traveling. Keeping a group of girls together is a rare occurrance in today's game. "The grass is greener on the other side."
As a commissioner, I have not kept stats on the girls moving from team to team or if they stay with a program from year to year.

JMHumbleO
Patty

 

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I really dont think it would be that hard if you have the rescources to do it
you have the teams classify themselves ,A,B,Rec All Star . From there put a list of the teams from there classification ,TD rates the tournament and can allow or dis-allow teams according to list,from the list the winners of the class are listed Rec All star if you win 3 sanctioned tourny's they move to B, at the B if they win 3 santioned tourny's move to A and A stay in A's what that would do is keep the ones sand bagging from continuing and makes them move up most tournament you dont have to enter right away as well as the fact that there are hundreds of touny's out there and keeps the competition constant.Looks like a project for Bear;&

 

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sweetcheeks - We went through sort of same thing a couple years ago. Yes, some of the parents felt 'abandoned' but most were very supportive. When DD played for her school team in the spring she became a leader partly becasue the increase in her skills and game mangement earned the respect of her teammates. You want the best for your daughter and if she wants the same then it will all work out, I'm sure. If her old team has hard feelings then are those the players you want to be with anyway? If you want more info on our experience, feel free to contact me.