First of all let me start by saying that I enjoy reading the posts here very much. It is humbling to see the wealth of experience and knowledge reflected here.
My daughter turned 8 in April and this is her first summer in travel ball, she is on basically a high end recreational team as opposed to a private travel team. (if "private" is an incorrect designator for the travel teams reflected here somebody please correct me)
We played in the Lou and Shorty tournament in Dayton and got a true look at what travel teams are really made of, and then we played in the Marion Diamond Classic and fared really well - quite an accomplishment since we had to defeat a couple of very well established and talented travel teams to win that honor.
in both of those tournaments the opposing coaches and the kids conducted themselves with class and decorum at all times.
This weekend we played at a purely "High End Rec" travel tournament (I won't name names but suffice to say they have been around for a while ) and did not fare as well.
But here is the crux of my question about sportsmanship and etiquette:
- almost without fail all of the opposing players when our girls were up at the plate would cat call with very organized chants - to the point of shouting - including ones to clearly disrupt us (I suppose that's the point right?) In some cases even the coaches who were coaching up their outfield would lead the chants in question.
- Additionally one of the opposing players parents would stand behind the backstop trying to coach up their catcher and make comments intended to throw off our batters.
In contrast our kids would chant from the dugout to pump up our batters, but other than generally cheering for each other and trying to encourage each other they were not doing anything to try to affect the other team by way of taunting.
Our players were thrown off, our coaches were annoyed but they took it in stride and the parents of our kids were pretty annoyed as well. But at the end of the game one of our coaches told our kids what great sports they were by respecting each other and respecting their opponent and not allowing ourselves to be taken down to a level where we felt compelled that anything other than our play should do the talking.
Is this the way things are moving forward? Like I said this is all new to me. Maybe I need to develop a thicker skin if this is what things will look like in the future? I hope that this is an outlier, like I said we have also been involved in two amazing tournaments before this one. But I am curious as to what the collective wisdom on this board has to say about their impressions of what I experienced as well as reasonable expectations in terms of sportsmanship going forward.
Sorry for the extra long post but I wanted to introduce myself and put everything about my experience this weekend into context.
Thanks in advance for your replies,
Joe
My daughter turned 8 in April and this is her first summer in travel ball, she is on basically a high end recreational team as opposed to a private travel team. (if "private" is an incorrect designator for the travel teams reflected here somebody please correct me)
We played in the Lou and Shorty tournament in Dayton and got a true look at what travel teams are really made of, and then we played in the Marion Diamond Classic and fared really well - quite an accomplishment since we had to defeat a couple of very well established and talented travel teams to win that honor.
in both of those tournaments the opposing coaches and the kids conducted themselves with class and decorum at all times.
This weekend we played at a purely "High End Rec" travel tournament (I won't name names but suffice to say they have been around for a while ) and did not fare as well.
But here is the crux of my question about sportsmanship and etiquette:
- almost without fail all of the opposing players when our girls were up at the plate would cat call with very organized chants - to the point of shouting - including ones to clearly disrupt us (I suppose that's the point right?) In some cases even the coaches who were coaching up their outfield would lead the chants in question.
- Additionally one of the opposing players parents would stand behind the backstop trying to coach up their catcher and make comments intended to throw off our batters.
In contrast our kids would chant from the dugout to pump up our batters, but other than generally cheering for each other and trying to encourage each other they were not doing anything to try to affect the other team by way of taunting.
Our players were thrown off, our coaches were annoyed but they took it in stride and the parents of our kids were pretty annoyed as well. But at the end of the game one of our coaches told our kids what great sports they were by respecting each other and respecting their opponent and not allowing ourselves to be taken down to a level where we felt compelled that anything other than our play should do the talking.
Is this the way things are moving forward? Like I said this is all new to me. Maybe I need to develop a thicker skin if this is what things will look like in the future? I hope that this is an outlier, like I said we have also been involved in two amazing tournaments before this one. But I am curious as to what the collective wisdom on this board has to say about their impressions of what I experienced as well as reasonable expectations in terms of sportsmanship going forward.
Sorry for the extra long post but I wanted to introduce myself and put everything about my experience this weekend into context.
Thanks in advance for your replies,
Joe
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