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I am a father of an 11 yo who had only played rec ball up until a year ago when she tried out for a couple of select teams and was offered a position on one, I thought that was the greatest thing. After the last year I have learned several things about select softball in Tipp City Ohio, at least the 10U team my daughter played for. It's a lot of time and effort from the girls, coaches, and parents, not all girls are made to play select ball and not all people are qualified to coach it. I thought with our team having indoor practices twice a week at a batting cage / training facility we would be ready for the upcoming season, we were NOT. I thought our girls would have a good understanding of the basics and be ready for that first game, we were NOT. I thought with all the things I had read on the teams website about "in it to win it, you get out what you put in, and we require a solid commitment to our team and insist it comes before any other non-school sport". We'll let me tell you what I confirmed over the last year, TALK IS CHEAP. We started off with 3 self-proclaimed coaches, by the end of the year our "Head Coach", who by the way for anyone looking to come to this team in question is coaching the 10U team again, had missed half or more of our practices. One of the other coaches missed most of the practices and games, not to mention took his family on vacation instead of bringing his daughter to Columbus for the World Series Tourney last weekend. The third coach, even though I think several things could have been done differently throughout the season, he was dedicated to being at as almost all practices, at all games, and he was also a driving force in getting us the needed players we had to pick up so we could put a team on the field at the World Series after several other players abandoned their teammates at the biggest tourney of the year. I have watched our team suffer with not being able to hit a ball, but as other teams get to the field 60-90 mins before start time and warm up, we get there 30 mins early to stretch, pass around some, maybe take ground-balls (even ouroutfielders), and bunt, that is right, we didn't swing at anything other than maybe a hitting stick, but we bunt. The last games of the year we were putting girls places they had never played before, our girl who played 90 percent of 3rd base all year long, spent every inning she played in the outfield, we pitched girls who had never been on the rubber before, and looked like a nice dressed, expensive, over traveled, under coached, rec team. I actually wanted my daughter to play for the 12U coaches this next year, because I watched the other teams in the organization grow from game one until this past weekend, and I still want my daughter in select softball, but when I think she could have these same issues in two years when these coaches move up, NO, NO, NO. That's right, this organization has been made aware several times by myself, other parents and other coaches in the organization at different age levels, of the ongoing issues throughout the year, and yet the upper organization chooses to bring them back for the upcoming season, and my daughter could be on their team again, I have no second thoughts about walking away from this team, rec ball would be a better learning experience for my child. I am sure I could hear a thousand stories like this of almost every team out there; I just wish someone would have warned me before it was too late, but now that I have learned my lesson; I will be much more selective in our upcoming softball ventures.
