Coaching and Youth Sports

Had I been behind the plate, it would have been. Sadly, one of the kids couldn't hit that.

Rainouts have been killing us and they've had to play a bunch of games in a condensed time frame. There no other option. It was two of the weaker teams and they didn't have much pitching to start with. Just an all around awful scenario.

 

it absolutely is. Walk after walk after walk. And some coaches will tell a kid to take a strike because a 2nd or 3rd one isn’t coming. Stay machine pitch imo and work on the swing, contact and fielding with more balls in play.

 

Just remember to enjoy it fellas. This is my 3rd and last one and one day it just smacks you.

 

A hit is an unexpected pleasure

 

the answer is “developmental strike zone” meaning anything a kid can hit is a strike. They’ll start telling a kid to swing then.

 

Time limit on this age is 90 minutes, and can't start a new inning after 85 minutes. A kid hit a tee ball home run in the bottom of the 2nd to reach the run limit or it would have been a 2 inning game.

 

which can be a deterrent for some kids. It was the last year playing for my son and several of his friends. He would swing at anything trying to play ball after sitting in the field for so long with no action.

 

I am a big believer of an expanded zone at that age. Otherwise you are asking for too much trouble.

Our 9-10 softball league has a rule where after 3 walks in an inning you revert to coach pitch rules. It helps a lot.

I kept trying to push for ages 9-12 to have a majors division, a high minors and a low minors. But it never went anywhere, so I finally gave up.

I thought the year I was over baseball was the best year for the quality of the game at kid pitch levels. Maybe I'm biased. But too many didn't like it "because that's not how we've done things" and reverted back. Now all of the top talent left again to play travel because it pissed people off and it's pretty terrible at the 9-12 age group as a whole. As much as I hated my son didn't play this year, having to be there and watch the results of everything falling apart would have probably killed me. Texted a friend after the games last night and told him that the top 6 teams from our son's 9 year old year would have run ruled either of the top 2 teams (they played the late game). No one on that field would have come close to touching my #1 from that year, and probably not my #2.

 

That is pure gold.

 

Seems like that's the strike zone in half the major league games.

 

If both kids can't throw as long as its not hopping in the dirt, I'd call it a strike. Don't want to miss Grey's Anatomy because its 31-31 bottom of the 2nd.

 

We have:
Majors
AAA - 11s who didn't make majors and 10s
AA - 10s and 9s
A - 9s and 8s

 

So as a league we have minimum play rules for the AA division (both sitting and minimum infield rules). One manager who has won 1 game all season 4 games ago decided to just start ignoring the rules and playing all his best kids in the infield and not sitting his best kids at all. Took a game or two to catch on because when you are beating people you don't really notice. Played him last night and he said he got a waiver from the board to do this. I'm on the board and told him this didn't happen. He then swears one kid has adhd and can't play in the infield (i had a kid with adhd in the fall and i played him and it was fine). The 3rd inning comes around and the kids have to play in the infield and he doesn't do it and i force him to do it. After the game the wife screams at me for 10 minutes for "taking the fun out of baseball" and being a "bad mentor." I'm umpiring his first playoff game on Sat and I am directed to eject him immediately if he doesn't follow the rules. will be fun.

 

That's more or less the structure I wanted to use.

 

It works nicely because the level of play increases as they age and generally the person that signs their kid up for little league the first time doesn't wait until they are 11 (though it happens). we also let kids play up one year in age if they are studs. They can't play down more than 1 year in age.

 

Ours is -

1. Majors (10-12)
2. Minors (9, 10s, 11s not drafted into majors)
3. Coach pitch (7-8)
4. Tee ball (5-6)
5. Wee Ball (4)

I would like to cut a couple of teams from majors and then have a high majors and low majors. Low majors would play with the rules I mentioned earlier.

 

we still lose lots of kids to travel. little league is always going to have the kids who stink and have the lower level of competition and lack of leadoffs and all the ridiculous rules and the really aggressive parents aren't going to go for that. for the coach pitch division are the kids pitching and coaches finishing or it all machine pitch? we do kid pitch at 8 with cp after they walk only the first 6 games. One of the pony leagues here does cp half the innings and full kid pitch the other half for the 8s which makes sense to me. our 9 year olds can throw strikes so it's not as big of an issue. hard to imagine the 9s playing with 11 year olds and getting the proper reps though. for fall ball we combine the 8s and 9s (and some 10s) and invariably by the end only the 9s are pitching because well they are the ones with the experience and the best pitchers by and large.

 

Brentwood V Ravenwood next Saturday for state title in lg school public.

 

My 7 year old got player of the game last night, he hit a double and nearly killed the first baseman on his 2nd at bat. He flips the ball to right field nearly every time. He threw two runners out from centerfield too.

He hasn't quit bragging and told the girl giving out the "player of the game" ticket he's done better in other games

 

"How YOU doin?" About sum it up?