[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by Atocep

Out of curiosity, what age group?

I've gone through it all as my son came up through the local rec T-ball league into Pony, into select, and then into national level travel ball. I went from parent/assistant coach to coaching, to coaching and being the vice president of our Pony League, to coaching a select team, to saying "screw it" it's time for someone else to coach my kid. This is my son's senior year and this summer will be my 5th summer as a parent only. I've been asked multiple times about a return to coaching and I have absolutely zero interest in ever doing so.

By far the worst age group, from my experience is the 8-10 range. For 90% of these parents there's no convincing them that their kid isn't the next best thing because X select team offered their child a spot. What they don't realize is that select team needs someone that's going to pay their player fee without challenging the core talent for playing time. The biggest parent red flag in this age group is parents that bring their mitt out to the first practice and are throwing with their kid before that first practice. Make mental note of these parents. There's more than a 90% chance they're going to be a pain in the ass.

10-12 is much of the same, but not as bad. This is the age group where those that are good enough have moved on to select and those pain in the ass parents that can afford it have been sold on taking the 13th roster spot on a select team and become someone else's problem.

Your average select program is still a nightmare with many of the same issues. It wasn't until my son was on a nationally ranked travel team that most of the politics and BS was gone. The kids are hand selected with no tryout and everyone is good enough to play and therefore everyone plays. I believe last year's team had 1 problem parent and they're not back this year. At that level it doesn't matter how good your kid is, if you rock the boat too much they'll find someone else.

In all, I think I've seen just about everything there is to see. I've seen the disorganized board that I volunteered to join, I've seen the shady coaches, I've seen the teams that try to stack rosters and then take those players to select, I've seen the nightmare parents.

We moved into a relatively exclusive upper-middle class neighborhood when my son was in the 8th grade and I watched him get cut from the 8th grade team because he was an outsider. High school has been a bit better, but not much. He hit nearly .600 with a couple of homers and averaged over an extra base hit per game as a sophomore on JV and didn't get a Varsity AB for a team that was struggle to score runs. Last year as a Junior he started the year hitting cleanup and got a hit in each of the first 5 games before being benched for no reason until the last week of the regular season. As it stands he has about 30 varsity plate appearances but because of his time on the nationally ranked travel team he's been fortunate enough to receive a scholarship to continue playing in college.

Youth sports sucks at all levels. The youngest levels are the worst, but anyone that tells you that politics don't exist at the high school level because those coaches are paid to win and can be fired are full of shit.

It's 10U

We have a weird dynamic in here. There was a guy at 11U ahead of me who is addicted to the baseball field. Everyone bowed to him which is what the last 10U AB coach did and while the team lost (no big deal to me) he also got too many emails of bad feedback. When we interviewed for a new AB coach this fall even the guy's asst. coach, during his interview threw the AB coach under the bus. That asst is now my son's head coach for the B team. The AB coach is the one who's now pulling strings and conspiring on a REC team in my division I'm commissioner of. The Addict melted down this spring after a histroy of mini meltdowns. This spring, he disappeared with the player evals while everyone needed them to process the team selections, then he didnt show for his rec draft where he is a coach as required and his answer to texts chasing him down was, "I was busy." So they took all responsibility away from him other than his AB team and they're going to show him the door at the end of the season.

Mind you the coach I brought back to interview for the AB job that he got at 10U is one of the best coaches in the area. He is a great coach and connects with kids. The problem is he's a bit of a hothead with Umps AND he doesn't put up with other coaches garbage (like I saw time and again) and he calls people out. So he once got into a heated argument with the commissioner of the position I'm now in and left the league because at that time that commissioner hadn't exposed himself to the board and they believed his BS. The first thing I did, day 1 was call that coach and beg him to come back and that things would be different. Almost within 10 minutes of me calling him, the previous commissioner called me to throw his support to me and let me know that he's here to help me any way he can. Oh, and one thing to never ever do is bring back that coach that left. Ha.

To the personal story, Aiden went out to the B team practice and had the practice of his life. Not an A team like practice BUT showed the coaches that he could play on that team or at least be there to step in if a kid gets sick etc. He did it all right even his attitude was great. Afterward, the asst I know complimented Aiden's play with a He did great and the coaches were overwhelmingly effusive about his play at their coach's meeting after practice. The HC is very good. Very good and while he has orbited the bad guys the last few years you can tell he was around them because he had to because his son is very good and he's a very good coach. He's no-nonsense. Yes Sir no, sir. While he has a chip on his shoulder because his son was left off A team by one spot, he's going to really help the B team a lot my son on it or not.

It just sucks that there's so much politicking and conspiring going on behind the scenes that over the last 3-4 years has hurt the league and the reputation of the league suffered. Now we're building it back and adding that coach was a huge boon. This coach is a boon. We've added to the rep by boxing in the bad apple and I feel like it's turning around. I just wished I'd known what was actually happening 4 years ago but I was so naive. I just didnt know that this would go on in rec baseball.