I'll start with a bit of background on what went on behind the scenes before we got to our first practice. This is my first attempt at any sort of dynasty and I'm pulling a lot of this initial info from memory. So you have to bear with me here.
Here's my initial post from last year about the team that was probably made at the peak of my frustration that sheds some light on the situation our team is in heading into this season.
Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - Youth Baseball League Rant
What to do with This Team
Last season was rough. We had 1 coach with limited baseball knowledge, 1 coach with limited time, and I ended up volunteering to help out a bit and coached 3rd base. It was a completely new group of people for me so I really just kept my mouth shut and followed the script. That script led us to not winning a single game. We had one travel game that was blatantly stolen from us by the ump, but in most of the rest we weren't all that competitive and it was frustrating.
I spent most of the winter trying to decide what to do with my son and this team. I knew the coach with limited time wasn't going to be back and I doubted the coach with limited knowledge (Mark) would be back since his son didn't seem to enjoy baseball all that much. With a few months between the end of the season and when I actually started thinking about what to do with this team I started to convince myself that the talent we have isn't all that bad. We had several 8 year olds, two 9 year olds, and one 10 year old on our team. We did lose 3 to moves, but the outgoing talent wasn't all that great to be perfectly honest. So I decided I was going to coach the team.
Kaden signed up and I started looking through the roster of players that had signed up and noticed that Mark had signed his son up and had volunteered to coach again. This is a huge boost because, although he has limited baseball knowledge, he's great around the kids and does a good job of teaching the things he does know. He's just not as competitive as I am.
I started putting together the framework for our practices and hunting down videos of the things I wanted to do so that anyone that helps out with practice this year will have a visual reference for what these drills are supposed to look like. As I'm spending my evenings doing this I'm informed the other coach from last year wants to move his son to another team. That same week we had a league meeting for the coaches to go over things for the upcoming season, set up our practice schedules, go over rules changes, ect. It's also a chance for me to talk to the division director about the former coach trying to move his son off our team.
The League Meeting, My Motivation, and Filling out the Team
Before that meeting started I got some time with the division director and I was told the rules backed us up on this one as long as Mark or I don't agree to release him. If we don't his options are either sit out or he goes into the draft (at this point I'm thinking, yeah!!!! They're actually having a draft this year!!!) and the only stipulation is we can't pick him. As I'm discussing this with the division director a coach from the stacked team of 11 year olds last year started running his mouth about how it isn't fair to keep him on our team, our team is terrible, and our kids don't have the slightest idea how to play baseball. I was pissed. Regardless of how true that may or may not be it pissed me off an incredible amount to listen to it from a guy that has a team that isn't in our division and doesn't have a damn clue what's really going on. The division director told him there rules that they have to follow and points to me and tells him "this is the guy coaching them this year". His response to me was "Good luck with that". At this point I had all the motivation I needed.
I leave that meeting early to go coach my son's basketball team and I leave signing up for practices and claiming fields to Mark. I found out later that Mark signed us up for 2 practices per week (every other team signed up for 3) on a field that's mostly used by tee ball teams. I love the guy, but his lack of competitiveness shows up in so many areas it can be a little bit frustrating. I ended up sending an email to the league president to get a 3rd practice day on a much, much better field.
One important thing I found out at the meeeting was the league's runner up from last season had more or less broken up. 4 of their players moved up a divison, the rest were left without a coach, and no one was stepping up to take over the team so they disbanded. One of many idiotic rules the league has is these players, since they had played in the division last season and were left without a team, were free to join whichever team they want. 4 flocked to the Tigers; a team that already had a solid foundation of returning players. 1 went to the Blue Raiders; a team coached by the division director. One of the players that went to the Tigers (he was actually the starting pitcher in the championship game the previous season) was on Kaden's basketball team, had been on his team the previous year, and I knew his dad fairly well. I immediately went to work trying to recruit him. I sold his dad on pretty much guaranteed playing time versus going to a team that's absolutely loaded and he could help me out with coaching if he was interested. It turns out he had a full ride to play catcher in college so he'd be a huge boost to our coaching staff. He asked his son what he wanted to do and his response was "I want to play with Kaden". We had landed both a solid pitcher and a guy that can teach both pitching and catching. I was getting excited. That put us at 10 players with one in limbo. That meant I had one slot left and a draft coming up.
I spoke with the player in limbo's dad at every opportunity. Our sons play in the same basektball league and have games on the same day so I could catch him either before or after our games. I spent multple conversations explaining to him why things would be different, what my plans were, that we had added a couple of solid players that would help quite a bit, and that I was 100% convinced that this group of kids can win. A couple of days before the draft assessment was scheduled we exchanged phone numbers. The night before the assessment I called him and asked if they were leaning any particular way because with the draft coming up I'd just like to have an idea of how many players I should be looking for. He gives me the news I had been hoping for. He was going to play for us. At this point I felt like a college recruiter that had landed 5 star player the night before national signing day. Now we only needed 1 more player and we have the draft to fill that need. Or so I thought.