7-8 year old Softball

[66 mustang]

Ok, so here is kind of the story. Norton had 20-21 girls out for the 7-8 softball team. last year I heard that they had about 18 girls out and had one team. This year they decided to break them up into 2 teams. This is my daughters first year playing softball after 3 years of t-ball. So they split up the team's and we go through practice back in late winter and early spring. knowing what I knew of a few other girls I had my suspicions but I was kind of in a wait and see phase. I didn't know a lot about the girls on our team. Come first game and we are playing the other team from our school and sure enough what I was afraid of was pretty much reality. The other coach pretty much got to pick his team and the deck was stacked into their favor most all the time. We got beat. One girl is a star in the making. she could play on the 9-10 team right now. So we go on through our season, playing other teams from other schools. After the 2nd game I had to pull out some tricks. my daughter was losing confidence. not hitting good at all. I go get her my "lucky" wrist band I used my senior year of playing football. told her it would bring her good luck and she started hitting good but we were still Getting beat and beat bad. We were in a tournement. you get 2 games guaranteed then any loss after the first 2 games and you are out. We go down and play our seeding game and we lose. We are winless at this point. they have seeding games again the next day then we go back Saturday to start. We get this team and we are playing a good game. We are down 3-2 going into the 4th inning. We hold and take to the plate. we load the bases and every time we make contact we take right down 3rd base line or to the pitcher and we get tagged out at home. still down 3-2 heading into the 5th (last) inning (limited to an hour per game)Again we hold them to no runs and we take the plate and load the bases. again we take every ball down the 3rd base line or to the pitcher and we get out at home. The best game we played all year and we cant get a run in 2 inning with bases loaded. This puts us into the losers bracket. Don't want to even talk about the way that game went. so we get eliminated in our 3rd game. By the way the other 7-8 team from our school is undefeated at this point but lose their first game in the tourney.

So we continue to go out and play and lose. the kids are expecting to lose. we lose any pep in our step and any confidence we had. I had decided to step away from coaching before the beginning of the season. just thought my daughter may listen to someone else more than me and I was twice as hard on her as any other kid we had. so I sit back but told the coach if they get into a tight spot and they need help I'd be glad to help. so pretty much I've coached about as much as I've watched. So earlier this week we get to play the other team from our school again. Go out and after 1/2 and inning we are winning 1-0. We end the inning down 5-1. there is a limit of 5 runs per inning. We finished that game on the bitter end of a 17-2 loss. Today we are back to playing other schools. One of my most vivid memories of my first 2 years of playing football (that is american football for ya'll to know) was the coaches wife would have watermellon every thursday after our lite / walk-though practice to get ready for firday night's game. coach left after my freshman year. So I've kind of made it a tradition with my daughter that once a year we bring watermelon for the team after one of our game's. Today was that day. went out yesterday and picked it out, sliced it and wraped it and put it on ice in the cooler. Get to the field early and we are short on coaches so I'm out coaching. Game starts about 30 min's late because the other team is running late. We get to start the game and after the first inning it is tied 1-1. after 2 innings we are down 3-1. Guess what, our kids are having fun in the dugout, chearing and chanting. We explode and go on to win our first game of the year 11-7. I'm so happy for our girls. they have had the deck stacked against them this year and they played their hearts today for a much needed win. their attitude totaly changed today and it was wonderful to watch the girls have fun playing a sport instead of moping around asking "why do we always lose". today it was my little girl leading the chant's and cheers in the dugout of "I. I Believe. I believe that we can win"

 

Congrats Girls!!!

[LV KIX]

I think every town/city is the same way. There is always a coach who does whatever (no matter how unethical) it takes to put together a dominate team. They don't care about teaching the kids or making sure the kids learn anything as long as they win. I've been pretty luck with my son and baseball. He has become a pretty good player over the years and has even been moved up to a higher league than his age. Lucky for him that every other year the same coach picks him.. not just because he is a good player, but because he is a TEAM player. This coach teaches TEAM and drafts kids based on a TEAM aspect instead of the best 12 athletes he can. My son plays 2nd base most of the time but never has a problem going into the outfield if asked. He has even pitched in a couple games. He doesn't care if he starts or comes in off the bench. Most of the kids on the team are the same way... because that is how they have been coached.

 

Other coaches who draft based on pure talent have a collection of players who argue and bicker while on the field. Some even pout about changing positions. They mumble under their breath if they get pulled off the pitcher's mound. These are the same coaches who argue with umps and even yell at spectators. I've even seen one coach tell a batter to swing his bat backward and hit the catcher with the bat. It is a shame that kids can't just go out and have fun because some "adult" needs a second chance at their failed sports fantasy through a team of little ball players.

 

My son has been on mostly winning teams but he has tasted defeat. If coached right these teams with less talent actually get more out of the sport than the other teams. This year my son's baseball team is is 12-1 and three games up on the 2nd place team. They lost their last game on Friday night and not one kid had his head down. The talked about why they lost and what they could have done better. They decided they should have a practice and that they needed to work on double plays. This morning 10 out of the 11 kids on his team were out on the field at 9:00 a.m. practicing double plays.

 

---

 

My son was on a terrible basketball team this past winter.... The thing is, he improved more than ever and had more fun playing than any other season. In the long run your daughter will benefit more from the team she is on than the ones who cruise through the season barely losing a game.

 

 

Losing is a great lesson at a young age... everyone is going to lose at some point in their lives. If they learn at a young age that losing isn't the end of the world it will benefit them in the long run. It will prepare them with how to handle a situation when things don't go your way. Just remember how great your daughter felt after the win. If you win every game and expect to win every game you lose that feeling.

 

 

+ Good luck with the rest of the season... and keep us posted.

[metaltrekman]

My boys both played soccer and T-ball when they were young. We always tried to make it about having fun. They are just kids, its not really that important about winning or losing. And its the adults that make it that way. If the adults werent so worried about it the kids could care less. I can see it becoming important if it's school athletics. But little kids, no. Let them be kids. Show them winning isnt everything and what they can learn about sportsmanship from losing. Encourage them, keep them practicing and make it fun. Congrats on her win too!!

[cdjunky41]

Congrats to all your kids. It's great to see that their young lives aren't wasted playing video games...

[66 mustang]

the really great thing is that our team has 9 girls so every girl plays the whole game. so no sub's going in and out and they get max experience.

[66 mustang]

New Year, 2013 and here we are again. before the season started I again said I was done coaching. I want to watch my girl play ball and not worry about all the other kids, just sit back and enjoy how my daughter is playing. Well, from the get go when we were called by the coach (acutally the coaches wife and my first girlfriend) she was asking what size Kenzie wears. what they wore last year and asking what they should wear ths year. Then she states to tell me about the other coaches and their schedule and asked If I could help out. So this year it is full blown coaching. so far we are 3-1 and looking good. got a good test tonight before we start a tourney tomorrow night and Saturday. The coach hasn't coached softball till this year. he did do 3 years of T-ball so it has been a learning curve. I finally got him to give my girl a chance in the pitcher spot. That is the position she played all last year and she did great. only one ball got by her in the last game and we actually got 2 outs from her throwing them out at 3rd and could have 2 more. I didn't push hard for her to be in that position because I didn't want it to look like I wanted her to be in a prime spot but after watching her play there I think they all agreed it was the best we played all year in the field. We have our 3rd base covered with the right girl now. still a little shaky at 1st but hoping with tonight we make the right move. Catcher is iffy. Short Stop, I have an idea on what I want to try there and 2nd base it still iffy. our girls are really hitting great. our worst batter is batting .400.

here is a link a our scorekeeper has set up for everyone. I don't have the ID and password for the full access though but it is pretty cool. it makes a write up based on the stats he puts in.

http://www.gamechanger.io/t/summer-2013/norton-ll-7-8-yr-old-lady-raiders-517689c00c27594856a66110/news

[66 mustang]

well, tonight we had a game against probably the best team we will see outside a tournament. we got beat 0-11. their infield was just amazing. they only had a couple big hitters though. they just won a tourney last weekend so i think we held in there pretty good for 4 practices and 4 games. Talking to their coach they had like 16 practices before the season and they still practice during the season. our girls just didn't hit it good enough to get by their infield. We did get a couple over to 3rd base but couldn't push any runs in.

[66 mustang]

long 2 days. last night had to go play a "seeding game" to find out where we get put in the first Tournament we play this year. We lost and were put into the silver bracket. To be honest we should have won that game. that loss is on the coaches. we have to be more aggressive and not try to be "mr nice" at these things. We had 13 hits to their 6 but we lost 3-2. we played the 8:00pm seeding game last night which wasn't over till 9:30.

 

This moring we had our first game at 11:00am. when we got to the field I looked at how the bracket shakes out and my comments to the other coaches "we can make a lot of noise in this bracket" Well, at the day unfolded and one win turned into two wins we are in the Silver Bracket finals. a game we could have won but didn't. they make more plays in the field than we did but our team is loaded with 1st graders, 6 year olds that are playing up in age and even my 8 year old was tuckered out and just didn't play good that last game. So we finshed runner up in the silver backet and #4 in the whole tournament out of 16 teams. gotta say I'm pretty proud of the girls. I'm a bit jealous that we have to move up to the 9-10 year old group next year because this group is just so young and are going to grow so much over the next couple years.

[66 mustang]

^{Well, after 9 days between games due to weather, we play today. We go back to the team that gave us our first loss of the season 13-12. I have a feeling it won't be that close this time. Our girls are going to be too rusty I'm afraid. Over half our team are 1st graders so the team is very young and this layoff is going to really hurt.}

 

^{Oh, and the really bad part about this week, I'm on graveyard shift this week so it is no rest for me and I'm already sleepy}

[66 mustang]

couldn't be more proud of the girls. we took a 14-1 win tonight and turned 2 double plays in the process. Then it was on to Dairy Queen for an ice cream celebration.

[66 mustang]

very proud again tonight as we played the team that put the 11-0 whipping on us a couple weeks ago. We still lost but it was 12-7 plus my daughter pulled a double play by catching a pop-up and throwing the girl out as she tried to get back to first. they played really good and have improved a lot.

[66 mustang]

double header tonight. We win both, first by the score of 8-3 and the 2nd by 9-5.

[66 mustang]

had a game Wednesday night which we won 12-1. our head coach was heading over to their coach to tell him for the score but the other coach beat him to the punch and "said thanks for not running the score up. you could have scored a lot more"

 

today we had our last game of the season against the same team and beat them 8-1. the girls kind of came out flat, sleepwalking through the game but still pulled out a W.

Thanks everyone for a great season. It was fun and the team played great together for a 10-5 record and we had 8 games rained out. I think I've said before but I'm jealous because we lose 5 off of this team but half the team were 1st graders so they should be really good next year.

[66 mustang]

first day of softball camp. later in the day during pitching camp my girl was asked if she wanted to join and play ball in a travel team

[66 mustang]

getting their 2nd place medal!!!!