I'd lose it too.

Look, the future is setup and he's getting bumped, that sucks, but that's life in the travel sports circuit. You can't get too high or too low.

But

1) the kid tried out and made the team for this season, and you took their money for this season
2) while there is no guarantee of playing time, the team is the team that was setup at the outset
3) guest players should only be brought in where there is a hole/gap need for a specific game or tournament
4) There is no need to ramp the new players up in advance of the Fall season. That's what practice is for

The behavior is crap from the coach. They shouldn't be included as guest players unless there is a gap to fill. To have them show up and take reps from a kid who made the team and paid is complete crap.

There is no need to have those kids come in to finish the season because they are part of the Fall plans, it accomplishes absolutely nothing.

If there's no guarantee they'll join the club, the kid may be trying out the club, too. But if a kid has truly already joined for the next season, yes, there is no compelling need to play for a random tournament.

But that's best done at practices, etc.

Tournaments aren't where you break in and get to know if it's a fit. Way too many moving pieces.

The team normally has 12 kids. But one kid is on vacation and another is out due to injury.

But.......... the team played with 10 kids last weekend and there are only 3 games max next weekend. They should be fine with 10.

As one of the dad's just told me, if they want to bring the two guest kids because they only have 10, just in case something goes awry, great. But under no circumstances should they get more PT than the kid already on the team and that should be made clear to the new kids' parents.

They are subs for the two who are out, but are literally only subs.

We see this in soccer all the time. If people are proactive in their communication and approach, it always goes better.

Any time my daughter subs up, I have zero expectations of playing time, etc. Any minutes she gets against the older kids and with the older kids is bonus. I'd be horrified if she took minutes from a regular player or was out there more than some members of the actual team.

My son was probably 9 or 10 and we were really fed up with the coaches...we had voiced our displeasure before which of course was the kiss of death but with two tournaments remaining in the season, the coach called me and said that we weren't going to be brought back the following year. Funny thing was, that earlier that day I had an hour-long conversation with the coach of another team that sounded like a great fit (and was). My immediate reaction was that we were not going to play the final two tournaments...I wasn't going to let them hurt my son any more than they already did (two of the coaches are, and still are total dicks...the head coach was fine). The head coach understood and we tried out later that week for a budding organization that ended up 3 years later being the best team in our region and the coaches were fantastic to my son and our family even if he wasn't always the best player. He was one of the best when we joined (about a .500 team) and then we steadily got better to the point where my son was one of the weakest hitters but the coaches always told him he had a spot as long as we wanted. We eventually made the family decision to stop travel baseball but remain close with the coaches and parents.

On the topic of guest players...that's a horribly shitty thing no matter what the situation is. Sometimes, you have injuries or missing players and you have to sub in but those players NEVER should take the regular spot of someone who paid the money and put in the time. If you want to cut a kid at the end of the year, that's fine (I still don't like it) and then you can replace him with one of the guest players then. I always hated when teams would bring in ringers and it's just not fair to the everyday players...winning games just doesn't matter that much and kids will always remember these dickhead coaches.

The timing of tryouts has also always been bad...you should not have tryouts until the end of the season but too often they're earlier than they should be and then "fall ball" is a factor too. Most of the teams around here are now done by the end of June and then tryouts are after...that's been a nice change. We've had years where we play all season with people and then new players are suddenly on the team for some fall tournaments...that needs to go.

I don't agree with this process but all three of my kids played travel baseball/softball at that age and this was standard practice. There are two productive ways to handle it:

1) Keep a stiff upper lip and watch the affected kid be cast off mentally before the season is over. It sucks since you paid for an entire season but once teams decide to make a switch for the fall (which starts in 60 days) they want to move as quickly as possible. The parents need to explain to the kid that this is a life lesson in perseverance.

2) Remove your kid from the team. Ask the coach if it's ok and say you understand and want to keep a good relationship. The coach will be relieved you want to leave and say "Sure. He's a heck of a ballplayer and I wish him good luck". I'm not sure why the kid isn't guesting on the B team right now.
As far as only batting 9 players, that's very common. I was an assistant for four years for a guy who was very successful and won many tournaments. But he ALWAYS batted the full roster. I'd say he lost at least 3 championships where one of the bottom three batters failed in a key situation. In one situation the last batter was walked and immediately got picked off. Still, he never wavered. Other coaches would note (win or lose) "And you guys batted 11 players!")

This should be asked at the parents meeting at the beginning of the season. If a coach says they "may" only bat 9 on Sunday, that means they WILL and you should take it that way.

It sounds like the coach has already written this kid off and has "moved on" to these new additions. Which sucks for the kid, and is a terrible job on the coach's part. I feel bad for the kid and the parents, getting cut or demoted isn't an easy thing to deal with at any age.

My kids have played travel/club for years. The biggest thing that impacts team chemistry is expectations. What is the owner's expectation for the team? What are the coach's expectation for the team, and what are the parents/players expectations for the team. If all of those aren't aligned then there will be problems. All travel/club teams aren't created equal. There are local, state, regional, and national level teams. You need to know which one you are on, and is everyone on the same page? The tricky part is that organizations can have multiple teams at the same age level with differing levels of play and expectations. So, you may think that you are joining the USA Stars Gold, and you are really joining the USA Stars Pyrite. But, to be fair, all players aren't created equal either. A kid who was tearing it up at 9U may be struggling at 11U due to any number of factors. It's very cutthroat and organizations will do everything they can to get you to sign up, and have very little loyalty if "expectations" aren't met. At the end of the day it's a numbers game. Tournament costs X, team dues costs Y multiplied by number of players. I've seen teams with 18-20 players on the roster, with some not playing or getting 1 or 2 innings a weekend.

As always, buyer beware.

...the belief that there are kids who want to take it more seriously and that one should know what they're getting themselves into when they opt to go that route.

But playing guest players who have just parachuted in over guys who have been on the team all season in the final tournament would be a bridge too far even for me.

The batting 9 thing makes no sense at that age, I hate when tournaments allow it. If your coach does it and and the other team does not, your coach is likely an insecure asshole. The only time I'd agree with it is if you're in a big event and you know the other team is cheating - some of the top "teams" in some of these events are kids recruited from multiple clubs as all-star type teams who get their rocks off beating regular club and town travel teams 20-0.

The whole tryout thing before the season ends also sucks - we got a spring tryout invite 3 weeks into the fall season last year. Our last event had 2-3 kids who were leaving and was awkward as hell. Unfortunately it's a double edged sword - it's not fair to grant kids a place on an A team forever b/c kids develop differently, but it definitely adds pressure on the kids and parents. These transitions could absolutely be handled better though.

If you're from NJ my kid likes his program, but it seems like experiences with programs tend to really vary by age group or even team. Places like USA Prime have so many kids they can piss off a few and it's not worth a bother to them b/c they have hundreds of parents lining up to pay them $.for kids that are little league average players or worse. I have kids who I bat 10th or 11th on my 12 kid LL team paying $3k+ per year for club baseball.

coaching kids. When I was an assistant coach for a girls U14 club basketball team, we had one game all season where someone didn't play (oversight by all coaches--but mostly my oversight as I handled rotations). The coaching staff apologized in front of the team to the girl who didn't play and then to the parent. It didn't happen again all year.

At that age, winning is secondary to skill-building. A puny 11 yr old today could be a 6' stud athlete in 5 years (my son was a puny 11 yr old on a U12 team and is almost 6' now). The board should talk to the coach and get him in line or the parents should walk.

The coach is not some raging asshole. I've spoken with him when teams share the same field or hitting facility and he seems like a decent enough kid. But I think he struggles with the reality that he's coaching 11-12 year olds and not high school or college kids.

I think the part about not just pulling the kid aside and just talking to him about why they decided to make the switch rubs me the wrong way. The snide comment about the bunt when you know the kid is going to the other team also is also very dickish. But I tend to believe it's more about his inability to accept he's dealing with kids and not high school players (he's an assistant high school coach as well).

"asshole". There's a problem if someone in his late 20s doesn't understand that you shouldn't be coaching 11 yr olds like HS players. In my experience, travel teams are a combination of players who have a higher skill level than rec players (or have parents who think their kids have a higher skill level) and kids who were recruited to fill out the roster and have parents who think their kid is better than they are or have the potential to be better if they get better coaching.

In the end, it's the board and the coach who need to make an 11U team a "teach first, win second" philosophy. Part of the teaching is not only skills, but also teamwork, camraderie, etc.

First off, the current team and players are the priority. Primarily because they all committed to each other as a team and coaches and deserve the opportunity to finish the job. We always told our kids "you don't have to do it next year but you will finish what you started." Secondly, and I say this only because it's the world we live in with this stuff, but the parents of the spring team paid for this and deserve to get what they paid for. That sickens me to say and think; but a kid being victimized by the pay-for-play system should be protected by it too.

"Losing it" is never a good thing but a measured, fact-based discussion with the coach and club leaders is merited. If he sees the writing on the wall, get ahead of it.

It's a sleazy model that hurts kids. These are children - under 11 for God's sake. The Little League of America model worked in this country for 100 years for a reason and the result was a sport and players that was MUCH healthier at all levels (MLB included). Practice twice a week on some school field, play once under the lights during the week, play once on Saturday during a tripleheader where your friends from school play the next game,. hang out at the park and drink Gatorade, go the pool. Have fun and learn to play the game as part of a team.

In the "improved competitive model that costs 5 grand" the kids lose. They don't focus on fun over everything. They don't benefit from an offseason. They don't learn the value of working with teams with a range of skills. They don't learn to value competition. They often don't get to practice.

that seems to be about the age where you might have a tournament or two where you're playing 9 with re-entry rules. I wouldn't be that bothered by doing that in the championship game only if my kid had opportunities to play in earlier round games. (Doing it for the whole tournament without communicating that before parents are traveling and/or taking on expenses would be bush league.)

I think adding kids for late season tournaments is kind of part of the game at some point. That feels a little young for me, though. It's one thing to do it to account for vacation schedules and maybe someone gets some innings cut because of it. It's another to just wholly replace kids that have been playing hard all year. But conceptually I don't have a problem with a new kid who may play for you the next season play and take some innings. And if it's going to mean regulars aren't going to play, depending on the circumstances and travel involved, I can see where some communication to parents would be the right move.

Talking to the team about the fall season is inevitable. Sure it may not feel good to be that kid in that moment. But that seems like those things would naturally be discussed in those settings

The things that bother me more are the snide comments to show up a kid and not talking to the kid about the demotion. I recognize that kind of coach, and in my experience that guy isn't coaching. His primary job should be talking to the kids and teaching them how to get better and develop.

That said, my coach didn't bat the entire lineup with free substitution rules until the 15U county and city tournament and a one-off 12U post-season tournament. Even while other teams were playing 9 and even in county tournaments that we won in 14U and that we nearly won in 13U in a season where we beat every team in the league 1 or 2 times. We didn't leave the ordinary development league until 16U. He cared primarily about player development. And was excellent with the kids. We formed the core of a varsity team that lost a 2-1 game to the DII state champs in the regional finals and lost a 1-0 game to the eventual DI state champs. So it's hard to say that approached deprived us of competition needed to excel.

My brother's coach played 9 in tournaments at a younger age than I did, and he added kids late in late tournaments to build relationships for the next year. But they also dealt with vacation schedules to work around, too. And he wasn't overloading the roster to totally deprive playing time of regulars. But some kids could've had some innings cut.

My varsity high school resembled the guy you're talking about. I don't think there's a single player who improved in any aspect of his game because of anything the coach did. But he had excellent youth development feeding the high school and his brother played in the pros, so he thought he was a coaching wizard.

The head coach and I (just finished 10U) are in no real hurry to play select ball for all these reasons. We'll make the move whenever we feel it'll be better for our kids' development to improve the competition they face. And the first step would probably be to play in the Athletic league of the local developmental league that permits teams to bat 9 at a younger age that self-selects into the higher quality teams. Our team probably isn't deep enough to do that without getting creamed. At some point it'll be worth it for our kids to do that anyway to improve the competition they face. But they're still young to suck the joy out of playing ball.

11U might be the age where development takes precedent over winning but I also understand that there is a business side to this and these guys want to win tournaments, attract better players, charge bigger fees, etc. FWIW, I've talked to the coach before and from all indications he seems like a decent enough guy, it just seems like he's struggling with the reality he's coaching 11U kids who have different emotional states than say a kid on a 17U team. The snide comment about the bunt innings later might fly in high school but is not necessary for an 11U kid who already knows he effed up because he's sitting there and not playing anymore.

If we were talking 14U here, I'd probably just let it go. The other aspect is the kid just likes playing baseball and has come to grips with where he's playing this fall and fine with it. The director and coach also made a comment to the team that the fall rosters won't be the same in the spring necessarily so there is the angle that if the kid has a good fall, he could be back on the A team but that might get ruined if the dad expresses his displeasure at season end.

Which is largely to say that yes development should still be priority here. And snark isn't coaching and developing. My primary job is to teach. Most of the big mistakes kids make at that age are because they're in situations they haven't faced before or haven't gotten enough practice at. Those are opportunities to pull aside and reinforce mechanics, mental approach, explain the rules with the understanding that there's no reason the kid should've done that yet, etc. You only have so much time to practice. Game mistakes should largely be dealt with the same way you'd teach in practice. There should be non-rhetorical questions. You should explain "you did x. We want you to do y. remember this is what y looks like. Why don't you show me that so you'll be ready next time."

Often times they're actually trying to do something they've been taught but they pick the wrong situation to do it in. Because they have a tiny fraction of the game experience I and the other coaches. That should be recognized, appreciated, and explained.

If we're talking Midland Baseball's A team, maybe I'd change my view a bit on the push for tournament competitiveness for 11 year olds. But the job priority to develop and teach is the same.