It's a bad world

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.