Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the ideas, they hit on many of the questions we had, but phrased in a nicer way. I had not considered the money grab aspect, but after the parents’ meeting I think it does play a role.

Most of the above questions were asked (not all by us) in the meeting. The answers were pretty vague, confirming the idea is not well thought out and will end up a cluster. It sounds like an outside person was going to start a new team with one of the assistant coaches and try to poach the “better” players off this team. Splitting now seems to be an attempt to keep this “new” team in the club (where money grab part comes into play).

We’ll stick it out, but depending on my daughter’s interest will consider other options for next season. Not in the DMV and the next closest team is over 90 miles away. This team takes a break for little league (they lose field access) and has never regrouped to play in the late summer.

Question: is the organization well-regarded in your area? Do many of their teams generally do well? Do they come up with good offseason programs and similar (you mentioned your specific team doesn't play in summer, which suggests these answers might be no). If not - the better players may already be ready to go, especially if it's to another established organization rather than something new.

If half the team was going to start their own thing, that's a lot of overhead. I'd want to be sure the people in charge had any idea HOW much overhead (permits, uniforms, offseason training space, taxes and non-profit status, etc.)

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the ideas, they hit on many of the questions we had, but phrased in a nicer way. I had not considered the money grab aspect, but after the parents’ meeting I think it does play a role.

Most of the above questions were asked (not all by us) in the meeting. The answers were pretty vague, confirming the idea is not well thought out and will end up a cluster. It sounds like an outside person was going to start a new team with one of the assistant coaches and try to poach the “better” players off this team. Splitting now seems to be an attempt to keep this “new” team in the club (where money grab part comes into play).

We’ll stick it out, but depending on my daughter’s interest will consider other options for next season. Not in the DMV and the next closest team is over 90 miles away. This team takes a break for little league (they lose field access) and has never regrouped to play in the late summer.

It actually sounds like they are doing pretty well by the players. It's better to have two legit teams that they enter in tournaments or leagues, than to be just a scout squad. This happens in basketball often. In soccer I just didn't like the idea of letting the A team practice their tackles on my daughter, otherwise we might have stayed. Likely you don't have to worry about that aspect in softball.

Thanks for the ideas, they hit on many of the questions we had, but phrased in a nicer way. I had not considered the money grab aspect, but after the parents’ meeting I think it does play a role.

Most of the above questions were asked (not all by us) in the meeting. The answers were pretty vague, confirming the idea is not well thought out and will end up a cluster. It sounds like an outside person was going to start a new team with one of the assistant coaches and try to poach the “better” players off this team. Splitting now seems to be an attempt to keep this “new” team in the club (where money grab part comes into play).

We’ll stick it out, but depending on my daughter’s interest will consider other options for next season. Not in the DMV and the next closest team is over 90 miles away. This team takes a break for little league (they lose field access) and has never regrouped to play in the late summer.

Anonymous wrote:Lol at A/B split. More like high C/low C from the description. OP, just find another team. This sounds like a sinking ship. Where are you though? I am confused by "three months left in the season" so assume you are not in the DMV area where we are starting our off-season/winter conditioning.

Yeah, similar thing happened to my DDs soccer team. They were supposed to be splitting by grade, but they didn't really do it that way. Looked more like a scout team thing. We left no problems.

I think what precipitated it were a couple of the star players left for a different program, so they had to recruit more players.

Lol at A/B split. More like high C/low C from the description. OP, just find another team. This sounds like a sinking ship. Where are you though? I am confused by "three months left in the season" so assume you are not in the DMV area where we are starting our off-season/winter conditioning.

Not sure that the prior response is accurate, but it sure does not seem logical. But "money grab" absolutely could be right.

Questions to consider:

What are the evaluation criteria? Who is doing the evaluation?

Is this an even split or an A/B set up? Will both teams practice together or separately? Who will coach the teams? How will field space and batting cage resources be allocated? If A/B which tournaments will they be playing in?

What are the cost differences based on even split or A/B set up? Are current practice players required to fully join a team? I'd also want to know if practice players are paying less than full squad members, which is normally the situation.

A general "Why are you doing this? What problem is this solving?" is what I would want to know. Are they trying to turn this into their own club system? Or do they perceive there to be a high level of demand for this 12U team and want to split it?

You can ask whatever you want, but they’re not gonna change their minds. Basically it’s a money grab.

My daughter’s 12u travel softball team is splitting into two teams with 3 months left in their season. They’ve practiced 2-3 times a week since August and played about 1 tournament a month and that schedule is expected to continue.

They currently have a roster of 12 girls and 4 girls who were deemed “practice players” at the beginning of the season to fill in when needed. There are apparently 4-5 other girls who now want to join. It is mixed age and not a high level team. As background, there are 2 decent pitchers, 1 girl who is ok and several beginners who are not really ready for tournament pitching. We were told that they would try to divide the teams by current positions (ie split up pitchers and catchers), but other than that they’re having “tryouts.”

What questions would you have for the coach? We were blindsided at the parents’ meeting and want to schedule a follow up.