Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL up through AA so far - kids are placed by grade and elementary school, unless they have a special request. Coaches we have had have all be fair and didn’t favor their kids - they are volunteers. Nothing is stopping you from volunteering.

Lots of things prevent one from volunteering to coach, volunteering on other things sure, but not everyone can coach. Just because you can coach does not mean you should make your son who’s below average at best to play the best positions all the time and treat other kids as merely your son’s training mates.

Well, you don't want to be gross about it but you do get to hedge in favor of your child - that's how it works. You're welcome to coach/volunteer too, we can always use help.

Actually it does.

It is a trade really. Coaching takes a ton of time and effort both for the coach and his/her family. It requires coaches’ kids to
also put in lots of extra time and effort too. Typically coaches kids are always the first to the field and the last to leave. They get to help rake the field and mound, help line the field, set up the bases, and pick up trash before the games. After the game they get to put up the bases. And pick up trash. And wait until all kids are picked up - always at least one parent who decided to make a grocery run rather than watch their kid. What 11 year old doesn’t live for those experiences?

Positions are pretty locked for under 12s. Yes you can watch the little league World Series and the kid in left field can actually catch and throw. That’s not what is going on at your local field. Take the two best kids in your league and they might make one of those teams.

If I put your kid at SS and hit 10 ground balls to him where he had to move 5 feet either side - 5 feet to his left. 5 feet to his right. Could he field 9 of them cleanly and throw to first with a good throw so that the first baseman can catch it with a foot on the bag? Yes? Great. Your kid can play SS. 2nd base is the same really. Second tends to get more hit to it, but the throw is shorter. 1st base - can your kid catch throws confidently, and is your kid willing to let bad throws bounce off him to keep the runner from getting to advance? Yes? Great your kid can play 1st base. 3rd base is mostly where you put your less skilled kids for their infield innings. But, that means you need decent left fielders as they are likely going to get more balls hit to them, though right field is where you typically would have the stronger players. You need a better arm to play right field but not in little kid ball. Catcher has to be good at catching the ball and be willing to get dinged up a little.

Now every kid is playing two innings of infield. You have let’s say 13 kids. You have 3 pitchers lined up for a six inning game. You are going with your weaker infielders with your better pitchers. If you have a kid who throws a little harder then you can go with a good second baseman and a weaker SS. If your pitcher is a softer thrower then you need a better SS. During the game you watch your pitch counts.

Now - take your kid’s team and set up the lineup. Make sure your pitchers are sitting out the inning before they are scheduled to pitch so they can warm up. Make sure every kid gets to play at least 2 innings in the infield keeping in mind the requirements of the positions. Now - cross a line through one player who is a no show 15 minutes before the game and redo all the positions. Wait - here he is running over midway into the first inning. Add him back at the bottom of the batting order and tell the opposing coach scorekeeper at the inning break. Redo the positions again.

You want to put kids into positions, literally and figuratively, so they can be reasonably successful. If the kid has the basic skills - throw, catch, swing the bat with a little confidence, they will do fine. And, they can play most positions. But in a typical team of 13 eleven and twelve year olds you will have 1-2 who are not competent at most of those, and 3-5 who lack at least 1 (usually hitting). In 4-6 two hour practices they will not improve. You must help if you want them to get good enough to be confident about their abilities to have some fun.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL up through AA so far - kids are placed by grade and elementary school, unless they have a special request. Coaches we have had have all be fair and didn’t favor their kids - they are volunteers. Nothing is stopping you from volunteering.

Lots of things prevent one from volunteering to coach, volunteering on other things sure, but not everyone can coach. Just because you can coach does not mean you should make your son who’s below average at best to play the best positions all the time and treat other kids as merely your son’s training mates.

Well, you don't want to be gross about it but you do get to hedge in favor of your child - that's how it works. You're welcome to coach/volunteer too, we can always use help.

Oh trust me, I help out A LOT. And oh I agree of course coach's kids get a certain degree of favorable treatment that's understandable, but oh boy the ABR coach I am questioning is very much "gross about it".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ABR definitely let certain teams have more than fair share of travel players, like one team has 7, one has 1. Guess which team always win? And humiliate the other team with a score of 20plus-0? LOL, must be a nice ego booster for certain people and their snowflakes.

This is just kids being with their friends. If kids have played together since k or even preschool, they will work together as a team much better than just a bunch of random kids thrown together.

+1

My younger child happens to have a group of friends from the same elementary school that are incredible athletes. They came together by chance, have natural ability, parents who work with them (throwing /catching) and have played together for years, so yes, they are a great team. Your kid can’t just show up to baseball once a week and see great improvement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL up through AA so far - kids are placed by grade and elementary school, unless they have a special request. Coaches we have had have all be fair and didn’t favor their kids - they are volunteers. Nothing is stopping you from volunteering.

Lots of things prevent one from volunteering to coach, volunteering on other things sure, but not everyone can coach. Just because you can coach does not mean you should make your son who’s below average at best to play the best positions all the time and treat other kids as merely your son’s training mates.

Well, you don't want to be gross about it but you do get to hedge in favor of your child - that's how it works. You're welcome to coach/volunteer too, we can always use help.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can look up league rules for things like tryouts and drafting players. They are not secret.

Drafts are not really drafts. All the coaches agree on who is likely to be a pitcher so they can be divided between teams.
If a coach's kid is a likely pitcher then they get included in this group. Do to pitch count rules this is most of the work when it comes to forming reasonably balanced teams. It is also why the asst. coach usually has a kid who is a good pitcher.

If you want to sway things to benefit your kid - (1) become a coach; and (2) spend time working with them all year - throwing, fielding, batting. Don't want to do those things? Then sign up and have your kid play like a good number of other kids. It is fine. But, they will not be as good a player as a kid who practiced all year.

1000% this

This, and I don’t think it’s expected that they will be. Rec is for fun. Just don’t sign your kid up in 3rd grade and throw them out there if they don’t know the rules or how to catch. They can get hurt.

LL is more south Arlington and ABR is more north, in general. Obviously some exceptions.

Anonymous wrote:ABR definitely let certain teams have more than fair share of travel players, like one team has 7, one has 1. Guess which team always win? And humiliate the other team with a score of 20plus-0? LOL, must be a nice ego booster for certain people and their snowflakes.

This is just kids being with their friends. If kids have played together since k or even preschool, they will work together as a team much better than just a bunch of random kids thrown together.

Anonymous wrote:"For the draft they first distribute the travel players amongst all the teams." - how do they distribute the travel players? There is a huge range of abilities among those travel players.

Most of the majors coaches also coach travel teams or have kids in travel. They do spread the travel
Kids out. There are 8 majors 70 teams of 12 and two travel teams for 12u and 3 for 11u. Most of the kids on the teams in majors also are in travel. The coaches of course want their travel players, but they do need to be spread out. Each team obviously needs kids who play certain positions.

Anonymous wrote:ABR definitely let certain teams have more than fair share of travel players, like one team has 7, one has 1. Guess which team always win? And humiliate the other team with a score of 20plus-0? LOL, must be a nice ego booster for certain people and their snowflakes.

Not at the majors level. There’s no draft for the younger kids.

ABR definitely let certain teams have more than fair share of travel players, like one team has 7, one has 1. Guess which team always win? And humiliate the other team with a score of 20plus-0? LOL, must be a nice ego booster for certain people and their snowflakes.

Anonymous wrote:ALL up through AA so far - kids are placed by grade and elementary school, unless they have a special request. Coaches we have had have all be fair and didn’t favor their kids - they are volunteers. Nothing is stopping you from volunteering.

Lots of things prevent one from volunteering to coach, volunteering on other things sure, but not everyone can coach. Just because you can coach does not mean you should make your son who’s below average at best to play the best positions all the time and treat other kids as merely your son’s training mates.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The short if it is, there is not too much is different- we're a family who has done both leagues and travel baseball in Arlington. My husband has coached for both leagues over the years.

In the younger years there is no difference at all. Then, Little League does drafts earlier than ABR so some kids stick with ABR so they can stay with their friends. But its only like a year difference so its a toss up. The real factor is if your kid starts to play travel. If they play for Arsenal (Arlington Travel Baseball), they must also play Arlington Little League. If they play for Arlington Storm, they must also play for ABR.

McLean Little League has a good reputation, but if you want to play Arlington travel BB, you'll have to eventually switch. I've known only 2 kids to get an exemption (to stay with McLean but play for Arlington travel) but they were the best kid on the top team, so YMMV.

One more factor, the tournaments the teams go to are different. Little League all star teams (different from travel) can go to the Little League World Series. In Babe Ruth, they go to the Babe Ruth League World Series (same difference but for whatever reason LL has more name recognition/is televised).

Finally, Little League ends at 13U. Then kids that still want to play go to Arlington Senior Babe Ruth.

I have had terrible experience with ABR so far. A few coaches run the program and always make sure their own teams have the most top players, while other teams have no talent whatsoever. Some teams will lose all season while 1-2 basically undefeated (until they face off each other). Also, ABR coaches' kids definitely get special treatment, it's very obvious. At what age/level does ABR do a draft?

We had the same experience in LL FWIW. Bro dads trying to get their kids to the LL World Series.

ABR starts drafting when they go to Majors:

Majors 60' and 70', Player Pitch (Ages 10 - 12)

It stinks to hear that LL is just as bad. I hope the ABR draft isn't rigged but I suspect it will be based on how the league currently functions.

LL is not as bad in our experience. When I compare with friends in ABR it seems like ours is slightly less political/competitive. We have been able to maintain most of our team together even through a couple of drafts. I will say that while I met nice families in both I prefer the LL crowd. Our team does not have anyone who plays on travel ball FWIW

ALL up through AA so far - kids are placed by grade and elementary school, unless they have a special request. Coaches we have had have all be fair and didn’t favor their kids - they are volunteers. Nothing is stopping you from volunteering.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"For the draft they first distribute the travel players amongst all the teams." - how do they distribute the travel players? There is a huge range of abilities among those travel players.

Both ATB/Arsenal and Storm have 2 levels of travel teams and for these majors teams there are generally 2 years of teams (eg 11U and 12U). So there's 11U top tier and 11U bottom tier, etc. They don't allow one team to have all the top tier 12U players. Its a randomly generated distribution except for certain cases where there may be siblings. That being said, there are kids that dropped from travel because they play too many other sports but are just as good as the travel players. It evens out.

Also should have said they first pull out the pitchers and distribute them for fairness.

Anonymous wrote:"For the draft they first distribute the travel players amongst all the teams." - how do they distribute the travel players? There is a huge range of abilities among those travel players.

Both ATB/Arsenal and Storm have 2 levels of travel teams and for these majors teams there are generally 2 years of teams (eg 11U and 12U). So there's 11U top tier and 11U bottom tier, etc. They don't allow one team to have all the top tier 12U players. Its a randomly generated distribution except for certain cases where there may be siblings. That being said, there are kids that dropped from travel because they play too many other sports but are just as good as the travel players. It evens out.