Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. We actually went and watched two of these schools play each other. One crushed the other. She also had her first game and loved it even more. She is watching YouTube videos to try to teach herself how to pitch. A neighbor saw her in the yard and said she knows a girl who is a great pitcher and she will put me in touch with her mom. (But I think the "great pitcher" might be quite young???)

My daughter pitched in HS. I agree with PP that you shouldn't let her teach herself pitching, really. If she wants to pitch, at least get her a decent HS pitcher as a coach to start. We ended up getting coaching lessons from a college pitcher. Be sure she ices her shoulder after games and practice sessions. Agree with PP that you need a pitch mound, a net, and a big bucket of balls in your backyard to practice. Mine would go out there and just pitch for an hour into the net. In winter, she did it in the basement. We still have two enormous Home Depot buckets of balls in our garage that I need to find a new home for. I think she took the net to college for her club team though.

Not trying to totally derail the thread, but one of my kids has started talking about playing club in college (not on a trajectory to play in college otherwise). How did your DD end up choosing her school/club team?

She picked the college based on academics and because she really loved the school. Softball was really secondary. She was a pretty mediocre player from a mediocre HS team and travel team, but enjoyed the sport. She's at a Div 1 school and the NCAA softball team is very competitive, and the club team is very recreational. Even for her. They only practice like once a week and then play in 1-2 casual tournaments a semester. She's enjoying it though. My understanding is that some club teams are just totally walk on. Other club teams have a couple of levels -- so, for instance, she's on another club team that has has an "A" travel team and a "B" non-travel team. They all practice together, but the travel team does a lot of out of state tournaments -- basically at least one a month where they are traveling for 2-3 day tournaments. So I assume that at some schools, the softball club is more along that model where you have to try out to make the more competitive level of play.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. We actually went and watched two of these schools play each other. One crushed the other. She also had her first game and loved it even more. She is watching YouTube videos to try to teach herself how to pitch. A neighbor saw her in the yard and said she knows a girl who is a great pitcher and she will put me in touch with her mom. (But I think the "great pitcher" might be quite young???)

My daughter pitched in HS. I agree with PP that you shouldn't let her teach herself pitching, really. If she wants to pitch, at least get her a decent HS pitcher as a coach to start. We ended up getting coaching lessons from a college pitcher. Be sure she ices her shoulder after games and practice sessions. Agree with PP that you need a pitch mound, a net, and a big bucket of balls in your backyard to practice. Mine would go out there and just pitch for an hour into the net. In winter, she did it in the basement. We still have two enormous Home Depot buckets of balls in our garage that I need to find a new home for. I think she took the net to college for her club team though.

Not trying to totally derail the thread, but one of my kids has started talking about playing club in college (not on a trajectory to play in college otherwise). How did your DD end up choosing her school/club team?

Anonymous wrote:OP here. We actually went and watched two of these schools play each other. One crushed the other. She also had her first game and loved it even more. She is watching YouTube videos to try to teach herself how to pitch. A neighbor saw her in the yard and said she knows a girl who is a great pitcher and she will put me in touch with her mom. (But I think the "great pitcher" might be quite young???)

My daughter pitched in HS. I agree with PP that you shouldn't let her teach herself pitching, really. If she wants to pitch, at least get her a decent HS pitcher as a coach to start. We ended up getting coaching lessons from a college pitcher. Be sure she ices her shoulder after games and practice sessions. Agree with PP that you need a pitch mound, a net, and a big bucket of balls in your backyard to practice. Mine would go out there and just pitch for an hour into the net. In winter, she did it in the basement. We still have two enormous Home Depot buckets of balls in our garage that I need to find a new home for. I think she took the net to college for her club team though.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Truly depends on which school. Some schools need players badly and anyone can make the team. Other schools have very competitive teams and the rosters tend to be filled with high level travel players.

Good rule of thumb... the higher the socioeconomic status of the school the hard it is to make teams. The 3 OP mentioned are very competitive.

Maybe for lacrosse, etc. but for softball it’s the opposite. The better teams tend to be lower socioeconomic areas and farther from the city.

The best teams in this area are in Loudoun, the wealthiest county in the nation.

Woodgrove, Broad Run, Riverside etc.

Anonymous wrote:My 6th DD just started playing softball. Hasn't even had a game yet--just a couple of practices and she absolutely loves it. Saying she wants to play in HS. Around here, I feel like you need to start earlier in any sport to play in HS, but maybe the softball teams are not great?

She is starting a little bit late but not horribly so, especially if she has athletic ability.

She won’t make it without playing travel ball, though. Travel will offer more reps and more games. It will more closely simulate high school teams.

If she wants to pitch, get her lessons at 643 or something so she doesn’t develop bad habits or injure herself. And get a bucket of balls and tarp with a strike zone in your yard for her to practice when there is no catcher available.

— former travel coach, current USA, USSSA, NFHS umpire

VGSL in Vienna has summer Raiders which is great experience--2 games a week.

Anonymous wrote:Did your DD just start with rec? Lots of programs around here have a summer all-star rec league you can try out for (in May/June). That's travel lite and a great chance to see if they like playing on most days, if they like tournaments, etc. If they want to pitch, private lessons are a must: they will not get enough from youtube. Private hitting lessons would also be a good idea before tryouts. And start watching college ball: it's not impossible to start softball later (mine started at the end of 5th grade and now plays travel) but it takes a long time to gain softball IQ.

All that said: it's a long way from a few practices to high school ball. My kid plays 4-5 days a week and would play all 7 if she could. But she has friends who dropped out after realizing they wanted to do other things. Encourage the love of the game but take it a season at a time.

Good luck!

Where are you located? In Fairfax County it's fairly few (I know of 2) leagues with open enrollment or tryouts for summer travel-lite. The rest roll their all-stars from late spring forward into summer competition.

I also know others who made varsity after playing JV at Madison under the old coach, but they got very little playing time. Travel ball players who had hot bats and were good fielders, great attitudes, but they had trouble getting game time.