Whenever I hear about some high school kid who freaks out because she didn’t get in Yale or Brown, I think, “There’s a kid who didn’t play enough sports to learn that you win some & lose the rest.”

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Anonymous wrote:Each of my kids has had a season where their team won every game and honestly, I didn't love it even though they did. You get nothing out of that.

My daughter just had a season like this. Her little league softball team won every game. They had by far the best pitcher. My daughter was probably 2nd-3rd best in the 6 team league, but barely got to pitch because the dad of the other girl was the coach and pitched her all the time. Anytime the game was close, the other girl pitched all 4 or 5 innings. Mine was the only other girl to pitch on the team, getting an inning or rarely two in a blow out.

Both girls made all-stars but in different age groups. My daughter was told she wasn’t going to get to pitch because she didn’t get enough experience during the season.

Hate to break it to you, but it sucks to be a softball pitcher. It's not like baseball where 5 kids are in the starting rotation and then you have relievers.

Did you watch any of the College World Series? Some teams ride 1 pitcher for the Regionals, Super Regionals and the World Series because you can.

The HS softball teams in the area do the same thing.

I guess it's OK for a kid to throw like 600 softball pitches in a week...though it doesn't sound like it should be.

Another softball pitcher parent here. This is true in school ball, but adamantly not in rec or travel ball. In travel ball when girls are playing a minimum of 3 or 4 games in a weekend the teams need at least 3 (and usually more) decent pitchers. In rec ball - with the exception, weirdly, of Little League (though I think they have pitch count limits) - there are strict participation rules that mean teams need at least 2 pitchers and coaches are usually smart enough to realize they need to develop pitchers. On a rec team my kids were on this season there was typically a new pitcher every inning except in close games, and even girls who really weren't good got to pitch to a batter or two. On our travel team I think they cycled through 3 or 4 pitchers most games.

Does travel softball have pitchcount or inning rules?

No, and some coaches abuse it, but at least of the teams I've seen most will basically pitch a different girl for each Saturday game, or rotate between a couple innings for each girl. Admittedly I mostly pay attention to younger age groups, but these teams need to rest their best pitchers to win games in elimination brackets on Sunday.

That’s the difference…as they get older, you just need a coach that understands that pitchers 2-5 are pretty good too and give them a chance.

Funny we're going through the same thing in travel basketball. Players six through nine are pretty **good**. Actually, really good, the problem is the coach's metrics. We've had a number of games where the starters just laid eggs, but he couldn't take out the starters, because he didn't realize he had caliber players sitting there on the bench that were almost as good if not the same or better, and the starters would play better if they had a rest. The coaches eventually recalibrated. Kids get better very quickly, others peak and reach their age group potential, sometimes they go backwards as they grow and have to relearn skills or learning new skills makes the old ones more complicated. I have seen some kids definitely exhibit "overtraining", mentally having breakdowns or having physical overuse injuries.