by Skarp » Tue Sep 04, 2018 10:44 pm
I watched my daughter play softball for about a decade, over 5 years of which were spent year-round in hyper-competitive SoCal travel ball. I'm a fairly bright guy, but even after all of that time (some of which I actually spent coaching) I still consider myself a rank amateur when it comes to the sport. It is literally that complex...and amazing. The thought of me opining about pitching mechanics, or whatever, is borderline absurd. Nobody should listen to me about any of that kind of stuff.
I suspect that there are a large number of softball parents who fall into that general category. They love softball, but it's way more about the family experiences and character-building for them than it is about the technical intricacies of the sport. They are certainly happy to tap into the expertise of experienced veterans on sites like HB, but many are reticent when it comes to posting their own opinions on such topics. And they should be, because they don't know anything.
Look back at all of the best discussion threads over the history of this site. Were they about softball strategy or technical advice? Nope. The best discussions occurred within the soft intersection between the sport of softball and other areas of (far more common) interest like parenting, culture, society, values, etc. And in contradistinction to discussions of pitching mechanics (or whatever), every softball parent has a legitimate opinion or question to contribute to these types of discussions.
I started posting here again recently, and it didn't take a day before the thought-police showed up to tell me what was appropriate to discuss on a "softball" website. That hasn't turned out very well for them, but then I'm not exactly a typical HB contributor. How many interesting opinions have been silenced by this kind of crap? How many people who might have been regular HB participants chose the better part of valor and instead kept their mouths shut?
If you want HB to be vibrant and successful, you need to stop viewing it as a softball website and start viewing it as a parenting website. There are parents of girls here ranging from 8 to 22 years old (and beyond), many of whom are dealing with a whole range of issues for the first time. The politics of rec ball, the realities and requirements of travel ball, raising a successful and happy daughter, dealing with specific challenges in the softball milieu (pole barns, etc.), navigating the recruiting terrain, etc., etc., etc. These things all relate to softball, but none of them are even mostly about softball. They are about life, and every year brings a whole new crop of parents who are starving for advice from people who have been there and done that. So if participation here is dwindling, the regulars here don't need to look beyond their own reflections to find the reason why.
There is no charge for awesomeness
...or attractiveness.