I heard that PGF is adding a 10U division this year? My DD is too old for this to matter for her but I do have a God daughter in 8U. If PGF adds a 10U division with no qualifiers and invites only, there is no way whoever wins it can claim to be a national champion? This is nothing more then the greedy getting greedier. I am a big supporter of PGF 14-18U doing what it did to bring the best teams together to play in front of the scouts and crown a national champion. This however is a bad idea. PGF can not claim to know the best 32 teams in 10U nation wide? At the 10U division anything can happen! My DD plays 18U for a top organization and just the other day we were both saying that so far, our best memories of the game came back in the 8U-10U all star games. We loved the excitement of getting through district, through states and finaly making it to play on local TV at the 10U "B" westerns national championship. The majority of the girls on that team that still play ball will go on to play college softball even though they played rec in 10U. My DD went on to play in ASA "A', TCS and PGF national championships but 10U was the most fun! 10U it is the last season to have fun in softball before it turns into a recruiting business. In the fall of my DD's 10U season we played on a T shirt team that beat many of the top travel ball teams and we still decided to go back to rec. It turned out to be a good decision. My point being, not all the best teams in 10U play on travel ball teams. With no qualifiers the teams that pay the big$ to wear a big name on the front of thier shirts will be rewarded and the teams that play rec or on a T shirt team (that want to learn fundamentals and mechanics without being foolish enough to believe that their DD will be scouted to college in 10U on a top organization) will be left out. If PGF makes this a invite only then the top organization coaches will take the invites to save money and have a chance to claim a watered down national championship coaches title (then the can start charging ridiculous dues amounts, BS fundraisers and carry 20 on a team to make them 1-200,000$ a year, you big time coaches know who you are).
PGF- do the right thing by adding qualifiers or pull out of the 10U PGF division all together. The less choices the 10U division has the better chance it has to put the best teams in one spot. ASA is doing the right thing by adding a select division to allow the better talent in 10U-12U to play more competively with each other however its about 5 years too late. The rules for select will be a headache to apply but it is necessary IMO. A lot of people are saying that ASA is just rushing into this select thing but that is the same thing PGF is doing with a 10U national championship. PGF, keep your product supperior and do not make a 10U PGF national championship equivalent to a glorified toys for tots tournament. The game of 10U softball is obviously changing but PGF should do its part to change it for the better of the sport not to better someones wallet. Do not add a 10U division to PGF to pull talent away from ASA "A', "B" or TCS out of greed$. The devil is usually in the details and in this case the fact that you would claim to have a 10U national championship with no qualifiers is a huge detail. Do it right or don't do it at all. Just my observation.