SnocatzDad wrote:DonnieS wrote:SnocatzDad wrote: Teams have done a pretty good job self classifying, if anything teams tend to over classify themselves rather than sandbag by underclassifying.
Based on the few times we have been able to play socal teams, thats the way I would guess it is there. When youngest was first invited to play on a travel team, (here in Texas), the managers were adament about playing B. This was pre-eteamz, but I didnt understand how we would know how good (or bad) we were, unless we played A. My hope back in those days, 7 or 8 years ago, was that my dds would be good enough to play high school varsity and it made no sense to me to not play A.
I'm with you Donnie, you should always play at the highest level you can be competitive at in order to improve the fastest. The problem is that goes for your opponent as well. If you grossly overestimate your ability (i.e. end up winning less than 10% of your games, run ruled 75% of the time) you may still see some benefit for your team, but your doing a disservice to your opponents who are also looking to play games at the highest competitive level.
I'm okay in principle with teams dropping down a level after they find out they dove in too deep, problem is the teams that stayed in the shallow end to begin with are never happy about it. So in practice your better off starting where your confident your at least competitive and moving up if it turns out your good enough to compete higher, no one complains when teams up-classify themselves.
In my area we have A and B, we don't really consider rec. The problem i see around here is that new teams get started all of the time. If a kid isn't getting playing time, dad starts his own team. The majority of teams are really watered down. I think that it is good for fastpitch in the long run because it generates more exposure. It doesn't help as far as immediate competition. There are only so many solid players to go around, right?
