Hey Bleacher Creature....

[Sam the Sham]

Winning is not the PRIORITY of Gold teams. Exposure is....

I have seen Gold teams bat the same girl back to back because a college wanted to see her hit.

I have seen a college coach ask a Gold coach to leave a pitcher in when she is struggling to see how she handles it.

I have seen them let a pitcher hit that hasn't batted all year because the college coach wanted to see her hit.

Thats not doing everything you can to win, that is getting kids in front of colleges!

Winning is a nice plus and there are some teams out there that try harder to win than others, but it is NOT the priority until Gold Qualifiers come up.

[Blind Squirrel]

Winning is not the PRIORITY of Gold teams. Exposure is....

I have seen Gold teams bat the same girl back to back because a college wanted to see her hit.

I have seen a college coach ask a Gold coach to leave a pitcher in when she is struggling to see how she handles it.

I have seen them let a pitcher hit that hasn't batted all year because the college coach wanted to see her hit.

Thats not doing everything you can to win, that is getting kids in front of colleges!

Winning is a nice plus and there are some teams out there that try harder to win than others, but it is NOT the priority until Gold Qualifiers come up.

I suppose it depends upon the caliber of team/players to some extent. Teams that want to draw maximum attention from colleges are not teams that suck and view winning as a nice plus. It is my impression that they are teams that, year in and year out, win. Win. Win. Win. They get the best fields, they draw the most scouts, they have the highest level players (in general). Does that mean the players on other teams get no exposure? Hell no. My kid was seen when playing for a very average 18G team. But even that team tried as hard as they could to win and qualify for Nationals though they were extremely responsive to the requests of college coaches.

All of the things you mentioned absolutely occur. Do they occur when no college coach asks to see a particular player? How often does it happen? Do subs intentionally get put in to get exposure when random coaches walk up? If exposure and not winning is the priority then I assume those teams bench the committed kids in favor of every uncommitted kid whenever any coach is watching. Why would a single uncommitted kid sit while a committed kid plays? I have not heard of such a thing but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen all the time. Then again, what committed kid would want to play for such a team which obviously leads to the better kids gravitating toward teams that win. The rest of the sequence is obvious.

Of course I could be wrong to a great extent as my experiences are solely from my kid playing on SoCal teams.

John