gunshy wrote:Bucketlist, don't worry about being a provider of good competition for weaker teams, worry about finding better competition for YOUR team. Winning at 10u is important, but so is losing. Teams will not find out how good they can be until they lose and figure out why. If you take 5 players on your team and have them run a race side by side to 1st base, one player will win that race. The player that won will have run fast enough to beat the other 4, but I guarantee the winner will not have run her fastest, rather just run fast enough to beat the other 4. Moral of that story is that if you constantly play teams at your level or below, your team's development will become stagnant and tied to the development of OTHER teams. Losing 25 in a row is not healthy, but playing down and winning 25 in a row is not the path to development.
First trophy is priceless, second one is great, third one is good, fourth is nice, fifth and beyond will likely be quickly forgotten.
How can you distinguish on paper to find the better teams if teams hide behind the "B" designation? Too many teams play B just to stay home and play in a B "World Series" which is just a regional tournament. It happened in Illinois and probably going to happen in Indiana with NSA hold B there this year.
The whole problem with that is, those teams will either tick off parents of the better players for staying a B and leave or their team will get a B label and fail to get better players at tryouts. Most of the parents don't realize that the coaches have signed the team up as B.
Illinois ASA is trying to get away from those teams that are just trophy hunting. They have combined the A and B state tournament at 10s and 12s after years of threatening the teams to police themselves. "If you have a pitcher that can throw strikes you are an A team."
The other organizations' directors need to grow a set and police this better than just taking the $$$ and running.