Information about Premier Fastpitch Girls Softball

[Cowboys55]

Since when has playing fastpitch softball been more about a "college scholarship" than playing the game because you love the game and want to play your best.

Can you not get the same college scholarship by being a good student and getting an academic scholarship? If the player is truly good enough to play college ball, can they not walk on at a college somewhere and play?

Too many players today at a young age are expected to treat this game we all love as a "job" (the job of getting a scholarship) instead of just being the best player they can be and enjoying the game while they can. JMO, but playing for a National Championship, win or lose, is a whole lot more fun and about the game itself than playing for a college scholarship.

[Gary Haning]

Cowboy

I so much agree with but sadly "the love of the Game" which many still have is overwhelmed by the "the love of the Green" or saving thereof

[Gary Haning]

Cont…
My Pollyannaish view:

I have always loved sports but I had no intention of ever coaching, especially coaching girls. My path into coaching girls’ softball was completely by chance, strange where life leads you.
When I began to coach I often would see other coaches who did things better than I did, knew more than I did, taught their players better than I did. Being a competitive person I wanted to learn and become a better coach so as many do I watched and asked questions and over time I came to have a decent understanding of the game and how to communicate that knowledge to others.

To me the pinnacle of coaching is to take a group of young athletes and over time to see them become a good team. I understand that this not always a level playing field. The Batbusters are going to get a certain share of good players and that share is likely to be greater than the Huntington Beach Honeys. It was not always so, our team was not automagically gifted to get good players. I enjoy building a team and watching that team compete against others who have built good teams, some that have earned the same advantages as we have, some that have not been around as long but are working toward that end.

College players completely skew that process. You do not have to build a team if you can go out and recruit a great pitcher and 4 great players who came up through the ranks with another organization(s) that chooses not to use college players. I understand competition, I understand the argument that the rules allow it, the best team that can be assembled by any means is fine. If all teams would only ask back players who had been with them for years before going to college it would help a little but that is not what happens and that still leaves all of the issues I mentioned in the first part of this post.

No one who is honest will argue that the best possible competition would be if everyone asked back every college player and played those players ahead of everyone else. I would like to see a 21U Division where this could be done without causing all of the problems that occur when some teams do and some teams don’t and some people with money turn 18U Gold into a mini-Womens Major.

[Iluvblue]

Gary,

All of your points are valid, but as the person in charge of your organization, you can do what you want. Why should you be worried about what team X is doing. If you dont want to add college kids to your team for the reasons you have listed, then you dont have to add a single college player. ASA doesnt mandate you have college players. So I dont see how any of the reasons you have listed should matter to you.

Not one kid on your team has to worry about working all year just to have their spot taken by a college kid, because you wont add them.


In addition, you run your own tournaments. You can make your own rules in regards to other teams and not allow them to use college players. Plus in the Fall, none of those college kids are even playing for an ASA team.

So I just dont get it???????



By the way, i will copy your post from this thread. All of the reasons you listed are the exact reasons why I hate Gold ball. They are the same reasons I try to explain to 14u parents why they should avoid it until they must play in Gold. Now I have your own words to back up all I say to them:)

[tcannizzo]

Since when has playing fastpitch softball been more about a "college scholarship" than playing the game because you love the game and want to play your best.

Can you not get the same college scholarship by being a good student and getting an academic scholarship? If the player is truly good enough to play college ball, can they not walk on at a college somewhere and play?

Too many players today at a young age are expected to treat this game we all love as a "job" (the job of getting a scholarship) instead of just being the best player they can be and enjoying the game while they can. JMO, but playing for a National Championship, win or lose, is a whole lot more fun and about the game itself than playing for a college scholarship.

Boo hoo hoo, I am crying real tears with this drivel.

There are 360,000 college athletes and every single one of them was driven at a young age to achieve the elite level of the game.

Are you saying there should be no college scholarships at all? Not football, basketball, baseball, etc? That is so out of touch with reality, Cowboy...and this being your first post on this forum? You can only go up from here.

[Gary Haning]

luvblu

Simple, because I and the other people want to win competing against the same type of teams we have. We beat a college pitcher in the finals 3 of the 5 times we won Gold and many of them along the way every time we won and the times we did not win. I believe we can do so again but I am tired of dealing with it. I am tired of busting my tail to build a team only to have someone grab a player(s) and vault their team to prominence.

I respectfully disagree as to your statement about 14U kids. Of course it depends on the athlete but if she is in HS she is playing 18U players anyway and in todays recruiting world, as bad as it sounds and as much as I dislike it, the sooner you are recognized the better off you are. You may or may not know we had two pitchers who were HS freshman on our team this year, both pitched against all comers, both more than held their own and both families thought it was a great experience. As a sidenote, both are being recruited by pretty much every top team they have an interest in considering. Please include this part in your message to those families.

[Blind Squirrel]

Why is it the umpires are flocking together on this topic? Premier offers an additional opportunity to work a Gold level tournament, and Wade has already commended Gary on his approach to officiating, so where's the beef?

Check out this thread on the umpire's message board. http://forum.officiating.com/softball/54303-2020-anyone.html
It started out with a comment out the 2020 Olympics and morphed into 145 posts and still going strong about PFGS.

Wow. I've only gotten through the first few pages but I have to stop for a few minutes and catch my breath from laughing. Wade. Dude!! Here come the pigeons and this time you gave them them a map to your location and plenty of food to get there.

I will give you props for being perhaps the most independent thinker I've ever seen. Independent of even yourself. Before you "WTF am I talking about" me, I'm talking about things like you saying something about the true gold teams being in OKC next year and how they will be the real 18 Gold National Champions

versus

"18G OKC may well look like a 16 Eastern Nationals in skill level."

Just ran out of time or I'd explain further.

John

[Iluvblue]

[quote="Gary Haning"]Cont…


College players completely skew that process. You do not have to build a team if you can go out and recruit a great pitcher and 4 great players who came up through the ranks with another organization(s) that chooses not to use college players.




I agree with what you said, but i wonder if the Strikkers felt that same way you do now when Amanda Williams led them to a 7th place finish at Gold Nations(I think it was 7th) only to watch her disappear from their team and be pitching for your very own OC Batbusters the nest season? I am trying , but I dont understand how someone in your position of being able to get the very finest players out there, can then be bothered by another organization that was able to get some stud pitcher to join their team. I do not see how keeping college kids out will change anything. Wont it just shift to the younger players? Wont some of those guys just pay for a Jr or Sr pitcher to now fly across the country to play for them instead of a college kid? I really appreciate you being here and having this discussion, so please do not take my questions or comments as a slam, they are not. I am really wanting to understand what the fuss was about in regards to college players.



And didnt the people running the tournaments cause the current problems you speak of? When I first started coaching I believe there were only a few "Exposure " tournaments in the Fall. Now there is one for every weekend. Didnt that in and of itself promote this view that getting seen was really what softball is all about? I dont think it was the players demanding it, i think it was the people in power looking to have huge tournaments to get paid. And I dont mean you, you already had your tourneys, but everyone else that followed with this exposure and that exposure. Hell, they people even started running that crap into 14u. Like we need 14u exposure tourneys, but it sure makes things easy on those people running tournaments.

[Iluvblue]

Gary,

But you are GARY HANNING. You routinely are able to pull the TOP players in the nation. So it is not unreasonable to think you could have 2 of the best Fresman pitchers in the country that can pitch at the level of your teams. The rest of those kids can not.

So now we have parent X see that you had 2 Freshman pitchers that played Gold for you and that those 2 kids are getting recruited by the top schools in the country. Now they think their little Suzie can also, then parent Y, then parent Z follows. Eventually we get down to parent xyz1,000,000, and there kid can barely pitch at 14u, let alone Gold, but I'll be damned if that kid doesnt find themselves on some sorry gold team out there looking to get recruited.

Thus we have the current state of Gold with 50% of the teams being WEAK, and 14u players not developing like they should.

[Cowboys55]

I understand the role "love of the green" plays. However, when looking at the bigger picture, if we continue the way things are now with all the exposures, team hopping, etc. and playing wherever "I can be seen", are we not ultimately destroying not only the game but the players in the process. In my part of the world, so many girls play for the scholarship and then once they have it either quit playing their last year of 18 or they quit after they get to college and find out it really isn't what they thought it would be.

So my question is, what is the ultimate goal? To teach these players this sport and all that it offers in the way of life lessons and hope that they carry that through to the next generation or to teach them that softball is a job and the only reason you are playing is to get a college scholarship and once that is accomplished you are done? If we teach them to first be a great student/person and then be a great athlete are we not doing better by them.

As someone said in a previous post about ASA needing the coaches, not the other way around. Do not the college coaches need the players, not the other way around. Seems in today's world we are making all the decisions based on college recruitment, when we should be making them based on developing the best player/person we can.

I am not saying that college scholarships are bad, I am saying that they should not be THE reason for playing the game.