Question for California from Texas

[dallasfungo]

MHO is as Texan as a plate of enchiladas with rice and beans. No fruit and avacado on his plate!

[MHO]

11-13 I think is the norm.
We have 13 right now with 2 injured. Last year we carried 15 all the way through Nationals.
It really depends on the program and age. Some weaker teams struggle to keep 10. Some top teams have 15-18.

Hey Texas your giving us a bad name if you can't count at least learn how to read. Go through all the posts and see how many put 13+ on their roster. We are talking about the top teams. Go ahead and have your DD play on the weaker teams, I'm sure your Nationals in Hurst will be successful, or at least your dd will get her playing time no matter how bad she plays and you can stand around a thumb your chest and tell every how great your dd plays.

[Sam]

Why don't educate us ignorant Texas softball parents on exactly which California teams carry 14-15 players or more during their regular season. Honestly, I'ld really like to know. I hear this all the time, but when you look at their websites, you see the same 11, 12, and 13 players you see in Texas. Maybe the top 10 California teams at ASA nationals might carry 14 or 15 to nationals, but there are only a few who do so during the regular season.

[color=#BF0000]We always hear rumors about how many players you carry on a regular season roster. 11,12,13,14,15,16.


The hardcore 12u's in cali due tend to carry more players. The only purpose I see for it is to strike fear in all your players. Bring your "A" game or there is 5 girls to your right that will take your spot.

That's my view as well. A great tactician coaching a 16U or 18U gold team may feel the need to have 4-5 skilled situational players and he/she may well be able impact a game with a timely substitution. I think it makes no sense for 14U and below to have more than 12 players. (But hey, I'm in Texas so what do I know.) It simply feeds the coaches egos, robs young players of valuable developmental playing time and sets the stage for destructive behavior among the parents. I also think that, at younger levels, chemistry among the players suffers dramatically when there are too many kids riding the bench. 16U/18U is a different story; kids are more mature and sufficiently skilled to play meaningful specialty roles, the focus moves to showcases and college recruiting.

My sense is that a few coaches in Texas make vague statements about "this is how they do it in California" to justify collecting talented players who would otherwise be on a competitor's roster. Maybe they just like to spend their time recruiting instead of developing their players. Not knocking that, they are unpaid volunteers, after all. (I think.) Their team, they make the calls, you either buy in or you don't.

From the comments thus far it appears to me that most Cali teams (14U and younger) carry 11-12 (maybe 13 if they have injuries) players throughout the season. At 16U the rosters expand to 14-17. Correct me if I've misinterpreted the comments.

Meyers, Haning, Rico, Anderson, Tyson are the only guys that I know that can actually convince a kid at 16U or 18G to be a situational player....you're not going to get a scholarship being a pinch runner....or a one-inning defensive replacement. Having said that...I don't think that any of those guys have any situational players on their teams....they don't carry anything but studs.

[TXfastpitchsoftball]

11-13 I think is the norm.
We have 13 right now with 2 injured. Last year we carried 15 all the way through Nationals.
It really depends on the program and age. Some weaker teams struggle to keep 10. Some top teams have 15-18.

Hey Texas your giving us a bad name if you can't count at least learn how to read. Go through all the posts and see how many put 13+ on their roster. We are talking about the top teams. Go ahead and have your DD play on the weaker teams, I'm sure your Nationals in Hurst will be successful, or at least your dd will get her playing time no matter how bad she plays and you can stand around a thumb your chest and tell every how great your dd plays.

MHO: You are typical of the new Texas parents who drink the koolaide of the coach de jour who tells you that you have to carry 14-plus because that's what they do in Cali (and he needs the money to cover his coaching fee). The responses to this post (and I've read them all) support that in Cali, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Viriginia, and other top softball states, you will rarely, rarely see 14-15 or more players on a team in the 14u and under age group. In the 16u and up age groups, I'll agree that most of the top 15-20 Texas teams, like their sister Cali teams, have for at least the last four or five years usually carried more than 14 players. In the 10u to 14u age groups, however, every state has 1 or 2 teams in each age group (Cali has 3-5) who regularly carry 14 or more, but it is definitely the exception and not the norm among the top 20 teams in each state. And not that it really matters, but I'll surmise from the tone of your posts that neither you nor your DD have ever been close to an ASA national tournament, and I"ll bet even money that I've been coaching fastpitch softball at the ASA national level longer than your DD has been out of diapers.

[MHO]

By the sounds of your posts you don't like competition either. Congrats on being a coach I'm sure your daughter enjoyed the playing time.

Ed Naudin team last season had 13 girls and won ASA Nationals last year, Go look at his roster at Glory now...

How manyskins do you have on the wall????

[TXfastpitchsoftball]

By the sounds of your posts you don't like competition either. Congrats on being a coach I'm sure your daughter enjoyed the playing time.

Ed Naudin team last season had 13 girls and won ASA Nationals last year, Go look at his roster at Glory now...

How manyskins do you have on the wall????

Well, that's the point . . . Naudin has three national titles (10u, 12u, and 14u) and I don't believe he carried more than 13 players on either regular season roster. His current roster is a 16u team (that will play mostly an 18u college showcase schedule) and is generally considered the next big thing in Texas, so I'm not sure Naudin's current team is the "standard" for 10u, 12u, and 14u. But you and others seem to keep throwing Naudin's 16u Glory team out there as the "example" of "the way they do things in Cali." I think he would be the first to tell you that for all but possibly one or two teams in the age group, carrying 14-15 players on a regular season 10u or 12u (and probably a 14u) roster is ridiculous. I could be wrong, but maybe he'll chime in.

[MHO]

Well let see I guess if he won ASA with 13 players. I guess thats the magic number...God forbid you have 1 more..you have to answer to idiots like you.

[3Bsnag]

You are typical of the new Texas parents who drink the koolaide of the coach de jour who tells you that you have to carry 14-plus because that's what they do in Cali

Well said TXFastpitch.

Hey MHO, let's talk about that 16U Glory team. He had a bigger roster (16 or 17 players) and is already down to 14 in less than 6 months. Have you talked to the parents? It became known pretty fast (whether implied or said) who he was going to play where and the others left. "We'll see how this works out" was the general comment. Not picking on that team, I truly hope they are very successful. It's just a perfect example on how we do things a little different here. Even though the coach and team name looks attractive, our girls (and our parents) want to PLAY ball, not hope we get put in sometime in a weekend.

And if you're going to drink the SoCal koolaid, realize the real difference between us and them. They have a bigger crop to pick from, workout harder than we do, and play more than we do starting at 10 & 12U.

[TXfastpitchsoftball]

"Naudin has three national titles (10u, 12u, and 14u) "

10s and 14s

You are correct. . . 10us (2004) and 14u (2007). Let's know downplay the other top 10 finishes. I know a ton of coaches in Texas who would cut their own DDs for Naudin's kind of success.