Looking for advice here before playoff game Thursday.
My son plays in 7-8 year old coach pitch LL. Unfortunately the coach we got stuck with pretty much sucks. We had 2 practices at the beginning of the season, and never practiced again. Coach chose positions at the beginning of the season which put his kid, the other coaches kid, and both parent volunteers kids in the infield at every game, all the rest of the kids either on the outfield or the bench. Unsurprisingly, 3 kids quit midseason, leaving our son sitting by himself on the bench for half of every game.
No other kid has ever played infield except the coaches/helpers kids.
We have no local league rules about mandatory play and defer to official LL rules.
My husband, a really calm and polite guy, approached the coach before the game and asked if we would consider letting our son play infield just once before the season was over since he never got the chance. Our son is not bad, and plays the same as the coaches kids. Honestly, they’re all pretty much on the same level.
Coach responded by absolutely losing his marbles, and chewed my husband out and said he didn’t appreciate being questioned about his roster
Coach retaliated by benching our kid for the majority of the game save for the mandatory 6 out rule. We’re considering just skipping the playoff game (likely going to lose as we have not won a single game) because the coach was pretty aggressive to my husband and we think he’s going to keep our son from playing in the game anyway. It’s really killed our son’s love of the game and his confidence as a player, as he never learned any skills all season.
I’m worried having to be excluded from the playoff game is going to hurt his confidence even more. What would you do?