We're on our 3rd travel organization, and between two daughters we've had 5 five coaches. I've never yet seen a coach do batting practice off live kid pitching (except one singular time). We've topped out at 12U. Does no one do this? It seems like a huge disadvantage for hitting development since it is actually pretty hard to make your game swing resemble your tee or soft toss swing. If this is as rare as it seems why is that?

I made a post a couple months ago about having a middle school team consisting of 41 girls. We had 25 on the 7th grade team and 16 on the 8th grade team. Just wanted to update how the season went and what we did. I was an assistant coach and not able to be at all practices. For the most part we split practices into 4 groups or so and ran different drills around the ball field. We would also split them up and scrimmaged at times which they seemed to like the best. As far as the games went we would typically play the 7th graders vs the opposing team's 7th graders and this posed the biggest issue since we had so many. We rotated often, except for pitching as we tried to keep that fairly consistent to get them into a rhythm. At bats were sparse in the beginning of the year so we ended up splitting the 7th graders into 2 teams, A and B and each team played 2+ innings based on time. This worked out pretty well especially as the season went on and we had injuries and players missing so at times we were down to 16 or 17 making rotations easier. Our 7th grade team fared ok but just due to having a large team we couldn't always have our best players out there all the time, though we did win some games.

8th grade season went better. We had 3 new ones on the team and though they weren't as polished still found ways to get on base and contribute. We went 5-3 with that team but again if we had about 11-12 I believe we would have had one more win.

All in all it was a good season and we saw a lot of girls step up and improve, which is all we really want to see. They had a fun season and most of the girls are on a summer ball team. The funny part is most of our summer ball teams will only have 10/team due to numbers being 20- 14u players and 30- 12u players so instead of having bigger teams we have very small teams. We'll probably be pulling girls from other teams up to play over the summer if we're short.

I’m a mom of a first year kid pitch player that is playing on a team of 11 girls, also first year kid pitch. I’m trying to make sense of playing time and figure out whether she is getting enough. Of all the girls on the team, mine has the second most time on the bench, almost 30%. She’s pitched the most innings of all pitchers (4 girls pitch on her team) and her secondary position is OF. Prior to kid pitch, she’s almost never sat the bench. Do pitchers just sit the bench more often?

My 1st year 10U daughter has become her rec league’s #2 pitcher. This happened because 1 pitcher hurt her arm, and the other 2 are 2nd year players but have a lot of spring commitments and can’t make every game. My daughter, until March had no interest in pitching but decided to try it 1 day at practice and here we are. She’s done really well with some basics from a high schooler who helps out but we’re looking at lessons for the summer since she seems to have decided she’d like to keep going with it. She’d like to get good enough to try for her travel team. Currently her tournament coach let her do an inning and has been encouraging but I don’t think she’ll get another shot for a bit.

What should we be looking for in a pitching coach to make sure we get someone who is focused on teaching good mechanics over speed to start? What questions should we be asking? We’re in a fairly populated area with a lot of college girls coming back for the summer and posting about offering lessons and workouts. Her dad and I are more than willing to catch for her, just want to make sure she’s learning properly.

My daughter is in her 2nd year of fast pitch, 14U. In April, she broke her ankle (fractured her fibula) and has just been released from her walking boot and now just has a brace for a little while.

Since she broke the outer ankle, and has taken hits there in the past, we are looking at getting a leg guard for her to wear for the rest of the season while the bone finishes healing. With us being fairly new to the sport, the gear is a bit confusing. We found batter leg guards but it looks as though the ankle protection is for the inside ankle of your front batting foot.

She is a right handed batter and it’s her left outside ankle (closest to the pitchers mound). Can anyone recommend what might work best for protection without interfering with performance? I have seen double ankle leg guards but they look so bulky.

My daughter plays 11U rec ball. She’s their starting catcher and loves it. I anticipate she’ll keep playing catcher going forward. The team has gear the girls share, but I’d like to get her some of her own. Any recommendations on where to get catchers gear that isn’t very expensive? I checked our local sports consignment store, but it’s a mess and couldn’t find anything in there. Nothing on Facebook marketplace. Thanks.

We are a 12U(c) team in Northern Virginia. We're a starter program focused on fundamentals and growth, not pressure to win tournaments. Today we're hosting an open practice to potentially attract some new players and wanted to see if anyone had some tips on good drills to try. Might throw in a mini-scrimmage at the end to have some fun. Thanks in advance!

I coach a 10U Rec team. We play in a county league that has 20 teams. We practice once a week and have 1-2 games per week. We're non-profit, volunteer, Rec only.

We don't have a Travel program. Travel players would be welcome to join, but we don't have any.

I have a team of great kids. Many of them have played before together both in softball and other sports, and they have good attitudes. They listen at practice and put in the effort. They want to win.

The problem I'm really struggling with is that we keep running up against other Rec teams that are in a completely different class because they have an ace pitcher.

We don't have any pitchers who can throw with a textbook windmill motion with the hop and everything. We have girls who are trying their best to learn that motion and get the ball over the plate.

Then we run into a team that has a girl who is about 6 inches taller than everyone else and is throwing in the 40s mph with textbook form. Our girls don't know what to do because they can't catch up with the pitches. I don't even know of a way to safely simulate 45mph windmill pitches in practice.

For games, we usually get 4 innings in. Travel players can pitch 2 innings, non-Travel players are allowed to pitch 3. We've run into a number of teams that have a highly talented pitcher who is not Travel (according to what they tell the umpire). I can't verify it, but let's assume they're telling the truth. That ace pitcher can pitch 75% of the game.

One team in our league has allowed 5 runs total in 10 games because they have one of these "not Travel" aces. I watched them play, their fielders barely knew what to do because they've faced so few batted balls all season.

My issue is this: I don't care if you play "Travel" or not -- if you have a perfect windmill pitch, you were taught how to do it outside of the Rec league. We practice for one hour per week. There's no way any team is teaching proper pitching in that time span. The motion requires a ton of practice and oversight from someone who knows how to teach it. I've seen so many girls who practice a ton at home and still can't get it because they don't have an expert giving them feedback. They try their best but end up with weird motions and bad habits just to get the ball over, to not embarrass themselves when they do pitch.

Maybe the ace's parent knows how to pitch and taught them, but when I talk to other coaches, most of the ace pitchers take private lessons. Parents are paying hundreds of dollars a week for private lessons, to pitch elementary school Rec softball!

I don't care if we win or lose, but my team does. I'm having a hard time keeping them focused because we're heading into playoffs soon, we have a pretty good record because we usually beat teams without ace pitchers because we have better fundamentals like baserunning and fielding, but they know they're going to run into an ace in the playoffs and not be able to hit the ball.

Have any leagues out there figured out a way to level this playing field? Obviously you can't have rules like "You can't pitch if you know how to actually pitch" and no one wants to get into a messy situation of evaluating individual players to place them at higher levels or split teams into skill divisions, but I feel like this is close to killing our rec organization. We didn't have enough players for a 15U team for the first time this year, and parents are starting to grumble about how it's not worth playing in this "Rec" league anymore if they allow pitchers like that. But I don't have the solution other than to take it on the chin and try to convince our girls they did a great job when they feel awful about not being able to catch up to a pitch.

Can somebody please explain df and dh rules in 11u travel ball….. Is it normal to sit the child for the whole game (no batting at all) and pitch them for 1 inning (and not play them at any other positions during the rest of the game)?

Looking for some tips/exercises to help my 10 year old daughter with her batting. I was a swimmer and have very little knowledge about softball and baseball so thank you for the advice!

My daughter is very strong and swings super hard, but tends to hit the ball “late” and it often goes foul down the first base line. Is there anything I can do to help her with timing and swing earlier (if that is the right thing)?

11 yo daughter moving from 10u to 12u after this season— she has come a long way with hitting. Fall season she would not swing at all. She may have swung once or twice in game and had trouble staying in the box. She was scared to strike out and scared of how fast (and erratic) some of the pitchers were. This spring she has mostly stayed in the box, swung a lot, and even had some hits! Two hits were shallowish outfield, a few were easy grounders, and a few infield pop flys. She can hit pretty well off a coach or parent or slower kid pitcher. Her dad and I do take her to the cages and just pitch to her but I’m hoping for some more drills for her to work on timing and just connecting.

She had a few hitting lessons and we plan to restart those when the instructor returns from a break. In the meantime, she wants to tryout for a 12u team and I know this will hold her back. Any suggestions to make it fun and meaningful?

They formed a new team out of all the new joiners. We can barely play the sport, so we lose all our games by double digits. It's demoralizing, and attendance is falling. How do I fix this?

Looking for perspective before I consider approaching our head coach. I want to make sure I'm not overreacting.

Background

I was an assistant coach for the last two seasons. I handled the lineup a lot, and my philosophy was simple: randomize it. My daughter batted first, last, and everywhere in between. Same for the head coach's daughter. We had a girl who got one hit all season, and she still rotated through the whole order. Same approach in the field. I didn't care if someone dropped half the balls at first and gave up extra bases. That's little league. That's development. The less-developed players don't improve when the coach's kid gets all the premium reps.

What I'm seeing this season

I'm not coaching this year, and I've been reading up on "Daddy Ball" because that's unfortunately what it looks like to me.

• Batting order: The head coach's and assistant coaches' kids all bat 1-5. Every single game. The remaining girls split into a middle group (played before, reasonably skilled) and a bottom group (newer players). The same 4 girls rotate through the middle, the same 3-4 rotate through the bottom. It hasn't changed all season.
• Pitching: Three girls account for over 80% of pitched innings. The HC's daughter has thrown close to 15 innings across 10 games. My daughter has thrown 1, despite consistently asking for the opportunity all season.
• Field positions: More developed players are never really asked to hold a weaker position. Less developed players don't get the higher value reps and actual development.

My read: the girls in the middle and bottom of the order are getting robbed of development. The middle group can handle more, and the bottom group needs more challenge. My daughter is in the middle group.

The question

For rec ball at the 8-9 year old level, specifically: is it reasonable to expect lineup variety and shared pitching opportunities? Or am I off base and this kind of structure is just the norm at this age? I'd half expect this in a travel ball setup, but in rec league it's leaving me sick after every game.

I want a grounding before I even think about raising this with the coach.

How would you handle a kid for 10U that wants to play catcher but absolutely can’t play the position? I feel like it’s unfair to my pitchers to allow her to do this for even 1 more inning because there is no target and the game comes to a screeching halt. Half the time she wouldn’t get out of her stance to get the ball that went behind her. She’s also at risk of injury in her set up because she kneels on both knees and has her body completely vertical, leaving her quads completely exposed

I have 2 capable catchers who live doing it so I feel it’s best to let them be the only catchers for the benefit of my pitcher, the entire team, and even the other team

I've been building softball analytics tools, and I just finished analyzing data from thousands of youth baseball games on GameChanger. What I found is that coaches are making evaluation decisions based on incomplete data. It's costing their players opportunities.

Here's the problem: When a coach looks at a box score, they see Anna went 2-for-4 (.500 average) and Vivian went 1-for-4 (.250 average). The coach thinks Anna had a better day. But here's what the box score doesn't tell you:

Anna faced three B-level pitchers and one decent arm. Vivian faced two really good pitchers and two mediocre ones.

Without that context, you're comparing completely different performances.

When I separated hitter performance by pitcher quality, the story changed dramatically.

Why this matters: If you're evaluating your players for travel teams, showcases, or just understanding who's actually performing, you HAVE to separate pitcher quality. Otherwise you're:

1. Overvaluing hitters who feast on weak pitching — they'll collapse against good teams
2. Undervaluing hitters who struggle only against elite arms — they'll dominate in most games
3. Making roster decisions on noise, not signal

The flip side (and this is equally important):

Why this matters for pitchers: If you're deciding whether a pitcher is "good" or "needs work," you have to know: Against what quality of hitters? A pitcher who dominates weak hitters might get shelled by strong teams. You need to see both to make real decisions.

Most youth coaches don't separate this data. They look at raw stats and make decisions. But if you actually want to know who your best players are — and predict how they'll perform against better competition — you HAVE to isolate pitcher quality for hitters and batter quality for pitchers.

This is why I started building OnBaseIQ. Not to replace batting average, but to add context TO batting average. Because stats without context are just noise.

Curious how many coaches actually dig into this. If so how they are doing it.

Hi all my daughter 11u plays for an ok A level team. They have a handful of capable pitchers including my daughter. 3 of the other pitchers are coaches kids and the two others are originals on the team we joined this year. Compared to most teams we are blessed,but this depth means my daughter doesn’t get many opportunities to pitch in game. She is an excellent 1b and hitter that plays nearly every inning. It’s pretty clear she’s burnt out and flat out bored with 1b as the team doesn’t use advanced fielding techniques with her. She doesn’t field bunts and 2b doesn’t cover on balls near her so she’s frustrated playing the game the little kid way instead of the big girl way she’s been working on the past two seasons. The last 3 tournaments she has been warmed up pre game, but never used and this week I think it finally broke her spirit after watching her teammates struggle. She is basically stuck in the mindset she’s not good enough to pitch since her coaches choose to go with others that get lit up. I’m out of pep talks as the coaches keep letting her down. She throws hard low 50s, gets the change up over. She has great movement that her travel catchers struggle to handle since the lack of reps keeps the movement unfamiliar and frankly the team is weak at that position. We signed her up for Little League hoping she would get a chance to gain confidence with the reps, but she was deemed too dangerous (throws too hard, hits too hard, team didn’t have a catcher that could hang on to her fastball) to play majors and asked to move up to juniors where first game she had 9ks over 3 innings with 5 walks as she’s trying to adjust to the 43 feet. The LL team thinks she’s the best pitcher in the district at 12 years old, but doesn’t understand the 40-43 foot difference and how we see this as skipping the necessary development phase. There are travel teams offering to take her on and give her pitching opportunities, but this would mean stepping down from our A level team. My wife and I are torn on how to handle this as she doesn’t want to keep team hopping year after year. My concern is the lack of game reps year round will slow down her development and cause her to lose that edge a pitcher needs. Has anyone had experience with a player that excels at their regular position, but needs more time to develop in the circle?