LLWS

[GCPRO]

One of the many plusses from playing on fields with short base distances is that you have to learn to be great at fielding ground balls. There is no room for error there. Basically catch and throw. The kid from the Nashville team put on a clinic. Work with high school kids non-stop on the footwork for that dynamic. Kids from LL have it down at 12.

I agree with your comment about the fielding. it was incredibly fundamental. I was really impressed with all the teams' fielding.

 

[14Red]

Just to be clear, the local Little Leagues pay their umpires. It is the rare umpire that wants to go to Williamsport that does not receive any money while umpiring games. That is their carrot as well as knowing they are helping a community non-profit succeed. In my 15 years being involved with Little League, Kelly Dine is the only umpire that I remember not taking any pay from Little League. She was a great volunteer and the leagues that she worked in were lucky to have her.

Coaches never get paid in Little League opposed to the Summer Ball coaches that are making a healthy sum of money while no guarantee of being any more qualified.

Just watched a "new" travel softball coach who has never coached before raid an excellent community team with ridiculous claims of improving the girls' skills. Get paid $5000 to coach with no experience. It happens waaayy more than people think in travel sports. And when the team fails to be as successful as the coach had claimed, guess who is to blame...the players. Time to get better players.

Little League is not perfect but I think their philosophy is better for the health of the sport versus the travel ball circuit.

Yes, I know very few if any local little leagues who get umpires to work for nothing. Actually the pay has got pretty good for many leagues and tournaments because they have to to get ANYBODY to do it. I think the LLWS model works pretty good because you see that the coaches (coached or not) NEVER disagree with calls. They are model citizens and with mound visits they never say anything disparaging to a kid or umpire. Now this is FAR FAR from the real world where you routinely have coach/ umpire confrontations and that generally brings fans into it.

I've always said the biggest influence on the fans is the coach. If the the coach gets emotional and yells, the fans (parents) are right behind him.

Youth sports is a huge industry. Many people have enough discretionary income to pay unproven coaches the going rate. Look at club volleyball and AAU programs who have multiple teams at every age group. These organizations shy away from having parent coaches just to take the nepotism stigma away. However, when the coach is more about the money than development, there are issues. Parent coaches generally have more of a sense of developing players, especially their own kid.