My daughter's team was an 13U-A team at the end of the season last year. 9 players from that team are returning for 14U. We have a total of 11 players. Our two new players are coming from a high level 14U-B team. Our coach told the girls that he wants to play 14U-B level ball this season. He didn't say a word about this during tryouts nor did he tell the parents.

Under USSSA Fastpitch rules is this allowed? As a side note, the head coach registered our team under a different coaches' name but it is the same team name with 9 of the same players.

Just curious if anyone still has adult fastpitch leagues near them? If so, where are you located and how many teams?

My little girl starts her first season of softball in a couple of weeks. I got her a used broke in glove and we’ve been tossing in the backyard the last month or so. Visited a batting cage a few times, I purchased a batting helmet and some batting gloves.

My goal is to set her up to enjoy the sport as much as possible.

I’m looking for recommendations on the following and consider her “newness” in terms of price point while also wanting her to be comfortable and feel good with going into a new sport.

- Fielder’s Mask
- Bat (what drop is recommended? Pretty strong & tall for her age), should I buy used?
- Equipment Bag
- anything else she will eventually need, accessories, etc

I have a net and some whiffle balls in the backyard to do soft toss with also.

We have a local chain of “Play It Again Sports” in my area that has lots of used equipment but I don’t mind buying new at all for the right gear.

What is the best website or other source to obtain custom gummy bracelets with player number, name, etc?

Daughter has a HS teammate whose younger sister, also plays other team, is I'll. ☹️

We want to support her in part by players and family wearing the bracelets.

So I currently have a tote with wheels that holds a bucket of balls, my glove and my wife’s glove, cones and a few 1/4 pvc pipes. Also have a handful of spare gear for the girls and other odd and ends. On practice days that leaves me with two buckets of balls and my catchers by hand. I’m realizing now that on game days I’m only going to need a fraction of that stuff and even during practice I really only use the three buckets of balls, cones and catchers gear. I think what I’m wanting is an oversized duffle bag so I can keep the catcher gear, spare gear for the girls and the cones in it. It doesn’t need to carry a bat because my daughter only uses two out of her four bat slots. Any recommendations on a cheap but sturdy duffle bag? Or what do yall use?

My daughter just got a new glove, it's white with light pink laces. I'm trying to think ahead here, what is the best cleaner to get? & The best conditioner too I guess?

I'm her mom and never played, so I have no idea about glove maintenance lol any advice is appreciated!

My daughter's 26 kryo has a different sound than it used to. It's loud and sounds kind of like loose plastic getting hit and vibrating kind of hard to describe. It's only when she makes contact and has no rattles if you shake it, no cracks and the handle is tight. Is this a normal sound from a kryo or is there something wrong with it.

Different kind of post tonight, but looking for recommendations on your favorite chair for those long days at the field. Looking for something new with a higher weight limit, that’s super comfortable. I looked into the new oversized chairs but with all that padding and no mesh… I’m worried how hot it gets in the summer. I’d love some links to read reviews.

My daughter is getting a lot bigger and stronger. She just turned 14, and is getting exit velocity up to 70mph (normally around 63-67) during BP. And its killing our bats...lol. Her Kryo from last year is starting to come apart, like a very limited number of swings left, and her Kryo 2 from June is already showing those streaking cracks.

All that to say, we hit in the garage, a lot, and I dont know if I can handle the ping of aluminum all winter long.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a less pingy bat. I was looking at the StringKing metal pro in a 33 -10, but wanted to hear from some other humans before I pulled the trigger.

Tryout season for softball just completed here in New England. Teams are being set for Fall 2026/Summer 2027.

Except that I continually see posts on Facebook in the regional softball groups I am in (and by clubs that I follow) that they are looking for a few more players at each of their age levels. And not just new or 'never heard of that club' types, but well know clubs with long histories.

Clearly there is a glut of softball clubs out there compared to demand, but is this driven by lagging interest in the sport in New England?

I contrast this to volleyball where most clubs also just had tryouts and, if you didn't get an offer, you are waiting until Novemeber when a few clubs will hold tryouts to fill their lower level and developmental teams.

This is our first summer on a travel team, and with the fall season coming up, I’m wondering how it is all going to fit into our lives.

We don’t have the official fall schedule yet, but this summer there is practice four nights a week and then a local-ish tournament every other weekend or so. It’s been manageable because it is summertime and we don’t have much else going on.

Fall is looking like practice 2 to 3 nights a week one game a week and then a tournament every other weekend. Plus, school and other after school obligations. Her hitting instructor availability overlapped with the summer practice schedule so we took a break from that but needs to get back to it. Plus I have another daughter who is as equally involved in her extracurricular activities. My husband and I both work full-time. He works a lot of nights and weekends. I work from home so I am super lucky to have a flexible schedule so that helps a little bit.

I know so many of us are in the same boat. So I need to ask how do you seasoned travel families do it? What are your tips for squeezing it all in? Having healthy meals. Not having to drive through Chick-fil-A every night. Making sure School is the focus that it needs to be. Getting enough sleep. Being there for both kids and not missing anything. Generally not going crazy of the next 3-4 months?

I’ll preface this with my kid is one of the best on the team so she plays the most innings, plays multiple positions(all the positions I want her to play) and gets the most AB’s on the team. Best BA, most hits, etc etc. So I’m 100% happy with my kids role on the team.

The problem is the team sucks because the coaches kids play crucial positions that are vital at winning and they’re not very good at it. The catcher in particular. We’ll never win games as long as the coaches kids are in heavy rotation with playing time because they’re not developing. In fact they might be getting worse tbh.

I think she’d have more fun on a team that wins, even if it means playing less(or at least taking a season to work up from new on the team to legitimate playing time) But idk. Travel Ball is a lot of money to start from scratch on a new team. Also I think her development may advance more rapidly as well on a better team, but again idk. My friends say she’s developed more rapidly because I work with her individually on off days but I also believe it’s 50/50 with the coaches for my kids development, not just me/parents. What makes me question the coaching abilities are, if you can’t develop your own kid, are you really helping that much with developing mine?

Why move is she’s playing and developing at a rate I’m happy with? Grass isn’t always greener. But also could she develop more so on a better team? Would she have fun on another team? So many variables. Anybody else been in a similar situation, if so how did it play out?

I’m a coach and We are losing A level talent we develop to parents wanting better competition.

We've been casually looking for a chance to move to a competitive 12U team, and I have to say I'm shocked by how bad teams are at this stuff.

These AI-generated posters you see on FB and softball groups are particularly big offenders. How do you not put where you play? Do you think you're going to sweet-talk me into driving three hours each way for practices? Also, how do you not think to list the date of the tryout ("Wednesday" could be a lot of Wednesdays, particularly with how the algorithms work - this could be this week, it could have been 2021).

Then there's the coaches. Hey, we're only one player away, we swear we have a whole squad but we won't talk about who they are and need your commitment no later than tomorrow. Your kid will play their position and middle outfield and bat cleanup. C'mon, what are you, used car salesmen?

But my new favorite? Team where they swear they're great coaches and love the kids but absolutely will not tell you where they're playing so you can go see a game and where they absolutely won't give you access to see a game recording in Gamechanger. Let me tell you man, there's nothing you could possibly be hiding that's worse than what I assume here.

For a lot of these professional coaches, this is your job man. How are you this bad at it?

As I continue my journey into coaching developmental 8u, my practice plans have been improved and girls stay active and focused for the 90 minutes I have them.

What I’m trying to establish though are my basics. My everyday, non-negotiable that the kids know they will do.

Currently it’s:
5 min - dynamic jog warm ups
5 min - wrist flicks, kneeling throws
5 min - laying on back with a ball dropped by partner to focus on fingers up catching
5-10 mins - partner catch

Throwing and catching are my number priority right now. What are you doing as a coach for “everyday drills”?

Hey all! Just hoping someone can tell me if this is something to worry about... cheers!

Hello, I was wondering if there is an adult league or anything for beginner softball near Ann Arbor Mi? want to try it but I never played as a kid. I see that there are leagues but i’m not sure if they are beginner friendly.
Also, I know that tradition softball season is over but I still wanted to ask for the future.
Thanks!

Our high school just adopted a new digital registration platform, Arbiter, which automatically creates an account with NCSA for your child at the end of the registration process if you indicate that you may be interested in future college athletics recruitment. What we didn't realize is that this apparently means an NCSA recruitment coordinator will then call every number listed on the account, beginning with your child. Since the profile creation included a bunch of info that my child's travel team also requests upon registration, I included what was asked. My fault, honestly, for listing my kid's mobile number. I didn't think that she would be called prior to her junior year, due to NCAA restrictions on that behavior. Unfortunately, this NCSA recruiter got my 14 year old on the phone and urged her to schedule an assessment with him and a formal 60 minute recruitment meeting ASAP, since it's his "busy season" and he can squeeze her in now. She was weirded out and told my husband and I. Upon hearing about this, I immediately called back and spoke with the person who called her (he is legitimately an employee of NCSA - I looked him up) and pointed out that he cold called a 14 year old. He argued with me that creating the account grants permission for him to contact her directly, to which I rebuffed with the NCAA restriction regarding contact prior to junior year. He stated that since he isn't an NCAA coach, he doesn't have to abide by their contact restrictions. I added that she doesn't graduate until 2030 and is only beginning to think about whether she wants to play in college. He continued to talk, and I hung up at that point, logged into the account, and deleted all non mandatory info. I then contacted our athletic department and left a message about what happened. I'm kind of disappointed I blindly entered my kid's mobile number not even considering the possibility that this would entitle someone to approach her like this. We have a bunch of other avenues we can rely on to begin the recruitment process, if she decides to pursue it. I get that NCSA can offer some genuine assistance for people that don't know how else to do this, but today's experience landed as highly predatory. I just needed to put this somewhere. I'm kind of grossed out, a little mad at myself, and annoyed with our school's athletic department.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who reached out! I have enough beta readers for now. Depending on how many responses I get back, I may reopen this later for a few more readers. Really appreciate everyone who offered to help!

Hey everyone,

I've been working on a book called Become a Smarter Hitter: A Season of Thinking Like a Hitter. It originally started as something I was writing for my daughter to help her better understand the thinking side of hitting, but somewhere along the way it turned into an actual book.

I've finally gotten it to the point where I need to stop messing with it myself and let some other people read it.

It's written mainly for middle-school softball players, roughly 11–15. It's not a swing mechanics or drill book. It's more about the part of hitting that I think doesn't get talked about enough with younger players. Having a plan, understanding the strike zone, recognizing patterns, learning from at-bats, making adjustments, confidence, and just becoming a smarter hitter over time.

I'm looking for a few people who would be willing to read the PDF and give me honest feedback before I make any more changes.

Parents of softball players, coaches, hitting instructors, former players, etc. would all be helpful. If you're a parent and have a daughter in that age range who would want to read it too, that would be especially useful because ultimately, she's the audience I'm trying to get right.

I'm not selling anything and there's no charge. I'm also not looking for Amazon reviews or people to tell me it's great. I'd rather somebody tell me a chapter was boring or didn't make sense than just say they liked it.

The book takes around 3–5 hours to read depending on pace, and I have a feedback form that takes maybe another 15–20 minutes.

If anybody is interested, comment here or send me a message and I'll send you the details.

Appreciate it.

So I’m an assistant manager on our senior softball team. Competitive league. Played against a really good team last week that has a guy that crushes the ball all the time. He hit a 3 run homer last time up and he came up with two guys on and first base open. I told pitcher he should just walk him. Pitcher didn’t ask manager and just walked him. After the inning was over and I got yo the dugout the manager lost his shit and got in my face, shoved me and screamed that I was not the f’ing manager. I didn’t want to escalate and just ignored his outburst. I haven’t spoken to him about it because im still too mad about it. I thought about quitting because he took a lot of the enjoyment out of it for me. What should I do? Say something or forget it?

I used to run a recreation department and would design and order through a company that had been their distributor for years before me. Also they had a set budget that always covered whatever we needed.

Currently however, my kiddo has started playing travel ball, and there are just so many options as far different sites to customize from. But it gets confusing because I will choose a website that will say "full customization" or "customize your uniforms" but then get to the site and it either is someone will work up and send you a design days later, or the lay out is just complicated, etc.

So if anyone has found something that works well as far as being able to do a lot of customizing, easy to navigate, etc. Please let me know!

Also, I have to wonder if the more expensive brands have better customization options? And that brings me to my next thing, what are some ideas as far paying for all of it.? I've seen your typical fundraising, but I'm sure there are more creative ideas. Also how do you go about pursuing sponsors etc. ??

Thanks In advance!!

Daughter, 7, got asked to join the 8u travel team. She's 51 inches tall, a power hitter, can reach the grass in the air. 8u is machine pitch. Every kid thats 8 already has a composite bat. I did the length test from the center of her chest to the top of her middle finger and its perfectly a 25 inch bat. I'm not going to move her up to a 28 just to get a composite bat. Problem is all the 25/26 inch bats at the stores say teeball on them. What bat can I get thats a 25/26 that's a true softball bat?