Reply #44: At one point in time

[Horse with no Name]

I thought our area was unique in this aspect.
Girls softball is HUGE here. They start playing when they are in kindergarten. There are summer leagues and fall leagues and now there are traveling leagues.
Some of these parents hire professional pitching coaches at the rate of $200 a day for these kids when they are in 2nd and 3rd grade to give them that extra edge.
And it is all about the draft. Whose team are you going to be on. Are you going to state? Are you an all-star?
My daughter was a pretty consistent player. Hit the ball 9 out of 10 times at bat, could field pretty decent, and had a natural pitching arm.
She was also left handed, so when some of these girls tired out, they would put my lefty in to finish the job. Consistently she did well but didn't pitch nearly as fast as some of the coached girls.
However, she wasn't a star player. Never griped when she didn't get playing time but always smiled and jumped in wherever she was needed. She was always highly drafted because of this.
As she got a little older, the competition got way too intense for us.
My daughter saw more and more of the bench. More and more of the pettiness, favoritism and bickering. She decided that she didn't want to do it anymore.
Many of these girls DID go on to play collegiate softball, however, all but one or two played past the first year. They had simply burned out.
When I finally had time to sit back and evaluate the situation, I think that living in an economically depressed area, parents looked for ways to send their kids to school. The smart ones could get academic scholarships, but the average ones could not. I think this was just a way for their kids to go to college. So many parents in our area perceive threats to their kids entire future when they sit on the bench.