12 year old girls softball world series on ESPN

Bloods or crips?

 

Which one is the two sideways peace signs?

 

Damn, that's evil ... in a good way.

Seriously, here's a basic guideline: Prepubescent athletes should never be on TV with the exception of the world-class 16-year-old gymnasts and figure skaters whose eating disorders are keeping them from growing up. How many thousands of dollars would American families save each year if they weren't trucking their kids all over the country for "national championships" that mean nothing and tell you next to nothing about your kids' athletic prospects?

 

And when there's enough interest to keep the regional finals running on ESPN, it seems like a lot of spitting against the wind to complain about the LLWS being televised.

 

Yeah, gotta watch those kids' soccer teams when they pull stuff like that.

 

I have never understood the sense of entitlement that parents feel about coverage of their kids sports in the local media. When my daughter played little league softball, the editor of the paper made it perfectly clear to the league's coaches, parents, and administrators that while she would love to cover these things but she just didn't have the staff to pull it off. If scores were provided, however, she would run them. she also said that short short gamers would be OK (4 or 5 lines max). I wrote them for our team, no one else would and she eventually had to stop running what I gave her because people were (his really happened) complaining that "the Tigers were getting all the coverage".

Fast forward to now, my kid is going to be a freshman pitcher at a college 6 hours from home. I can't fathom why anyone besides her family would care how she is doing. She is not a superstud (she'll play at a D II) and would never expect anyone at the paper to give a rats ass. Why should they?


Jeez...the stuff you guys have to put up with. Amazing.

 

Believe me, I'm coated in my own spittle at this point. The fact that this shit is popular doesn't make it any less revolting.

 

That was my suggestion when I was a prep writer. One day, before the start of every seaosn, we run the rosters of every team in our area (about 20) and run two team photos on the agate page every week. That way, no one can ever complain their daughters/sons weren't in the paper at least once.

My editor told me to shut up and get back to work.

 

I love covering Little League in the summer. 5:30 start, done by 6:45, great weather to be outside and watching people really enjoy themselves and the game is great.

It becomes a hassle when every parent of every team wants every kid mentioned, but I'm telling you, I'd rather cover the 12-year-olds than the 17-, 18- and 19-year-olds.

And, yes, I watch the LLWS on ESPN. I love baseball and most of the teams playing at that level are pretty darn good. It's fun to watch and I'm not embarrassed about it.

That said, I wouldn't watch softball on TV unless Jenny Finch or that pitcher whose sister dropped some homophobic slurs on her MySpace page was pitching.

 

Sometimes when AAU parent calls me about some national tournament, I always am tempted to tell them "Congratulations sucker. You paid the enormous entry fee and they gave you a trophy for it."

 

So what was the deal with those masks the Tennessee team was wearing? For a second I thought I was watching "Sugar and Spice". I didn't watch the telecast enough to get the explanation.

 

There definitely are a lot of fake "national'' championships, but there are some legitimate ones, as well. USA Volleyball runs a national tournament every year for boys and girls teams at all levels (I coach a team). It's where a good chunk of college recruiting goes on, so its actually worth it to the participants.

AAU also runs a volleyball national championship tournament, but, at least for boys volleyball, its almost total bull (not sure about girls). The only thing going for it is its held at Disney world, so teams can make a trip there.

One thing everyone should watch out for with teams telling you they "won their division'' at tournaments. At nearly every big volleyball tournament, teams all start out the same, go through several rounds (and days at nationals) of pool play, then the teams are broken up into divisions of teams that have done comparably well. (Teams that keep coming out first, or first and second, go into the gold division, teams that did well in the beginning, then were third against the toughest competition go into Silver Division, etc.)

So in a 64 team tournament, you might have 8 teams in Gold, 8 in Silver, and so on down to Bronze, Emerald, etc. At Nationals, they go Gold, Silver, Bronze, Flight 1, Flight 2, etc.
So a team that wins the Emerald Division probably actually finished like 41st in the tournament, and sucked it up against every good team they played. But you'll still get a parent/coach calling in and saying "my son's team finished first at nationals, when they really finished first in their crappy division.