Friday, May 13, 2022

Youth Softball

My granddaughter (age 11) is pitching tonight for at least a little bit.  She has been catcher a fair bit this season as well.  If you have watched much girls' softball, you will know that those are the only two positions that do much of anything at that age.  Maybe 1B a little. Genetically, we are not athletes in this family.  The two Romanians we adopted were actually good at soccer and one even worked at it. Son #2 worked like a dog to be good at basketball even though he was short and slow, and was able to make the highschool team, played intramural,  and hung on playing adult leagues for a few years after.  He coaches young players now, and he can have it as far as I'm concerned.  I was a terrible coach myself. I thought, given my 70's college psych training, that the key was to treat the girls the same way you would treat the boys.  This is untrue. Several of the girls still talk about it 25 years later.

The 11 y/o's father drinks very little, but is thinking there might be money made in selling booze secretly at the games, because it's just painful to watch. Parents would line up, he thinks. There is usually one girl per team who is really good, and the rest are unbearable.  (With boys it is more like 3-4 per team with the rest unbearable.) However, they do seem to have this team bonding thing going on, which is all to the good to my mind.  It's what holds society together as they grow.  However, I also worry that it can go south in a flash beginning around age 13, and there are only a few coaches of either sex who handle it well.  Not me. I consider that the third circle of hell now.

6 comments:

Donna B. said...

eh... don't get me started on youth sports. It's travel volleyball that currently has me gritting my teeth.

james said...

3rd circle: Freezing mud?

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I picked that at random, not from Dante's list. But it fits.

Grim said...

"I thought, given my 70's college psych training, that the key was to treat the girls the same way you would treat the boys. This is untrue. Several of the girls still talk about it 25 years later."

What do they say?

Assistant Village Idiot said...

How much I hurt their feelings but they were afraid to tell me.

Sample line: "You hedgehogs! You need to get back there and help her!" This was unendurable. Boys would instead laugh at being called hedgehogs.

Texan99 said...

Good grief. I suppose they had no idea how much they needed to learn to grow a little bark, so they wouldn't enter the adult working world expecting everyone to avoid hurting their feelings, and therefore completely incapable of being a productive team member instead of an emotional sinkhole. I know women who to this day have absolutely no idea how to broach the idea of getting a raise, or how to make a case for why granting the raise will be advantageous for the boss, not just for her personal needs.

9/10ths of the complaints I hear about gender pay inequality can be traced to this problem. Guys typically are taught not to sit around waiting in resentment until someone notices their special specialness and rewards them for it.