Part 3 brings up a new topic for discussion. Every week as we prepare the topics for our Everything Fastpitch podcast I look through a bunch of fastpitch discussion groups on Facebook and one thing is very clear.
3. Too many teams!
You’ve all seen the posts about a great team looking for one or two or three more players to fill out our outstanding roster. Usually looking for stud pitchers or catchers but not always. But one thing is very clear, there are a lot of teams looking for players. And I mean teams of all levels and all ages are all looking for more players.
What’s the problem you say? Well, it’s a little complicated but, as we’ve discussed recently on Everything Fastpitch, when you are constantly looking for players or need to continually pick up players to get through each tournament, do you really have a team? To my way of thinking the fact that so many teams are looking for players in a time where we clearly have more players than ever playing the game is pretty strong evidence that a problem does exist.
On one hand I think it’s amazing that so many people are willing to take of the responsibility of creating a team. That so many people are willing to sacrifice their time, effort and often money, to create opportunities should be a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, though it’s apparent that these good intentions are contributing to the problem of so many teams needing more players. Just think of how many teams could fill their roster needs if 10% of the teams looking for players decided to scrap their team and put those players into the pool of players that could fill out the other needy teams.
We all know of the teams that are created because a player or parent feels they need a better opportunity so they gather up a small nucleus of players and start shopping to complete their rosters. So just one piece of advice, if you are starting a new team with a solid core group of 3 or 4 players, be prepared to spend a great deal of time looking for players. It might all work out but, my guess is, the long list of teams I see on Facebook every week thought it was all going to work out too!
Shoppers beware!
Comments? Questions? Suggestions?
