Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
The magic number is 18 to play and to have 20+ to practice with the parents of the extra players being notified their children will not be going to games unless absence or injury demand it. No one does it like this.

Nor would anyone, I don't think. I wouldn't pay fees and schlep to all of the practices and risk never playing games. I get that you might get good coaching and competition in practices, but going to tournaments with your team is part of the fun and playing in live games is an important learning experience in itself.

There was a discussion on here a while back about AA teams having poles that could play with elite teams -- I think part of the reason is that most (though certainly not all) parents whose kid is the 5th best pole on an elite team but barely plays would prefer to move down a notch or two if it means that your kid gets to play significantly more minutes. So you end up with kids who are good enough to make elite rosters spreading out over time.

Lots of people would and do. Madlax does it every season except for HoCo season. They have 2 rosters with multiple names on both rosters. They tell the parents they can come to a tournament or not but playing time isn't guaranteed. Next Level has a roster with 31 players. Their bottom 5-6 players never see the field in a tournament much less a single game. Same goes with Crabs as all their teams, younger ones included, regularly have 25 kids and they don't see the field. If your roster has more than 20, you are schlepping for your kid to play about 2-3 minutes a game.

A better way is to have 20 kids and the number over 20 pay less and are told up front more fees are expected if their kid makes a tournament team. But Madlax and Next Level and many more stuff the rosters with as many players as possible. If you are a lower MoCo player or NoVa player, you accept that reality or go play with a team who might win 10 games in an entire year.

Madlax 2028 currently has 21 kids on the roster, and that is the highest it has ever been. It’s usually running right at 18-19. One of the 21 is a TX kid that plays occasionally during the summer, so it’s really 20.