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.

91MD literally has a practice team (and I'm almost certain, but can't quite guarantee, that MadLax does as well). It works like this, your kid makes 91, gets the famous schwag bag, and quickly gets wrapped up in his new identity as a 91 player (which is good marketing honestly). Many parents go ahead and pay the full $1900 fees for the year. After the first practice (there are only a few each fall), coach sends out an email saying that he's got his eye on next spring and summer's competition and gosh, it just looks like some of the kids won't play, and need to be relegated to the 91 Practice Team for a few months so little Johnny can Hit The Wall.

And surprisingly very few of those parents flip out and pull their kid (one 2028 did, this past spring, and parents were pretty public about it).

To be fair to ML, 91 and others with this "practice team" nonsense, at least they are fairly transparent about it. I think it's a whole lot better than just showing up to a tournament and "Oh look there's 6 new middies, I guess my kid isn't playing this weekend?"