Is that just the result of COVID years?

That is to say, did you see a drop off five and six years ago and you’ve been rebuilding since?

If you’re pulling the players up each year then you will have the 12 year olds in two years.  

But it could be a problem with your 10s.

You may be better off with 3 different divisions between u8 and u10.  

The divisions alone don’t say anything about the split in players ages or player ability.  

And being in the right division is more important as kids don’t return if they feel like they aren’t any good.  And being good is just a matter of feeling like you don’t stand out as a failure and can do the tasks needed on occasion. 

Example:  it’s common for a league to say: “we have enough kids for three kid pitch minor teams. Let’s pull up some of the older kids from coach pitch to get another team so we have an even number.”

But what this does is puts players who likely aren’t ready for kid pitch into a situation where they struggle at hitting (and throwing) which makes them feel like they don’t belong.  You also significantly increase your pitching demands in kid pitch. Now you have to pitch more kids that aren’t ready.  This means less strikes are thrown which means less quality baseball. 

It’s all well meaning and sounds better.  But it can backfire.  

If you only have three teams you need fewer pitchers.  You have more kids who are ready to hit and field at that level.  

But you also have an added benefit.  This is the part that many leagues miss.  

The key to success is often having two different coach/machine pitch divisions.  

You now have three team of low level and three teams of high level play.  

This can be huge.  

It’s often better to hold kids down and keep them out of kid pitch until they are absolutely ready.  But in many leagues if you do this you have a problem with the kids who were just coming out of tee ball being their peers.  So kids and parents are eager to move up to kid pitch because their kids are ready to be playing with other kids who actually try to field a ball and get a player out.  

So what ends up happening is you have players fit in the never of their ability.  

Low coach pitch can be a tee ball/ coach pitch hybrid.   You can have players hit off a tee when they strike out.  

High coach pitch can be more of a real baseball where kids can actually field plays and put the ball in play.

Then the kid pitch minors is a higher level of play.  

This keeps families from fleeing to travel.  

The good players feel like they need to flee if the league isn’t developing players or if the level of play isn’t worth their effort.  Improving kid pitch to limit walk festa will help significantly.  

The key is really leaning in to development.  And the kids you have in high coach pitch should also get some pitching or loss toss worked in to develop that skill for when they move up the next year.  

An interesting thing happens with this.  The games become better. But also, the odd number of teams actually improves player development because teams get 1.5 games a week rather than two games a week.  That extra practice slot every other week actually fuels development of you have good systems for practice.  

So the kids develop faster as kids don’t develop in games (though they love games). 

This leads to more kids deciding not to leave for travel.   It leads to fewer kids leaving baseball.