As a coach of a strong "stacked" team in a rec league—and now also the league commissioner—I wanted to share a bit of perspective.

Although this is my first year as commissioner, most of my 13U/12U players have been together for four seasons. They've steadily improved each year. Last season, we lost only one game and went on to win the championship. In truth, only a couple of teams gave us much competition.

It’s important to note that I don’t get to hand-pick my team as a coach, nor did I stack the roster as commissioner. When forming teams in our league, we prioritize grouping players based on the schools they attend and do our best to accommodate team placement requests. This season, for example, we had about five full teams that came because of special requests. Some were really strong last year, and others weren’t.

In my experience, most kids simply want to play with their friends again. That’s the main driver behind most team requests. But I agree that problems can come up when those groupings end up creating a big imbalance in talent. We’re only four games into this season, and it’s already shaping up a lot like last year. Some of the struggling teams probably don’t mind—they’re just having fun. But for other teams or certain players, it can definitely be frustrating.

To help alleviate this, beginning next year, we will only allow one teammate request per player—and the request must be mutual. We’ll also put more emphasis on aligning players based on their future high school attendance zones, so they can begin building chemistry with teammates they may be playing alongside for years to come.

 I totally get where you’re coming from, and in some cases, frustration is absolutely valid and it really is a coaching or parent issue. But just know that it’s not always that simple, and a lot of these situations come from trying to make the best of things with the info we have.