The Good, Bad and Ugly of the Draft

Last night was the draft for the in-town softball league.  In theory, it's supposed to allow for relatively even teams.  It doesn't always work out that way.  The biggest obstacle is the seeding of the coaches' kids.  The age director does that, with minimal input from the coaches.  Overall, it's probably balances out, so no one complains too much, but looking at individual rankings could drive you nuts.  The teams with more 3rd grade parents as coaches were penalized by having their girls ranked higher than they should be.  This eliminated some of their early round picks and they ended up with a skewed roster (when looking at number of 3rd vs 4th grade players).  My team ended up right on balance based on the relative numbers (5 3rd graders and 7 4th graders), but my team has four coaches and we are split between 3rd and 4th graders (2 & 3, respectively).  One team (age director) has 11 4th graders and 1 3rd (The undisputed top 3rd grader).

As the draft snakes through the order (1-6, 6-1, 1-6, etc), we had pick number 6 & 7.  I intended to take the best player available and my girls best friend (she's probably the 8-12th best, so not a stretch).  I didn't get a chance to select her as she was taken by the 4th pick as that coach tried to select kids that his daughter knew from school.  I can't blame his reasoning, since it was the similar to my thinking, but he definitely left stronger players on the table.  He offered to trade if I was willing to give up S for her (half-jokingly).

The end of the draft is always tough.  The girls that have been skipped over become a game of picking the least amount of trouble.  Six of the last 7 girls were 4th graders.  A combination of weak skills or prior experience with them kept them on the board until there was nothing left.  The final player probably would have ranked in the top 12-15 if she had shown up for the tryout.  But that is the key issue with her.  She misses practices and games regularly and when she's there, she can't focus on the game.  She absorbs at least half the time of a coach.  This puts more work on all the other coaches.  If she's attentive, that team just picked up the steal of the draft.

Games start next week.