And now it's time for the Daily Rant!

My rant today concerns kid's games. Yesterday both Genevieve and Audrey played in a softball tournament. This was no a ASA sanctioned tourney it was something called UTRIP. There were only 3 teams in this tournament.
I am 100% for kids playing sports I think it teaches them great life lessons about sportsmanship, following directions and rules and being part of something bigger than themselves. However, it is important that while they are learning those things they don't also get taught lessons about defeatism and hopelessness.
Both of the teams they played yesterday were teams that had beaten the pants off us all season long. And the girls know it. Some of them even said they didn't want to play because they didn't have a shot. Our little girls were just starting to get some confidence built up, they had a taste of winning a few and being successful and then this came along.
First of all we barely had enough girls to field a team. In UTRIP you bat through your batting order unless you get 3 outs first. And there's no run rule. Let's do the math: a team with 12 or 14 girls VS a team with 8 or 9 girls. Big team bats through it's order and scores 9 runs, little team scores a couple of runs and gets 3 outs. Big team back up to bat at the top of the order and the same scenario happens over and over again.
Then you factor in the situation where the umps calling the games didn't even understand the rules themselves. Two times in the only close game we had our batters drove balls right back at the pitcher and he could not react fast enough and the balls hit him. Dead balls? Should have been - just the same as if a ball had hit the umpire. But no.........batter out! So the batter is penalized for getting a hit. We might not have won this game but until this point it was a close and interesting game to watch.
I am further against teaching kids one set of rules such as hit the ball and run till someone tells you to stop, and then asking them to run base to base and stop if they are ahead of an inferior team. Mixed messages anyone - these are not adults they don't have the reasoning faculties to fully understand the why. Also in ASA softball there IS a run rule so what does it matter how quickly they get them. And let us consider for a moment the inferior team who has to realize they are being patronized for being a weaker team.