Coach, I agree. A little perspective would have been nice. I'm going to talk about one school in particular without mentioning any names, and look for the opportunities to use a little perspective.
The preseason tournament comes around and a usually strong hs team is missing a handful of premier players. The coach has a roster of 20 players, including some older players that have been on JV for a couple of years. Does the coach:
A) See the opportunity to get the older players that he himself has developed over the last few years some valuable playing time? (development does happen in hs right?)
B) Realize he won't have his strongest team available and use the weekend as a scouting venture while playing other good teams and watching a coastal rival that will have almost all of their better players?
C) Enjoy the weekend with the kids that are there after setting the tone in the weeks prior that this will be a memory for some of those kids that were going to sit on the bench for 90% of the season anyway.
D) None of the above, and instead give people the impression that the preseason trophy that is at stake is the biggest deal in the world and punish kids with unnecessary fitness in a season that will have them playing 25+ games in less than 3 months. By the way, on this note, I almost didn't mention that if this group had all their players they probably would have played 5 games in 3 days this past weekend (do your own research on what a good idea that is) and then scheduled a game for Monday night! It was a real competitive game that was great for player development, by the way, that was won 8-0. To my knowledge, not even the team that was 'forced' to play in 3 leagues at the same time ever came close to playing 6 games in 4 days. Yet somehow it's now perfectly fine to do that?
