Little League Days

and you get to see me on a fairly regular basis... in fact i think our teams face each other this week.

 

A bonus

We are not very good, but here is the funny thing; most of our players have no idea if we lost or not.

 

My son is coaching his first Pony team along with two other Ragsdale players.

 

Ah, the fine art of sandbagging. Braves practices this fine art even at the Little League level.

 

what are ages? mound? bases? Did PONY replace LL?

 

negative Stretchy!

Old school LL was going to McD's for a small the simple burger the small frie and the small Coke! Pizza is new schooooooool!

 

54', 80' dimensions. Age group is 13-14. My son and the other 2 coaches are 16. They play for Ragsdale. It's time they start giving back to the game. They had their first practice tonight. the kids wer fired up. We had parenst showing up at our practice wanting to know how they could get on the boys team. I think they'll have fun.

PONY baseball stands for Protecting Our Nations Youth. We do not have Little League in Greensboro or Jamestown, where we live. The big difference between LL and PONY is in PONY you start leading off at 9 and pitchers have to hold runners on. 2 scjhools of thought on that; the kifds learn bserunning but I think young pitchers should learn to throw strikes and not worry about a pick off move. The other big difference is LL is 9-12 years old where PNY has 2 year increments.
Shetland 5-6
Pinto 7-8
Mustang 9-10
Bronco 11-12
Pony 13-14
Colt 15-16
Palimino 17-18

Thay do have Little League in High Point and kernersville. However there are some stacked teams. Kids stay together for years. Coaches recruit. The program I put in is much different. Teams change each season. This way the kids meet new kids every year and make more friends. Plus, I don't want stacked teams. Coaches go to the draft and they do not have an assistant coach yet. I would have 4 guys walk in to the draft and their 4 sons would be the best players and they would claim they were coaching together. Now you walk in te room and all the kids are graded out. If your son grades out a 2nd round pick then your own son is your second round pick. And no, you can't pick your kid last. I had a dad try to skip his own son one year. If you want a good assistant coach, then pick his son.
Beginning at 9-10 we play all our games Mon.-Fri. We were losing too many kids to travel ball so we changed our schedules so you can do both.
We carry 11 kids maximum, we play free substitution and bat 10. You can play with 8 players and you can pick up a player from another team if needed but he must bat last and play outfield.

It may sound strange but it works and the league has grown from just under 600 kids to over 2200 playing all sports. Baseball has grown from 300 kids to over 900 in 8 years.

Both LL and PONY have their positives and their drawbacks.