tball hell

For those of you who haven't had kids in the rarefied air of children's organized sports, we've had our first official hellish entry into it. We signed both kids up for T-ball at a local non-profit t-ball/softball association. We had been told by many parents that it was a great organization and the coaches and games were low-key (no yelling or screaming coaches). We primarily wanted the kids to get the feel of being on a team, and to have FUN playing some T-ball. Simple, right?

We should have left the day we went to sign them up. There was no way of knowing before forking over $40 per child when they were going to practice, or when they would have games...just a vague..."oh we'll let you know in a couple of weeks." Oooookaaaaayyyyy. So about a month later we find out that kid no. 2 has practice on Friday evenings; and kid no. 1 has practice on Sat. mornings. Still okay, but we don't have any set schedule as to when the actual games are going to be. Then last week we get a call on Wed. informing us that our kids were going to be in a "tournament" sometime in the next two weekends, and oh, by the way, we need to pull our time volunteering in the concession stand during the tournament, one stint each for each of the kids teams.

The Reenactor did his stint last Friday night. It was supposed to be for an hour and a half; he ended up staying over three hours. The kicker to this was that at some point in the evening one of the association "honchos" came in and started barking at all the volunteers about how they were doing things wrong. For those of you who know The Reenactor, you can well imagine how much this was appreciated.

Sat. a.m. kid no. 2 had his "game" which we were told would be strictly held to 80 minutes, and no score would be kept. I had a previous commitment that both kids were supposed to attend that day, so I took kid No. 1 to that, and showed up in what should have been the last 20 minutes of No. 2's game to watch him play...but that strict 80 minutes somehow went to nearly two hours. Now think about this....No. 2 is a preschooler. How well do you think a bunch of preschoolers did with standing in the hot midday sun for 2 hours?

We finally got a message last night containing the "official" schedule for NO.2's upcoming games. Of the ten games scheduled, nearly half are 8:30 P.M. games. As in a half-hour past his bedtime. Another two are 6:30 p.m. games...which means even if they DO stick to the "strict" 80-minute rule we will still be doing good to get home for a reasonable bedtime.

We don't even have the schedule for No. 1's games, although her coach has it. He says we can see it this weekend.

My "slacker mom" instincts are kicking into high gear at this point. What started out as us wanting our kids to have some quality playtime enjoying a sport they both like with other kids, has turned into scheduling hell. We're probably going to yank them from the program and just get them together with the children of our friends...who are also pissed about all this...to play an occasional game.

My message to anyone who is responsible for organizing this sort of activity...PLEASE take into consideration that young children need to be home at a reasonable hour, and so do their parents or caretakers. There is simply no reason this had to be so disorganized or confusing.

And here's the really sad part to me. Both kids are actually good at this sport. We love to watch them play because they seem to have some natural talent for it...and they are enjoying it. Both of them have good coaches too...and it is so nice that they are clearly doing the coaching to allow all the kids just to enjoy it. But the umbrella organization seems to be on some sort of power trip to make this a much bigger thing than it needs to be. This ain't The Show, people...it's tball.