Welcome Holt Jr. Rams Baseball Parents,
We are pleased to welcome back 130 players from last year and about 65 new players for us this season. Many of the new kids may be siblings of kids that have already played for Jr. Rams Baseball, but many are new and consequently there are many new families that are new to all of this! A big welcome to all of you!!
The teams have been formed and have now been posted on the www.hjrb.org website. These are still somewhat preliminary as each year a few kids drop out and we sometimes need to adjust the numbers. If a lot drop we may even need to eliminate a team and redistribute players. We hope this doesn’t happen but has in the past.
As we sit right now,
- We have four U14 teams (Three Tier-2 and one Tier-1.) Two of these teams will play in a U13 division.
- We will have five U12 teams (Three Tier-2 and two Tier-1 teams)
- And we will have seven U10 teams again (one Tier-2 and six Tier-1 teams).
Just to recap our process. The HJRB Board of Directors met to assemble the teams. The evaluation scores were used to group the boys by skill level. We play in the Mid-Michigan PONY League and there are various skill levels/divisions from A – G with Division A being the toughest. In order to compete in these various divisions we need to assemble teams the same way. We cannot group kids based on friend requests, the school they attend, or randomly. We absolutely can’t do a draft (or spread the talent) as that would result in all our teams having some kids that are exceptional, some that are middle of the road, and some that are still learning the basics. We need to build our “A” teams, then “B” teams, etc., in order to compete in the respective PONY divisions. This also matches the kids up with other kids of similar skill level so there isn’t a wide disparity of ability. We want all the boys to have a chance to win some games, improve their skills, and have fun. We try our best to assemble the teams for this purpose and try to get them in the appropriate division so they play against kids of equivalent skills. We don’t want teams that get squashed every game, and on the flip side, we don’t want our teams to be in a division where they blowout all the other teams. We want good quality match-ups and that is what we will try to accomplish; the goal is to have fun and continuously improve.
Tier-2 teams play in four tournaments, have indoor practice that starts in March, and usually practice a lot more. These teams require a lot of time commitment from the kids and parents. We build as many as we can as long as we feel they will be able to compete at a higher level. Not all kids that wanted to play on a Tier-2 team were able to be placed on one. In this case they were placed on a Tier-1 team that best matched their score.
Player fees will be due March 1st. The website is ready yet for payment but will be by tomorrow and I will send an email when it is.
A big thank-you to the Holt High School baseball coaches headed up by Nate Potts, varsity head coach, for their help in running the player evaluations. The process they use is very similar to what your boy will see if he ends up trying out for high school ball.
To checkout the teams, go to the website and go to the TEAMS tab. For privacy purposes for our kids, a simple registration process may be required to prove you have a kid in our program.
Thanks,
Brian Kayser, President
Holt Jr. Rams Baseball
www.hjrb.org
