LL vs Pony

I serve as president of a local youth baseball association that has an official little league program and then jumps to Pony and Colt. The problem I have is that most programs in this area play Pony rules from the start. When our 12 year olds jump into Pony they are shocked by the jump in both the pitching distance and base distances. I've tried to convince our members to change but the "old school" mentality is hard to overcome.

Truth told, my heart and passion is in travel baseball. I've been going outside LL with my son's group for 3 years now and the kids have grown by leaps and bounds. I will caution anyone who attempts this, especially LL officers, the backlash will be harsh.

My solution for this season was to create a third program within our association. We are calling it our Sunday Travel League. Our LL rec. schedule nows avoids Sunday play. We also avoid scheduling games on the day before and after a Sunday travel date to avoid overplaying our players. We invite select travel teams or other traveling all-star teams to our facility and/or travel ourselves to their home fields.
I'm hoping this does two things; creates an avenue for our best kids to play Major League rules every Sunday and to develop even more and secondly, it lessens the intensity level in our rec. league and puts more fun back into the games for the "not so serious" youth player. It's my hope that these second tier players will see more pitching time in rec. ball as our coaches plan to save the best for Sunday afternoons.
Note: A separate liability insurance was purchased to keep our LL players eligible for LL All-Stars.

I'm hopeful that this will work.