playing up

I am not against t-ball. t-ball has its place. its alot of fun for kids.
In our LL kids are able to play up to machine pitch at 6yrs old providing that they have played 1 spring season of t-ball and evaluate to play in out 'A' divsion. It is not real hard to evaluate up.
So having a 5yr old (league age 6) kid on a machine pitch team is not a bad thing.
Now because of the size of our league (over 600 children) we break them up in to 'A' and 'AA' for machine pitch. the younger (6/7/8) in 'A' and the older (7/8/9) in 'AA'.
again we are a good sized league. If we were smaller I am sure that 6-9 would all play together again as it was 5-6 years back.

It is the coaches job to bring up the bottom 4 kids on the team so that they can play as well as the others.

Dont worry about batting averages, stats and standings of the players. Be concerned about smiles and attitude and enjoyment of the game for the palyers.

As a coach look for something special in each of your players. Work to mend mechanical flaws and create a positive attitude. Try to make each player successful in the game.