Always finding new ways to cheat…

I’ve seen too much of this lately, so I’m calling it out.

Here’s what’s happening far too often: organizations with multiple teams at each age level basically swapping rosters between their A team and B team just to get tournament bids. At 10u. And I’m not talking about 1 or 2 fill in players because kids are on vacation. I’m talking about deliberate roster manipulation.

It looks like this. An event requires teams to win some kind of a qualifier event in order to compete in their “World Series” later in the summer. You have several event opportunities to make this happen. So if an organization has 2 teams at an age level, and the A team qualifies early on, they want their B team to get a bid as well. Having no faith that their B team can actually do this legitimately, the organization enters the B team in a qualifier, but stacks the roster with A team players, who conveniently happen to have an off weekend.... “B” Team wins and qualifies.

Here’s why they do this.

Now this organization can say “We have 2 teams going to the World Series!” It’s a PR move to get more kids at tryouts and more good press.

What does this say to the A team players? It’s not cheating…it’s just “helping” your organization. What does it say to the B team players? You’re not good enough to get the seat at the table on your own, so we took care of it for you. Have fun at the World Series.

This is 10u baseball, folks. This is literally DIRT on my diamonds.