playing time

...kids "police" their own...its amazing how much more influence those kids that are working hard, as you say, have on the lazy ones than the coaches...if they miss practice 2 days (we only practice 4 days) they dont play..league rules...and we constantly preach about the ones that practice everyday will play the most..and we abide by that...we substitute freely in the 2nd half, and those kids that are ready, we use...no science project here....kids know whats what...we deal with this thing all the time, and i think, handle it as well as we can......yes, they keep records....we play a 6 game regular season, then a round robin playoff...so, even the team with the worst record has a chance to pull off an upset...and they have a championship game....we won it last year, the kids got plaques...but, the league wants us to stress "fun"...and learning....and to keep it as simple as possible, and we do....thats our job....we do everything we can to teach them all they need to learn...so they WILL be ready for the next level...cuz up there, if they dont do the job, they ride the pines...no playing time promises.....and how you described your league, for the $65.00...same as us...its drop the kid off, and let us deal with them...alot of them come from broken homes...mom drops them off, dad picks them up....or vice versa....alot of times, its the parents idea that theyre there, not theirs....we work them all hard, we treat them all equal, and we do the best we can...its real easy to forget they re only little kids..even if they re 6ft tall and weigh 250 lbs..!!!!!