Last weekend 2B and I were out at the field hitting, and after 3 buckets of balls, another dad and his son showed up and wanted to share the field. We didn't know them, but my arm was dead so, great! Anyway, turns out that this kid is a JV pitcher from one of the local HS teams. Freshman. His dad told me that he had been offered the opportunity to join the varsity team for the playoffs, but had declined because the varsity team is "advanced rec ball." I know the team didn't have a great season, but I think they are a pretty young team having lost 12 seniors a couple of years ago, and had some other players transfer. I am somewhat befuddled because, well, if varsity is that bad, what does that say about JV?
I have been mulling this over for the last couple of days. It seems to me to be a good thing for a JV player to be called up to varsity. And at the end of the season, the player is not losing playing time on JV, plus the extra practice time with varsity is almost always beneficial. The summer season won't start for another couple of weeks, so I can't figure out the problem. Even if the JV player has an injury, it seems to me that they still might want to put on the varsity uniform for the last few games.
Are there legitimate reasons to decline the call-up?
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