Teenage Divisions

The Little League Rulebook lays out the age rules for divisions in Regulation I(a). This is meant to be the maximum age range permitted for flexibility, but leagues are allowed and encouraged to narrow these as they see fit. There are lots of good ways to do this, based on the needs and desires of your league.

This document focuses on the teenage divisions above Majors, and a separate document focuses on the younger divisions.

D52 makes the following suggestions:

1. Keep all 12s in Majors.

2. Bring all 13s and 14s into the D52 Juniors 54/80 division, and skip Intermediate 50/70.

3. Run a Seniors league for strong 14s who want to play 60/90, along with 15s and 16s, if your town doesn’t have another league for this.

4. Unlike the younger divisions which feature overlapping age ranges, we find players at this age are focused on playing with their friends and so we prefer to keep the age groups together as much as possible.

JUNIORS 54/80

For most leagues, we suggest that, outside of extreme exceptions, all players play in Majors at age 12. We then offer a district-wide Juniors division which plays at a field side of 54/80 for age 13 and 14. We strongly believe this is the best path for almost all kids. Playing 50/70 at age 13 is not desirable for most players, and we find the field size just too small at that age, and this distorts the game in a number of ways. Similarly, we find that 60/90 at age 13 is also not desirable for most players, as the field is too big. Players learn better and advance faster when playing on a right-sized field. 54/80 plays as the best size between 46/60 and 60/90. Almost all travel/tournament programs play 54/80 at age 13, and matching this is appealing to players who may be playing some tournaments during the season, or using the Little League season to prepare for summer tournaments. When we moved our post-Majors focus from Intermediate 50/70 to Juniors 54/80 we saw a dramatic rise in interest from players.

Another reason we prefer Juniors at 54/80 for 13’s is we can build a 2-year division. 14’s are not allowed to play Intermediate 50/70. Having all the 13s in one division and all the 14s in another division does not work as well as pooling the two age groups together and forming balanced teams. This allows us to build a division to focus on all the players in Middle School / Junior High and not leave some out. (Indeed, that’s why it’s called Juniors.)

SENIORS 60/90

For those kids aged 14 who feel ready to move on from Juniors, and for kids aged 15 and 16, leagues should field 60/90 teams. Some leagues have recreational 60/90 programs in their town, and if you do we suggest partnering with and supporting those programs. In D52, this is primarily Babe Ruth, but note those programs end at age 15. We have seen some of those players come back to LL for their age 16 year.

We are just beginning to re-develop a D52 Seniors program. Leagues with strong Juniors programs should consider joining in. While the Juniors schedule will feel very much like Majors (2 games per week, one weekday and one weekend) with all games within D52, Seniors will be less predictable and likely involve some weekend games in neighboring districts on the peninsula. Most or all games are weekend-only. For that reason we’ve had 14’s who would love to play Seniors just stick in Juniors because it works better schedule-wise for them. However, a benefit of this for high-school aged teams is we can better adapt the season plan to the team’s needs. Only 6 games are needed to qualify for all-stars!

Some Seniors teams are primarily kids not in high school baseball (either by choice or by cut) and want to play a traditional LL season beginning in March, and some Seniors teams are primarily kids who are in high school baseball or want a post-high-school short season starting mid-May and then in quickly into all-stars. We have several ways to accommodate a mix of this depending on what the players want. One way to do this is to play a short Mar-May season, then rebuild teams and do a second May-June season. Or, keep the same teams throughout but the number of opponents may grow for the second half.

While Seniors grows, merging leagues for Seniors is a good way to start your league’s involvement without running a full program.

INTERMEDIATE 50/70

If you have a strong desire for Intermediate 50/70, here are a few alternatives to consider. The most common set-up outside of D52 is to make Intermediate a 13-only division and make Juniors a 14-only division. We believe this is the worst option, and will lead to two weak divisions.

If you really want to play 50/70, we recommend playing Intermediate as a replacement for Majors. This means all 10s will stay in Minors, and all 12s will play 50/70. If you do this, we suggest you still encourage almost all 13 year olds to play Juniors. This structure is uncommon in the Bay Area but is done more often on the East Coast.

ALL-STARS

Little League has now fully decoupled All-Stars from the regular season division. Kids can play in any all-star tournament for which they are age-eligible no matter what they played in the regular season. And, if you hope to go far in All-Stars your team should really be made up primarily or exclusively of the top age for each tournament.

For 13’s moving down from Juniors 54/80 to Intermediate 50/70, we find they are able to adapt quickly and play very well. For 14’s, some will be coming down from Seniors and be used to 60/90 and some will be coming up from Juniors and need to adapt.