9u Development Team

Chesapeake Chaos is forming a 9u Development Team that focuses on both team-based and individual skill development. We believe practice is where true learning and improvement happen. Practice develops, games reinforce!

For every competitive event a player participates in, we believe they should have at least three instructional practices. This philosophy aligns with USA Baseball’s Long-Term Athlete Development Plan. While the weekly practice-to-game ratio will differ from what families may be used to with their recreational or travel teams, our Development Team strives to reach this 3-to-1 goal.

This team will be entering their 9u season in Fall 2026 which will be their first season having to pitch and face other kids pitching. We must develop pitching and catching before we can play games. The ultimate goal is to have 12 players who can pitch, while we will not wait for that point before we play a game, we are not willing to put players on the mound in a game if they are not comfortable. Pitching is hard, these kids are competitive, and learning to handle failure is going to be a huge skill to develop. We will also be tracking pitch counts in both practice and games and adhering to a pitch limit schedule as well.

Our game scheduling philosophy is simple, no more than one tournament per month, no exceptions. Our goal for games is that we will not play on back-to-back weekends. This fall we expect that we will play in only 1 tournament at the end of the season. We will also setup a few games or doubleheaders as well, but most of the focus will be on developing our skills, especially learning how to pitch.

Tryouts will be scheduled in June 2026 with specific dates and times to be determined. Players cannot turn 9 before May 1, 2026