activities for the older kids with a large family

I have 6 kids, ages 1 month to 12 years old.  I’m struggling with figuring out how to balance my oldest child’s desire to be involved in activities with my own need to not commit to too much.  She really wants to participate in a middle school homeschool basketball team.  The practices are 3x/week for 1.5 hours in the early afternoon, and it would be a 50 minute round trip drive as we live out a little ways outside town.  I told her she could participate only if I could find someone else in our area who was participating and would be willing to carpool.  I did find another player in our area but they aren’t able to carpool regularly due to other activities, so I told DD she wouldn’t be able to play on the team.  I feel badly about telling her no but I know how stressful it would be to have to rush to finish school those days, eat a quick lunch before leaving or bring a take-along lunch, and somehow get everyone in the van and to the practice on time (being on-time is something I struggle with).  Then I would have to find a way to occupy my other children during the practice.  Fall is already starting here and we would not be able to go to a park every time, and I don’t know what we would do the days when it was too cold or too windy for the baby to be outside.  It would just be too much.

This is coming up more and more as DD is a very social child with a high desire to do activities.  So far I have limited her activities to 4-H (1-2 meetings/month most months), weekly church youth group, and occasionally a once or twice a week sports commitment such as a running club or riding lessons.  Her 9 YO brother has only been allowed to do the same activities as her, if he’s old enough and interested in them.  We also attend midweek Bible study as a family.  DD would love to do some sort of activity, playdate, etc at least 2-3 days a week on top of 4-H and youth group but it’s too much running around for me.  That’s not even counting errands and any medical appointments we might have!

I feel badly about disappointing DD but I remember that I did very few activities as a child until 8th grade, when I starting playing 2-3 high school sports/year at the small Christian school I attended.  But even that didn’t usually require extra work from my parents as I got rides with classmates to/from practices and games until I was able to drive myself.  Unfortunately getting rides is not often an option for DD since we live out of town.

I guess I’m looking for any words of wisdom from other large-family moms or moms with large age ranges on managing older children’s desires with the needs of younger members of the family (and mom’s need to avoid overwhelm!), without guilt.