FUN da MENTAL

Is there any doubt that girls fastpitch softball must be fun, involves the mental aspect more than just about any sport, and requires a life-long focus on fundamentals? Fun is absolutely critical to participation in fastpitch softball. Sometimes folks involved in the sport forget this element of the game and turn it into “work,” meaning drudgery. The mental aspect of softball generally gets the least amount of attention, not because it isn’t important but because most of us are uncertain how to work towards improvement in this area. Fundamentals are key to almost any endeavor, not least of all our sport. So why do so many otherwise successful coaches ignore them? And if your kid’s team is successful, should you really care?

The wisest Statement I have ever heard which described the differences between boys baseball and girls fastpitch softball went as follows: “Boys need to play ball well to have fun. Girls need to have fun to play ball well.” If you want to see a team break down and begin to play well below their talent level, make practice and playing a mentally painful endeavor. Some measure of physical pain is always necessary when practicing just about any sport. A degree of mental anguish is necessary to create game-like situations and toughen up your crew for the real thing. But a continuous stream of mentally negative stuff during practice or in games is not only a waste of time and energy, it actually is quite counter-productive.

There is no doubt in my mind that every child (up to about age 45!) needs a different level of brow-beating in order to succeed. This notion comes to me as a result of a seminal encounter I once had many years ago. My widowed mother-in-law was dating a fellow who was the single parent of an adopted child. Apparently the child had been mistreated before he was adopted. He was very badly behaved most of the time. When my wife and I would get together socially with the three of them, we often found the child unbearable. As a result, and probably because we were fairly young and energetic, we would scold him whenever he acted out. Over time, it became apparent that the kid really liked us. Why? For whatever reason, he understood scolding as indicative of love and caring. Thankfully my mother-in-law eventually broke off that relationship and we never saw the kid again, although we did hear he was incarcerated for some sort of criminal act. My lesson from the event is each kid has a different view of being corrected and each reacts to it in his or her own way.

In contrast to my experience, my niece recently recounted a story regarding an employee who reported directly to her. She said that when she corrected a person’s errors (obvious ones to her), she had to tread extremely carefully because the person invariably cried whenever corrected and then proclaimed that whomever was doing the correcting “just doesn’t like me.” She told the story as anecdotal evidence regarding today’s young people not being properly trained for the workplace and perhaps she is right about that. But that’s a notion for some other type of blog. To me, the anecdote shows the polar opposite of the kid who needed to be scolded in order to feel loved. And there is a world of individuals between the two poles.

Every kid is raised differently, even within a single household. Every kid takes being corrected differently. This is one aspect of parenting which makes it the hardest job on Earth. It is also the element of coaching any group which makes the job near impossible. A coach can take one particular tone with his entire team and one or several kids will shrug it off, others will reach or exceed the boiling point, and a few may actually gain from the experience. It is very difficult to figure out how best to talk to a kid to get the desired output when you are not around them enough to really know what approach works best. It is an impossible job but that is why we coaches get the big bucks.

Each coach needs to find the right way in which to bring up corrections. Personally, I find that a mix of encouragement and constant, low-key correction works best with most kids. I know others have different opinions on the subject. I have no desire to impose my opinion upon you, the reader. Instead, I want to make you think a bit about this and see if it can help you a little in achieving your results.

I suppose that one reason why anyone comes to enjoy any kind of physical endeavor like playing a sport is because they feel the exhilaration of success at some point early on in the process of learning how to do it. I remember learning to sailboard in a mucky lagoon some 20 plus years ago on a very windy day. We were taught by a knowledgeable windsurfer who had us pull the sail out of the water via a rope attached to the boom. It was hard work pulling that sail out especially since the wind and water combined to keep it pinned down. Every time I would get the thing out to the point that I might actually be able to bring it into position to actually sail, the wind would push it out of my cramped hands or die down enough that the device would topple me over backwards into the drink. The water was scummy. There were some of those infamous Philadelphia horseflies hanging around the nearby bay. When a human body comes out of the salt water into the sun, it is very similar to someone salting a steak, at least as far as the horse flies are concerned. In the several hours during which I tried and failed to pick up that sail, I fell victim to perhaps thousands of horsefly bites. It wasn’t really painful per se but each time a fly bit me, I received that neurological input which informed my cerebral cortex that it would be OK to speak the word “ouch” along with a few other choice words often used as sentence enhancers.

This process went on and on for a seeming eternity. Then, all of a sudden, something happened. The wind cooperated long enough for me to get the sail into proper position and actually sail the board a few feet. The feeling of success was overwhelming. I had just actually sailed! I did it! I did it!

At the time of this trial at something new, I was camping with a couple friends in a campground about 15 miles from the windsurfing lagoon. My friend and I went back to the campground, showered and settled in at the picnic table to celebrate our day of great success. The next morning we awoke with scars of our celebration, whole chunks of our bodies covered with itchy bite scars, and a muscle soreness I can most accurately compare to that experienced on the day after my first triple session football practices in high school. Football compares favorably. I was far more sore from pulling that sail out of the water than I had ever been before in my life.

My friend and I made our morning coffee, listened to some music and news, and then almost simultaneously asked each other, “what do you want to do today?” We then, again simultaneously said, “go windsurfing.” We were addicted!

Very recently, I had occasion to watch my 7 year old great nephew take a little driveway batting practice which his grandfather unwillingly pitched. The grandfather loves the kid to the highest degree possible. He also hates baseball to that same degree. He perfunctorily pitched the ball over and over again until he was about ready for Dr. Kevorkian of euthanasia infamy. The kid struggled and missed most pitches. He looked pretty miserable, almost as miserable as his grandfather. Finally his grandfather gave up and went inside to relax his now frayed nerves. The kid looked at me and said “now you can pitch.” I did so, although similarly against my will.

After a short time of throwing pitches with a typical overhand throw, I remembered that if a kid is just learning to hit, one of the most important things you can do is not remove the ball from his like of vision. Also, it is important for the teacher or coach to congratulate the kid for even minor successes. So I began more or less just merely snapping my pitches while showing him the ball and never removing it from his line of sight. All of a sudden he began to actually hit the darn thing. I praised him vociferously. Then he started driving line drives back at me. I noted when I thought something was a “homerun” to which he inquired, “what’s a homerun?” I explained that it is the greatest thing in all of baseball and requires the hitter to run completely around the bases. We drew up a sort of basepath and every time time he hit a homerun, I made him run around the bases while I cheered his efforts. To tell you the truth, I was trying to wear him out in the hopes that we could end our batting practice at some point. That did not work.

Luckily we were using the kid’s only whiffle ball and the kid was hitting it with a major brand composite bat. The ball never stood a chance once he began really whacking it. After several dozen hits, the ball began to crack in one spot. Then it cracked in another place and another. Finally cracks combined and in the end, the ball was destroyed. Were it not for the happy event of the ball’s destruction, I might still be pitching batting practice in that kid’s driveway since, as he informed me late in the day, there was a light on the garage which would be perfect once it got dark out!

My point is, once a kid hits the ball successfully and repeats it, they are likely hooked and will want to play the game again and, perhaps, again and again. Just as a momentary success in my nascent windsurfing experience caused me to experience “fun,” this kid has become a full-fledged baseball junkie as a result of hitting the darn ball and receiving encouragement in the process. By the way, I became more or less of a windsurfing nut case for several years and only after much therapy was I able to kick the habit.

I have seen the same sort of dynamic play out on softball fields. You take a bunch of kids and work with them on rudimentary skills such as for hitting, then have them hit easy pitches or hit off the tee, and follow every success with praise. The result is almost invariably a softball addict who is more likely to want to play each day thereafter. Likewise, I break down the skill of throwing into elementary pieces and teach the kids how to do it. The first day of practice is pretty much mayhem but after they experience some success, followed by praise, they get better quickly. Not only that, they will also actually listen to your instruction and seek to earn your praise more and more.

I know it is a bit Pavlovian and we should all just know this stuff but I find many parents and coaches, even those of very young kids, fail to use praise often enough. One father even told me that he despised how every time a kid made a very routine play in the field, everyone would exclaim “nice play!” These kids were about 8 years old and in their first year of play. I knew the guy didn’t understand the value of praise and probably never used it on his kid. I also knew that I did use it on his kid and the results were very good.

I found it quite curious that anyone would ever question the use of praise in the sport of softball or baseball. If you go out to see a fairly high level game of either and you are in a small enough venue to hear the players chatter, you will quickly see some very basic play made and a teammate of the player who made it exclaim, “good job” or some such apparently undeserved praise. If you can’t hear the player’s chatter, take a look at a play in which say a 2B fields and easy grounder and lobs the ball over to first. The 1B begins the throw around which is the infields self-congratulation. She then jogs over and slaps gloves with the 2B. As the girls come together ever closer and at the edge of the circle, quite often the pitcher will slap gloves with each of the fielders or with the 2B in particular as if to say, “nice job, you got that out for me, thanks.” That is the nature of these games. It has always been so and for good reason. Praise engenders better play not to mention enjoyment, i.e. FUN. Try it sometime.

Even if a player’s fundamentals are sound and all involved are having fun playing ball, mental focus can break down and cause failure. The best players at all positions have lapses which cause physical errors (e.g. missed grounders, bad pitches, etc.) or mental errors (unsound judgment manifested in throwing to the wrong base, leaving a base on a flyball with 1 out, failing to get an easy out, etc.).

If you want to succeed in girls softball, as a coach, parent or player, it is best to try to develop a player(s) mental focus. How this works in today’s instant gratification, “that’s so 20 seconds ago” society is difficult to say. Most kids cannot remain focused for 30 seconds, let alone a full minute, not to mention two hours or more. But we must endeavor to create and enhance the mental focus of entire teams of softball players or face losses (or worse) that should never happen.

Mental focus is kind of a piecemeal sort of thing. One must work it little by little and stretch it until the desired level is attained. Typically first year rec players can only do one something for about 10 minutes, on good days. So drills or pieces of overall drills need to be worked inside of this time constraint. You should not be performing one drill with young kids for say one half hour, at least not in the early stages. I like throwing mechanics as a mental focus developer because it allows me to talk for a few seconds, then the kids to perform a rudimentary skill for under ten minutes, then I instruct again for about a minute or so, then we add to the skill we just practiced, and so on. The result can be as much as an hour of improving the skill while not throwing anyone into ADHD overload.

Obviously, a coach cannot work the same drills from practice to practice since that is a sure fire way to break down mental focus. Nothing can be done in a sloppy way due to focus breakdown. So the next time you practice, you go to those same throwing skill drills but move faster. You might do wrist snaps for 5 minutes the second time around and then follow up with 5 or so minutes of the other pieces of last practice’s drills. But this time you add something like perhaps a crow hop or half of one to one side and then to the other. The next practice, you might add the easy grounder to the drill while also shortening other pieces. And between each step, you will talk less and less. The result of this process is that rather than sticking to a ten minute rule for drills, you will actually extend that to 15 minutes the second time around and so on. With each succeeding practice, you look to extend every players mental focus by a few minutes.

While this technique works well with the very young player, what do you do with older ones. Well, it is the same principle but manifested in differing drills. Sure, you might have them warm-up while performing the same types of drills for throwing that the little tykes use but they run through this progression rapidly and then are ready for “real” drills. I think the keys to success with girls as they age through the game is to 1) never give up the old drills, 2) do your fundamentals over ever decreasing time periods, and 3) progress to more and more challenging drills which reinforce the fundamentals.

When working with just throwing, the drills I use are, at least initially dependent on the age and experience of the kids. Doing pure ground ball work can get really old really fast. So coaches should adapt drills to make them more challenging and competitive in a fun way. When we work throwing accuracy, I find that setting up some sort of competition which rewards accuracy over strength is useful. For example, you might set up a relay line of 3 to 5 girls with another beside it and race the two against each other. Another example is to have just two girls on each team and have them throw balls back and forth say 10-20 predetermined times You put 2 or 3 teams alongside each other and race with the winner “staying at the top of the hill” and then taking on new challengers each time. Once you have established the winning team, break it apart. And each time one team wins multiple times, note that the reason they won is not so much that they are the strongest throwers or the quickest but rather because of their accuracy. This can enhance skills and team work which is always desirable.

A more advanced throwing drill I like to use involves placing girls around the bases and then have them throw in some pattern accurately and quickly. I sometimes use a stop watch and a pad to record times in order to add an element of fun to the thing. One group of 4 or 5, depending on the style of drill, goes and I record their time, perhaps giviing them multiple tries. Then the next group goes and their time is compared to the prior team. We keep going to see if any team can beat the best time and we may take another try the next time.

Finally, I have never used the following drill but I have observed it used to go effect. With high school girls involved, a coach assigns the kids each a number which corresponds to the positions in the field. On “go,” the girls run out to the particular position. Then, 10 seconds or so after the last girl reaches the proper location, they are told to return back to the fence by the dugout. Next they run back onto the field but go to the next position in the order of numbers. For example, girl number 2, initially runs out to the catcher’s position and next runs out to the 1B’s, then 2B’s and so on. This is continued until everyone has successfully taken each of the nine positions in the field once and the drill is over. If the drill is done incorrectly, it is started over again at the beginning until the team can do it perfectly for all 9 iterations. An error occurs when, for example, the girl taking number 9 position in the field runs back into the outfield and realizes she should have gone to position number one, inside the pitcher’s circle. Each girl must run directly to the correct position or an error has been made and the drill starts again. This drill serves the purpose of girls running some wind sprints, increasing their mental focus and learning to compete with themselves as a team rather than as individuals since each mistake “hurts” the whole team.

Any of these exercises or exercise/drill approaches can serve to increase mental focus. One key to building focus is to make things move progressively faster and more difficult so interest level is always maintained. Another is to use what you have. If a kid or group of kids can only focus for 10 minutes, use 10 minute increments and gradually pull them together so 20, 30 and so on is achieved.

For teams playing tournaments, having mutiple practices in a single day can be a boon. No coach wants to have parents bring kids at 9 am, pick them up at 11, bring them back at 1, pick them up at 3 and then return at 6. The next best thing is to conduct longer practices with some kind of extended breaks in the middle. Say you can get everybody together for 4 hours, stop after an hour and a half to two hours, bring in pizza for a half hour lunch break and then get back to work, er fun.

If you can practice longer and do similar stuff, great but if you can’t I suppose the only way your team is going to learn to focus for extended periods is to have them and their parents experience tournament ball. I have known some elite club teams to conduct practice most of the day on a Saturday and then half a day on Sunday. Some even have the girls stay at a hotel overnight so they can get started really early on Sunday and perhaps end it by noon or 1:00. This serves multiple purposes as you would expect but in this day and age may represent an undesirable cost. Still I note that if a team is going to play its biggest tournament of the year far away from home, it is best to get in some kind of hotel experience before the big tourney. With kids aged up to 14 (probably 24 is more accurate) being far away from home with their bff’s for more than a day, the hotel experience can break down a team’s focus. Girls need to experience it before going to the big, expensive, end-of-the-year tournament.

Well, we have addressed fun and mental focus. I am kind of working backwards here so I leave fundamentals for the last section. But I do this because I want you to focus your attention of this subject before you walk away. Fundamentals are everything in softball. What is the most important work that very high level players do in preparation for competition? Fundamentals. What do beginners need to get them into this game? Fundamentals. What are some of the required fundamentals? How should they be worked? And should any of us really care that our coach is not working on fundamentals if the team is winning?

To begin with, we must state some very obvious points in order to properly address fundamentals. The very first “skill” a ball player needs is the ready position. Is that too silly for you? Well consider that when future hall of fame baseball player Derek Jeter was trying to improve his defensive game (after he was referred to as future hall of famer), what he worked on was his ready position. When another major leaguer was struggling at the plate, he worked on his ready position and improved it to the point that he was considered a strong candidate for the MVP MLB in the following year. “Ready” is a position which makes you ready for just about anything. If you take a close look, ready is pretty much the same in the field as it is at the plate with just a few minor adjustments.

Ready begins with our feet because everything on our gravity dominated planet begins with our feet. The common phrase folks use to describe ready is feet, shoulder width apart. I don’t know about you but from the vantage point of my eyes, I have no way of judging how far they are apart, let alone how far apart my6 shoulders are and how the two relate to each other. The best view of where my feet and shoulders are comes from a point in front of me, like where the coach is standing! So coaches, how about this approach rather than the old shoulder width apart instruction? Trying telling each player in succession to merely stand opposite you and then instruct them to move their feet closer together or further apart. Once they do this, have them repeat it often until they can be in a proper position. Truth be told, shoulder width is probably wrong anyways since the distance between the feet has more to do with an individual’s leg length than it does with the width of their shoulders. The feet simply need to be in a position at which one can go forwards and backwards, right or left very quickly, one might say explosively. Weight is slightly forward on those feet and slightly towards the outside so that lateral push-offs can be achieved rapidly. The idea is quickness more than power but explosively describes the quickness combined with power. Neither element can be overlooked but it is thee net result we are after – how long from point A to B, with good posture, etc. We are not looking just for power alone. There are no rewards in softball for getting someplace more slowly yet with greater power.

After the feet bones, obviously come the leg bones and so on. The legs must be bent like a partially coiled spring. You can’t get anywhere quickly if your legs are straight as rails. You must bend at the knee prior to using the leg to push off but at the same time you need to be balanced so there is a point at which an individual player is not comfortable bending their legs and they should abide by their own feelings with regard to this. Next, players should bend very slightly at the waist so as to be able to shift weight quickly into the desired direction. You want to be slightly forwards but not so much so that it hinders you from going backwards or side to side. Balance is key with ready so bend but balance. The arms and hands should be relaxed and carried slightly forward of straight along the sides we are talking about fielding and or baserunning now rather than batting so the hands will be in front of the waist but not way out in front so as to change the center of gravity. And that is pretty much all I want to say about the ready position other than to note that if a kid can’t get into a ready position, she will not succeed.

I would say general running is the next most important fundamental but I’m not going to get into that because there is a lot of discussion on the point on the internet already. Let me say that softball coaches simply must run their teams. The running should be sport specific – not miles in duration. To run a softball team the way a soccer or field hockey team runs its players merely demonstrates one’s lack not only of knowledge but also of intelligence. Players need running mechanics and repeated runs over the distances they are likely to encounter in a game of fastpitch softball.

Enough of ready and running. Of all the skills which can be said to be critical in softball, throwing mechanics are central to at least half of any game. These should be worked ahead of game situation stuff and ahead of hitting. If you have the greatest athletes in the world playing for you, you are still not going to win any games if they cannot throw the darn ball. Throwing is a complex activity which poses many dangers to life and limb. Kids can easily damage their shoulders or arms with poor throwing mechanics. I have seen season come crashing down on the first day because an otherwise talented kid has poor throwing fundamentals and she ruins her arm on the first play. If ypou “throw your arm out” but are still able to play through the pain, I advise you not to but also chances are decent that your hitting will suffer as well. I threw mine out once and had extreme pain whenever I swung a bat for one entire season.

Softball coaches at all levels should make a study of proper throwing mechanics, devise drills to work on these, correct players as frequently as necessary, and work these in every practice. Throwing mechanics cost more in lost games than any other aspect.

When we discuss throwing, it would be wrong to exclude certain special sorts of throwing like those underhand and backhand types found in infield play. I shouldn’t have to say that at young ages, kids should be taught to make all the common types of throws found in the game, especially in the infield. But often overlooked are the short underhanded throws a second 2B makes to 1B or those a SS would make to the 2B when the two players are very close together. Likewise the corners and Ps should work the sorts of short, possibly underhand throws they would make to the C on squeeze plays. Additionally all infielders aside from the C need to make backhanded throws towards bases when a throw to the throwing side is necessary and players are in close proximity. The SS need to be able to throw a runner out at third from a position on the ground or deep in the hole but close to the bag. A 2B needs to be able to go to the SS at second, etc. Also these girls need to practice those throws made overhand from the in between positions near to the bag yet too far to underhand or backhand. Because these skills often are overlooked, make sure you don’t overlook them.

Similarly, outfielders must learn to make throws from near and far, plus those ones where they must throw through the cutoff person. One of the mistakes which bothers me especially when I see it at high levels is a throw from the outfield that is either a big looping one in order to reach the far away base or which is made to a cutoff so softly that it could not reach anyone else. Say a ball is hit along the left field line and the LF goes far in and over to retrieve the ball. Possibly the girl who hit it there wants to stretch it into a double. What kills me is when the LF tosses it to the SS very softly and then the SS turns slowly to see the runner sliding safely into second. Instead. the LF should come up throwing a bullet at the SS’s head and if the 2B sees the runner coming, she can yell to the SS to let it through. Likewise the RF retrieving a ball hit safely to her when the runner is trying to take an extra base by continuing on to third should be handled similarly. The 2B cutoff should not turn with the lightly thrown ball and watch a runner head into third. The throw should be made on a line at the 2B’s head so that if the runner is going, the ball can reach third on no more than one or two hops. Outfield throws to home are similar and these need to be practiced over and over again.

I make these obvious statements because I have seen many teams never conduct fundamental throwing drills, never practice underhand and backhand throws, and not even so much teach fundamental cutoff skills. When they fail to cover these topics, they are hurting their individual players as well as their teams.

Aside from ready, running and throwing, obviously batting needs to be taught and that would be several whole blog posts in and of itself. But before we even get to real batting, we should discuss the most fundamental offensive plays, those of bunting and baserunning.

The typical amount of attention bunting receives consist of a batting practice in which the coach instructs, “bunt 3 and then swing away for 10.” Really? Is that how important bunting is to the game of softball? 3 attempts over what about 15 seconds for each player? Have you ever seen a softball game? 15 seconds over the course of an hour and a half or more is the proper percentage? I don’t think so.

Coaches need to devise multiple drills in order to teach and practice bunting. At some point, players need to face live pitching for extended practice with bunting technique. You may find that your team can beat most other just because they can really hit but if you want to win tournaments against good teams, they are going to have to get on base using bunts, sacrifice baserunners over, and squeeze home occasional runs. If only one or two kids can bunt because they once played on a team which taught bunting properly and gave enough practice for the girls to get good at it, chances are those kids won’t be the ones who come up to bat in ITB of the championship game. It will instead be the girl who hits mostly homeruns but is 0 for this tournament who will pop out to the catcher or second baseman. Teach your kids to bunt no matter how old or young they are, no matter what their skill level, no matter what. And parents, please cooperate with your team’s coaches work on bunting. Don’t inform your kid that they are too good to ever bunt. Don’t tell them to foul off the pitch anytime their coach tells them to bunt so they can swing away at one pitch. No you are not fooling anybody except yourself. Bunting is the single most critical fundamental in offensive side of the game of softball.

Baserunning is often neglected because it is too hot, too wet or too whatever outside. Also, coaches often don’t want to dedicate the amount of time necessary because it steals from other aspects of their practices. Yet, if you spend any time around higher level softball at any age, you should notice that what wins games is often baserunning because it forces opponents into defensive mistakes while not detracting from the rest of the offensive effort. When girls age up a class, often they find that baserunning tactics they used last year no longer work. I recall watching a youngish gold level player who had been an apparently great baserunner the previous year in 14U. She had a natural aggressive tendency but she had not been limited at all to understand how to run the bases against better teams. I knew the first base coach for her team and was standing along the sidelines near him at a game. I asked how she was doing. He noted her obvious athleticism and speed but also noted that she had a lot to learn. Right on cue, she came to the plate and got herself a basehit. When the next pitch was thrown, she got off the base very well but led a little too far. Then, after the catcher had caught the pitch cleanly and was coming up to throw back to the pitcher, she stayed out there, off the base. The coach said, “balls in the glove, back on the base.” The girl didn’t move, not having heard the coach and staying out there just in case the throw back to the pitcher was in some way muffed. The coach repeated himself more firmly and loudly. The girl returned to the base. The coach looked at me and said, “see.”

Now what are some fundamentals we need to teach kids about baserunning. First off, one’s focus in coaching a team should not be limited to things for achieving success at the current level. rather a coach should always teach for the next level and focus on smart techniques that will work not only today but always. Coaches need to teach kids when is the right time to leave the base with real pitchers throwing real pitches. From first base, they should be taught to take 3 strides and no more. If a girl is excessively slow, perhaps she can keep it to three short walking steps but most kids ought to be able to take 3 running strides. After the lead, a player must go into a ready position with weight distributed in such manner that it facilitates returning quickly and safely to base. If the catcher catches the ball cleanly, the runner must return to base immediately.

Do I not believe in delayed stealing? Of course I believe in stealing bases when the other team falls asleep. There is a time and place for that. But every pitch is not the time to challenge a catcher’s alertness. Good catchers live to pick you off first, second and third when you get too comfortable, cocky or just plain fall asleep. The 10U catcher from the team you mercied probably doesn’t throw out too many. But at 14U, that’s probably not going to be the case. And when you stumble into showcase/gold/premier I guarantee that most catchers will be able to pick off runners with bad fundamentals. As a final comment, runners should be taught when to advance on balls which get away from catchers. And these skills must be practiced, not merely worked in games.

From second the lead is 5 strides and thereafter adjustments made based on what the middle infielders, and possibly CF, are doing. If nobody is coming back to cover the bag after every pitch, obviously it is a poorly coached team but also one can get away with extending the original lead so as to take advantage of any balls in the dirt. If the CF is not routinely coming in to backup the 2B who is backing up the P and/or positioning to take pickoff throws, perhaps your runners should be instructed not to take off should a pickoff be overthrown by the C. I have seen more runners removed from bases after a failed pickoff at second then from any other play. The runner gets a good lead and then charges back into the bag when the C’s throw is over the 2B’s head. She gets up and heads for third as the throw passes her 4 strides from the base!

At third, the lead should be one stride in foul ground. Players need to be ultra on their toes after the one stride but any more than that is asking for trouble. I have seen numerous players picked off third by the catcher or even the pitcher because they came 3 or more strides down the line and then dogged it back to base because nobody threw at them immediately after the pitch. Teams practice surprise pickoff plays. You must be aware and ready for this. While you are going through baserunning at third, please explain what is meant by tagging up. A lot of kids try to return to the base after they are pretty sure the OF is going to make the catch. That is too late. If a ball falls in the outfield, a runner at third can easily make it home safely. If she thinks there is any chance the OF will make the catch, she should return to base immediately and stand with a foot on the bag waiting for the word “GO” from the coach. Most kids don’t really understand this and also do not realize that as soon as the flyball strikes the OF’s leather, they go. They need not wait to watch her catch it. They needn’t watch at all since any decent coach is going to perform that task and instruct the runner when to go. Practice this!

Lastly, players should be instructed about the differences between a suicide and a safety. That is true for bunts with runner on third and true for stealing situations and even sacrifices. The runner must know whether she has to go or not. Then she must understand what one or couple things she needs to watch for in order to make the decision to go or not. Base stealers should not initially be concerned whether the batter is going to hit the ball or not. She is plain, flat out going when she receives the steal sign. She need not look or listen. of course, if in the process, she hears metal strike leather, she ought to look and figure out what is going on but initially a steal is a non-conditional instruction. On sacrifice bunts, players need to get off the base aggressively while watching for the bat striking the ball, “angle down.” If that occurs, they turn and run hard, sliding at the other end regardless of whether a play is made on her or not. Hold the bag is something I hope I don’t need to tell you. Yet, most girls don’t do it. defensively, you should practice for that since you will pick up a lot of free outs after successful sacrifices by throwing behind the runner. And obviously, kids need to fully and completely understand what is meant by the terms “suicide squeeze” and “safety squeeze.” I have many times seen girls at the gold level fail to run on a signaled suicide squeeze and instead act as if a safety squeeze was called. That’s a travesty. So teach all your kids what the difference is and make sure you practice it if you plan to use it.

That is about all I want to say about fundamentals. If I said more, I couldn’t call them fundamentals. But I do have two related subjects I want to go over. Why do coaches give fundamentals short shrift? And if your team is a winning one, should you be at all concerned about whether your team teaches fundamentals or not?

First, coaches don’t spend significant time on fundamentals because they spend time on other things like situations. Just about everybody thinks kids need to be taught such things as where to go with the ball in certain situations. I disagree that a significant chunk of practice needs to be devoted to this. Kids cannot play this game for any length of time without gaining an understanding of where to go with the ball given certain circumstances. They can’t go there with the ball if they don’t field or catch it first and if they can’t throw. And because it simply is not possible to go over every possible situation in practice, you go over the important ones and then address shortcomings as they arise. Rather than doing a lot of situational stuff, I think you should work rudimentary set plays like defensing against bunts, squeezes, and aggressive running situations like first and third. That approach should not take so much of practice that fundamentals cannot be worked for a majority of time when kids are young and gradually for a smaller percentage of your time as the kids age up and the need for more set plays arises.

Many coaches choose to spend almost all their team’s time on hitting and situational defense. Perhaps this makes a team win more games than the fundamental approach. Yet I have seen some of the kids who graduate out of such teams later on in life when they need to play in front of college coaches. Their fundamentals are poor and that quality more than any other shines through their games. College coaches are not looking for girls who once played on very successful teams, for that matter neither are high school coaches. They are looking for kids who have very sound fundamentals and seem to know the game better than everyone else.

Parents like teams that are successful because it makes them feel as if their kid is very good. Hey, your kid might be the number four hitter for a bad team but my kid is the number nine hitter for a great one. The implication is something like “my kid is really good while yours is just OK.” Nonsense. I have seen outstanding kids on terrible teams. I have seen many poorly skilled kids on “winning” teams. One has nothing to do with the other. As a parent, you should always strive for your kid to have enjoyment (fun) while also being well prepared for whatever level she aspires to. If she wants to play ball in high school or perhaps college, you should really want to see fundamentals taught. You should not judge the ability of your team’s coach by its win loss record.

Softball is FUN-da-MENTAL. Girls have to have fun to play ball well. Didn’t somebody write a song with that line in it? Coaches who do not address mental focus over extended periods of time are not coaching their charges well. Coaches who give short shrift to fundamentals in favor of tons of batting and situational practice, are not giving their players what they need for the next level. They may win, perhaps a lot. But that does not speak to whether they are good coaches or not and should not inform parents much.

Leaders and Followers?

A coach once said, “We need 9 leaders on the field.” Many softball folk have fully embraced this philosophy yet each in their own particular way. The problem is, a simple phrase like this is subject to interpretation. Each proponent of the philosophy brings their own understanding of the term “leader” to the table. So, in order to understand it, we must come to a common understanding of leadership on the fastpitch softball field.

My first thought on this subject is: 9 leaders? How is it possible for everyone to be a leader if that leaves nobody to follow? I think the notion presents a bit of a dilemma, at least in the conventional view of what constitutes leadership.

Dictionary.com defines leader, in part, as follows:

1. “a person or thing that leads.”
2. “a guiding or directing head, as of an army, movement, or political group.”

I don’t think the dictionary definition really does the subject justice. Actually it works counter to our examination since, you cannot, in strict terms, have more than one leader in any particular endeavor since it necessarily follows that if one leads others follow (note the dictionary speaks in the singular). The references within the definition to military, political and musical leaders cuts far short of the reality. We need leaders in almost every endeavor. Also, s leader does not merely guide or direct in the sense of pointing in a direction for others to go. There is just so much more to the concept.

In our society, the meaning of the term leader has been mixed up with that of celebrity. If someone is famous – known to the general public – then they are to be followed. This seems to be true regardless of whether the actions of the famous person are worthy of being followed.

I don’t wish to examine the syllogistic logic by which I reach the conclusion that folks confuse leadership with celebrity. I don’t wish to debate the truth or falsity of this underlying premise of my arguments. I think it is obvious enough, a natural truth, if you will, that in today’s society, we revere celebrity as an intrinsically valuable item.

Most children and many adults aspire to celebrity. Achieving celebrity is seen as the single most worthy endeavor. All sorts of bad behavior is displayed and then defended as free expression mostly because some performer or other celebrity (our leader) has engaged in the same type of “expression” and defended it as acceptable because “that’s just the way I am.” The rapper pretends to be a “gangsta” and the high schools are filled with kids wearing their pants below their butts, nondescript baseball caps worn askew, and ostentatious displays of “bling” and facial piercing or tattoo “art.”

Sportswriters often lament the very public bad behavior of sports celebrities who perform wild end-zone antics to celebrate touchdowns sometimes detrimental to their teams, conduct illegal dog fight operations, or carry concealed firearms into bars located in seedy neighborhoods well into the wee hours of the morning. One cannot possibly list all the bad public behavior of athletes many of us consider leaders. And the same is true of politicians, performers and other celebrities

This is, I believe, why the acts of someone like football player Tim Tebow are somewhat refreshing to many of us. He shows a public persona which many would call pristine while also admitting that he is a faulty human being. Some folks don’t like Tebow’s bible-thumping, goody-two-shoes public face. Nobody really likes to have their own behavior challenged by an example they can’t live up to. Nobody, least of all me, wants to be subjected to a stream of morality by which their own lives can be judged as poor. But Tebow is truly just being himself. He is not trying to impress anybody. His attitude is: I am who I am, take me or leave me. The media does not really care for the wholesome athlete since he provides little fodder for their work. I suspect if Tebow was a womanizer who stayed out late into the night with Victoria Secrets models, his persona would be deemed more acceptable by the media! He would be framed as more of a hero by sportswriters.

There was a time when an athlete’s “all-american boy” style was seen as a positive. Sure, guys like Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle hardly led exemplary lives. But we, the general public, didn’t know about their late night adventures to the degree we know about them in today’s internet / mobile phone age. Many a lad had his hair cut to the scalp, drank only milk and water, and otherwise stayed out of trouble just to be like the heroes of a bygone past. The apparently natural desire to be like our idols has not changed. The known actions of our heroes have.

I suspect that many of the not famous folk out here in the real world have begun to mistake the outgoing-ness and “free-spirited-ness,” and situational ethics approach of today’s celebrities as the pathway to true greatness. Gone are the parental aspirations for children to emulate the strong, quiet type of leader. Rather, since few think much about these things, they believe overt shyness or the desire to speak only when one has something constructive to say is the pathway to being trampled by the masses. Keep quiet and never have your ideas heard. Fail to speak up and you’ll end up at the back of the line.

Excessive outgoing-ness, boastfulness, braggadocio, ostentatious-ness and many other personal traits previously perceived negatively have become the new ideals. The quiet yet strong work ethic has been replaced by those who seek to have their intermediate (perhaps beginner) level “accomplishments” recognized and praised. Long-term dedication to achievement has been replaced by the persona of the actor or actress whose credo seems to consist of “hey everybody, look at me, aren’t I just the greatest” when that actor or actress has merely been blessed by the right facial bone structure. There are few, if any, actors or actresses out there who spend a lifetime perfecting their craft while accepting secondary or worse roles. Gone are the great ones who were satisfied with second or third fiddle.

When we speak of leadership in military terms, I believe Americans of my generation imagine the picture of George Washington sitting with excellent posture upon his horse with sword drawn, encouraging the farmers, villagers, etc to hold their line or charge forward. We may also conjure images of Patton directing traffic in the European thetre during WWII. These are visible images of leadership but hardly speak to the underlying characteristics and actions which made these men leaders.

To go further, in our current political state, we have men and women who seek to enrich themselves, follow blindly a philosophy of government, or cater to their respective constituencies without regard to what they believe is truly good for the country. We elect men and women who are outspoken, sometimes immoral, and often selfish to represent us because they play well on TV or know the right contacts from whom to collect contributions. We mock the moral person whose primary drive might actually be to represent us! We seek leaders who reflect our overall ethos and philosophy. The result would appear to be somewhat disastrous as of this writing.

I guess I begin my premise by claiming that our own notion of leadership (including or especially my own) is faulty. We really need to reconstruct the term “leader” in order to put meaning into the examined phrase, “we need 9 leaders on the field.” For this is no room for 9 self-centered, boisterous, immoral, self-indulgent, outlandish players on the field at one time.

When I think back to my earliest athletic pursuits, they involve football, baseball, and swimming. Swimming is an individual sport so I really can’t look very much to that sport although many of the same lessons pertain to it. In early football practice, the coaches pretty much beat us up, possibly for their own entertainment, but probably more to harden us for the real game.

When we performed drills, we would watch others, especially the veterans, to see how the thing was supposed to be done. Then our turn would come and we would try to emulate those receiving praise from the coach. Later, after we had mastered the requirements of a particular drill, we watched others while catching our breath and something else was evident. Some kids did everything with almost all the effort they could possibly muster while others sort of faked their way through the drill. This latter group did enough to not arouse any anger in the coach and no more. The first group, those working hardest, seemed unaware of others observing them. They did the skill with their best effort for unknown reasons.

Many of our number began to follow the group who just got by. They didn’t want the coach’s ire but they didn’t desire to tax themselves too much. Gradually it became apparent that the kids who put out all their effort in practice developed their skills much more than the lazier group. Over the course of two years, I would say the difference between the two groups was stark. Those who practiced hard got better and then displayed their skills much more favorably during games.

The same dynamic was evident on the baseball practice field although the physical demands were far less than those required in football. We often stood around at baseball practiced with nothing much to do. It wasn’t like today with players being run through agility drills or constantly moving in the drill-oriented practice regimen so many favor. We took batting, ran through generic defense and called it a day. But the serious players waited for their reps and took them with great seriousness, as if they were playing a game. Others more or less sleep-walked through their reps. Some kids worked on improving their games off the practice field. Others did not. Just like with football, as time progressed, the kids who took practice reps seriously and worked their game off the field began to outshine their teammates. In games, they made plays, got hits and generally led the team to whatever outcome it had.

I speak about my earliest practice experiences because I believe it has much to say about leadership and because it begins to support the notion that every member of a team needs to be a leader in order for it to succeed. The attributes of integrity, self-honesty, work ethic leads to success, etc. were displayed without the need of constant chatter or talking things up. One looked to one’s left and then to one’s right and saw pure, honest toil. One felt that if others were working hard to jump up their game, well then, I might just as well do likewise.

It can become very difficult to be the game goat who strikes out with bases loaded in the last inning, drops the game-losing flyball, or otherwise makes a negative impact on a game when one is the least hardworking member of a losing team. The practice example is an important display of leadership characteristics. And we undoubtedly need a full roster of this type of leader, if we are to succeed.

Another example of leadership I take from sports is of the in-game variety. No, I am not talking about the loudest mouth or the person most likely to lead the charge, should any foreign army decide to take the field from us. During those games in which our team is having an easy go of it, there are often many who begin to relax excessively and begin to goof around. The leader(s) in these circumstances is the one or several who maintains focus on the task at hand and encourages others to do likewise. He or she is also the one who continues to play the game with integrity while remembering it is just as easy to be on the losing side of a lop-sided score as it is to be on the winning one. Leaders encourage their teammates not to belittle the opponent merely because they are winning this game easily.

When involved with the losing team in a blow-out, the leader is the one who continues to dive for balls, have good at-bats, etc. He or she discourages others from dogging after balls, having weak at-bats, or otherwise not engaging in the act of still trying to win the inning regardless of the game score. He or she leads by example and by reminding teammates that losing this game is a learning opportunity rather than a misadventure or opportunity to give up. This team is really good but we can play with them if we continue to work hard and play our best when we face them next time. Losing is often the best opportunity for improving one’s game. The leader recognizes this and does not waste time by feeling sorry for his or herself, or giving up when innings remain to be played.

Despite the need for leadership in noncompetitive games, the conventional view of leadership is really more understood in close, contested games. But it is not always what we perceive in these circumstances that is truly leadership. When we take on a difficult opponent, sometimes leadership is displayed in one or several player’s very relaxed approach to the game. If hitting, fielding, etc. are very hard to do well when one is tense, getting “up” for a game should not really entail making oneself stressed or tense. When one arrives at the field for an important game, if one notices his or her teammates just going to work the way they do against every other opponent, one is more likely to do so too.

You’ve seen this pitcher several times previously. You can’t seem to hit her. Neither can your teammates. Somebody brings this up. The leader reminds everyone that today may be different, today we may hit her, today she may be off. W@e just need to work on the approaches at the plate we have been talking about. We need to take her high stuff and try to go opposite field on her breaking stuff. Leave the balls alone until we can see where this ump’s strikezone is; make her pitch to us; get your bunts down, let’s be very smart on the bases, push their defense, concentrate on putting balls into play, etc. It isn’t about whether you are going to take the collar today or not. It is about taking the right approach on every pitch, getting your job done in small ways, and generally taking a workmen’s approach to the game. The leader(s) reminds us to do the little things right and not get all stressed out about history. The leader(s) demonstrates this approach and makes us responsible to do likewise lest we want to become the one who does not participate in a great achievement or causes one to collapse into oblivion.

Leadership is a peculiar term, especially since it is poorly understood generally, and more so in today’s society. It is not possible to understand what is meant by “we need 9 leaders on the field” in girls fastpitch softball without examining the term. When we come to understand leadership the way it is often understood today, there clearly isn’t room for 9 leaders on one field. But when we examine closely some other styles of leadership such as leading by example, by encouraging others to take better approaches, by shaking off failure and reloading for the next attempt, and by a workman’s approach to the game, we clearly see that any successful team definitely needs 9 or more leaders on the field AND filling their bench. The coach is right. And it all begins to make sense now!

Foreground Check!

A few years back, I watched an 8U, coach-pitched, tournament. When I focused on the play, I was deeply enthralled, watching all these pipsqueaks out there running down balls, etc. Some were likely as young as 6 or 7 and a few were 8. All were, as you can imagine, rather cute! Something distracted me and I stopped paying attention to the kids and turned to their parents. Obviously many were quite anxious and just wanted their kids to survive this probably first foray into something beyond town ball. A couple teams were pretty good and their kids quite serious. Now those parents were not merely anxious, they were downright nasty. If their child made an error or did something less than brilliant in the field or on the bases, they made all sorts of comments. If you isolated the parents from their kids, you would come away with the impression that you were at a high school game or maybe a fairly high level club tournament in the upper age groups. The parents’ expectations were that high! And their commentary was unacceptable with kids this young.

I never had my kids play anything other than the usual rec “clinic” league at such a young age. My youngest played her first club game at 9 and my older one started in 12U. The one who started at 9 nearly burned out by 14. The older one, who started later, never really had issues like that. But this is not a posting about the right age to start kids into truly competitive play. Instead, this piece is about the conduct of adults at tournaments.

I mention the 8U tournament because I was so taken aback at the words spewing forth from the parents’ mouths, at least with respect to the better teams. That has often been my experience at club team tournaments at every age group. It is just so surprising to see and hear it with 8Us on the field. And rec does not get off scott-free. The commentary along the sidelines in rec ball is often much worse than in club competition. As a base coach, I got into more nasty discussions in rec than in travel ball. But the fact is, wherever you are watching softball, you are going to see some strange things, hear some horrible comments made, and generally be surprised at the conduct of adults, along the sidelines, in the coaching box and in the dugout.

I suppose most people lose themselves when they are participating or observing youth athletics. Softball is certainly not different than other sports. And all parts of the country are pretty similar. I remember my kid playing in southern California at one of those OC Batbuster showcases a couple years ago. Our entire roster and coaching staff was made up of people from New Jersey and New York. My brother lives in SoCal so he came to watch a few games. The umps were giving our team heck and our coaches were giving it back to them in spades. My brother commented to me that “your team’s east coast pushy abrasiveness doesn’t play well in laid back SoCal. People just don’t do that here.”

Understand that my brother grew up on the east coast and is genetically predisposed for that “pushiness.” But he likes to pretend as if he has become something different after a couple decades out west. As it happens, we left the softball fields to go watch his daughter play in an important soccer game later that day. Let me tell you that the west coast soccer parents would make the east coast softball parents blush. They are far more pushy, not to mention their rudeness, threats of violence, etc. They were far worse than anything I have ever witnessed at a softball tournament at anywhere!

I suppose that many people like to pretend that whatever happens along the sidelines will be forgotten in a couple weeks. They like to think they are in some sort of huge universe of softball where they’ll “never see those people again” so they feel under no obligation to behave themselves. Trouble is, that’s not actually the case. As I’ve said before, softball is a small town, not a big city.

There have been many experiments in psychology which show that people typically behave better in a small town than they do in a large city. I know that while I was growing up, I had a few experiences which support this theory. I recall walking around about a half mile from my house in a neighborhood where I believed I knew absolutely nobody. My friends and I were goofing around when all of a sudden a woman I had never seen came out of her house. She stood watching us and then began talking in our direction. She called me by name! Then she suggested that my mother would not be happy with my conduct if she were to place a call to her and tell her what she saw me doing. I stood straight up and behaved myself thereafter. Not only that, I also began to be a little paranoid!! I wondered who else knew me in every other place I found myself.

Compare my experience to that typical of a city kid walking around someplace where perhaps a hundred thousand people walk daily! They feel very little of my paranoia regarding my mother’s friends keeping an eye on me. They face tons of other pressures that small town kids do not but one of them does not involve behaving or else! I think when people first get involved with club ball, they think nobody here knows me and likely nobody ever will. They feel “free” to act as they wish and to say anything that pops into their minds.

I’ve told so many stories over the years involving poor parent conduct that I don’t know where to begin. Right now, I want to convey to you the fact that if you misbehave now, somebody is going to remember you and it may come back to haunt you at a later date.

When my kids first played, they were just in town rec and all-stars. The next step was a local club team that didn’t have a wide geographic draw. They were in our home county and a pretty lengthy drive away. We played teams from several states and far away from our home base in tournaments. I would say this organization played a healthy mix of good “A” tournaments and a few “Bs” I know I never expected to see most of these teams again. But the next year, almost every tournament we entered was filled with teams we had seen the year before. And several of the teams were at half or more of the tourneys we played.

After a couple years, we found that we needed to venture out to a team about twice as far away from home than we had been playing with in our first club experience. This team played all “A” tourneys. They were located outside our county and often played pretty long drives away from home. Next and finally, we ventured out to a team which draws from the whole state and sometimes outside it. They play only good tournaments and mostly showcases at that. There are often college coaches in attendance even when we play competitive tourneys.

At each level, one of the things which most entertained me was the stories each of us had to tell along the sidelines. Those were primarily about the behaviors of parents along the sidelines. Most of the men including me and a few of the women had coached club teams in the various age groups over the years. Another thing that entertained me was when somebody would describe something and I would say, I was at that tournament. I remember that!

One day, a girl on my kid’s team brought some old photographs to a tourney. She showed my kid a picture she had of somebody on the team playing and I was standing in the background, perhaps coaching third base or sticking out of the dugout along one of the baselines in any event. The picture made my kid laugh. She remembered “that tournament” when this or that happened.

When she told me about the picture, my first thoughts were, “oh geeze, I hope I didn’t do anything weird or argue too much with the umps.” I actually cannot remember anything specific I did at tournaments back then but I know sometimes I got a little out of line. I don’t believe anyone can say they exhibited absolutely perfect behavior during their own time attending tournaments. I luckily never did anything totally outlandish except maybe once. I won’t go into that but let’s just say I wish it had never happened! Here I was thinking I was just in the background and on that one occasion, I stepped out from the dugout and pushed myself to the front of the memorable stuff line.

I hope I am making myself at least somewhat clear. Everybody tells stories of things that happened at tournaments when their kids were younger. Everybody remembers the really outstanding stuff. I remember one particular coach who I now know pretty well. An umpire made a close call the way he saw it. This guy did not argue the call or in anyway make a spectacle of himself. He did however make a comment the ump could not hear but which most of us parents did. The comment was vulgar. And I remember it as if it happened yesterday. Some years after the comment the guy approached me and asked if one of my kids would be interested in playing for him. I, of course, said no. I don’t think I could allow my kid to be around that sort of person for very long, let alone an entire year. Every so often, I tell the story about that guy and several people invariably note that they have heard worse comments spew forth from his mouth. And no, they wouldn’t want him around either.

One final story kind of makes it for me. There is a guy who has a daughter play at the same age level as one of my kids. He coaches and is pretty darn serious about it, regardless of the overall level of play. A few years back he got into an argument because he made some comments from the dugout regarding the opposing pitcher. This girl was maybe 10 at the time and definitely overweight. The guy made comments out loud about how they can bunt on this girl because she obviously cannot field her position. The pitcher became embarrassed and a little hurt by the adult’s comments.

Her coach approached the ump and asked him to get this to stop. The ump tried to get the guy to keep his mouth shut but the reverse happened. The guy began ranting and raving at the ump. At this point, the other coach decided to go out and suppport the ump he had enlisted to get the man to stop criticizing the pitcher. The man then turned on him and said, “don’t you tell me … I have coached this game for many, many years. There is nothing I am saying which is not perfectly alright” The man implored him to stop as this was just a 10 year old girl, one with real feelings, one capable of being deeply hurt by his comments.

The coach again began to rant and rave, saying, “I have coached this game at every level and played it too.” He stopped as if to say “have you played this game the way I have.” The man stood silent for a second and then said, “OK, you have got me there.” Time hung perfectly as the contrition speech paused for a moment of reflection. The man repeated, “I have to admit you’ve got me there.” The coach stood silent, almost gleeful, gloating at his well earned debating point. He was full of himself. he was proud. He was going to win this discussion. The man paused and stroked his stubbly face. Yes sir, you’ve got me there. I have never played GIRLS softball at ANY level.”

At this comment, the crowd roared. Some wouldn’t stop laughing until hours later. All were rather entertained by this man’s whit, none more so than the parents on the team with the now radiantly red faced coach. All roared laughter, some held their sides gasping for air which made the coach all the more embarrassed for his folly and for the fact that he was the final butt of the joke. The coach never again uttered any such nonsense, at least for that tournament.

So the moral of the story is learn to keep your worst comments to yourself. If you can’t do this, at least move away from the fields, the dugout, the stands, and put yourself out along the outfield fence with me. But don’t stand too closely. I need room so I can mumble my own commentary.

Remember, stay in the background. if you move into the foreground, you will live to regret it. You may actually hear from other parents on your very own team a couple years down the pathway.

“Verbals”

On some message board, there was a post concerning “verbals” or verbal commitments made by young prospects (say 14 or 15) and college softball coaches. One person opined that verbals are a way for colleges to get kids in line for their recruiting needs while making absolutely no commitment to the verballed kid. Another person asked “have you ever heard of a college coach not honoring a verbal commitment?” The other person replied yes and then quoted the official NCAA policy about verbals which supported the original comment with respect to the institution not being committed. Actually, it noted further that the student is not committed either. These comments and the official NCAA policy truly belong in the “wink and nod” category of “facts.”

In truth, a verbal is merely a promise with no legal standing. Think of it this way, if you tell your neighbor you will do something for them, you most likely are not legally committed to perform the act. We all go through life making little “promises” we do not keep. In a perfect world, we would honor all such promises. But the world is not perfect and neither are we so we often don’t follow through on little this and thats we have sort of, kind of promised. Yet, when we “promise” to do something big for someone we care about, we should take care to follow through lest we lose reputation and suffer the consequences.

If we make a promise that causes someone to rely on our follow-through and then fail to perform, our friends, neighbors, and business colleagues will likely talk about us behind our backs. Our reputation will become soiled and certain opportunities will not be presented to us by these friends, neighbors, and anyone they choose to talk to about the promise. Develop a reputation for not honoring your promises and every time you make a promise the person on the receiving end is likely to smirk and take it with a grain of salt. It is assumed we will not follow through. Develop such a reputation with respect to big, important matters and you may find your life coming apart. Live your life with honor and integrity, honor your commitments, and you should be OK.

College coaches like to line up their prospects because finding and evaluating these players, recruiting them, and generally competing with other institutions is a long, difficult job. The “verbal” process is not something the NCAA condones or really acknowledges because it runs counter to the official rules. They do not want coaches in any sport hunting around high school fields for anything other than seniors. For this reason there are certain rules about all sorts of contact of prospective athletes by college coaches. They can begin responding to prospect initiated e-mails at the beginning of the junior year and proactively contact the student-athlete after the junior year. Sorry but I do not wish to outline all of these rules here. I merely note that real recruiting is supposed to start following the end of the junior year of high school.

Yet, coaches receive all kinds of inquiries much earlier than the end of the junior year. Kids ask coaches to come watch them play. Coaches have discussions with club reps regarding kids along the sidelines at certain showcases and competitive tournaments. Colleges run clinics at which kids from all over the country with varying skill levels attend. It is next to impossible for, as I have posted in other discussions, a coach to conduct a clinic to which his or her ideal player comes and not feel the need to keep an eye on that kid or maybe discuss a little more than mere technique. Often parents push the envelope once they see a coach paying extra attention to their kid.

Let’s say you are the coach for (D1) University of Mars and you really are going to need pitching and catching starting in the year 2016. Until then, you have 3 good pitchers and 2 good catchers who just happen to all be graduating in the year prior. It was certainly not a good idea when you did it but, you did it, and now you need to find some recruits to replace them. You begin to receive e-mail inquiries from a pair of twins who are pitchers graduating high school in 2015. Every week on Monday morning you get an update on these girls’ prior weekend performance. They sound pretty good, actually better than pretty good. You send out your clinic brochure and these girls register. They walk into your gym and stand about 5 foot 11. You watch as 30 pitchers warm up and these twins seem to be a cut or three above the next best pitchers in your clinic. They throw around 64-65, and appear to have great control as well as a full repertoire of movement pitches! They are undoubtedly college prospects and good finds for you.

What are you thinking about these girls? Did I mention that they already have shirts and sweatpants with U of M on the front? Their parents both appear to be alumni! After your clinic, when you do your little spiel about how great U of M is, these girls smile a lot and seem to hang on your every word. The next week you get an update on how they did and where they are playing the following week. They thank you for your great clinic and tell you they really want to enroll in your school so they can play softball for you. Then their father calls you and asks if you might be interested in them. He wants to bring them in for a tour of the school in a couple weeks. He wants to talk with you.

I suggest to you that at some point, maybe a year from now, perhaps next month, a conversation is likely to take place between you and your prospects which might just involve a pair of verbal commitments. This certainly isn’t true of every institution or coach or pair of twins. But, if you spend any time on Spy Softball or anyplace where there are lists of verbal commitments, you are likely to notice a few pretty young players have committed before they are allowed to sign a national letter of commitment (NLI). Of all the girls I have known who have signed NLIs, every last one of them had committed verbally prior to signing day. I can’t say for sure but I believe this has become the norm.

Now, consider a kid who has verballed to a coach and then gone on to not honor that “non-binding” commitment. What could possibly happen to her? How would the next college coach know anything about her backing out of one of those “non-binding” commitments? Let’s just say that the roster of all college coaches in this country just isn’t particularly large.

I live in a large town. We have two fairly big high schools. I don’t know very many people. But when I was a kid, I lived in a town of about 4,000. Everybody knew everybody else, not to mention everybody else’s bidness. People talked and shared info about how this kid is bad, that one is mature for their age, this one is a delinquent, that one is a really genuinely nice person, etc. 4,000 is a small town.

College softball is a very, very small town. How many colleges, excluding juniors, have softball teams? I don’t really know but let’s guesstimate it at about a thousand. On top of this, these people bump into each other all over the place. Some of them were teammates or opponents for four years during their playing careers. Some have coached together in college or travel, perhaps even high school. Some have met at softball conventions and shows. Some coach together at clinics. Some continually bump into each other at recruiting camps and showcases. If you sit down near the coaches’ parking lot at some event, you will notice many of these people greeting each other like very old friends. Stand along the sidelines of a game involving a lot of prospects and you will see these folks chatting away. They know each other and each other’s business.

I once eaves-dropped on a couple of coaches. One noted that she had been recruiting a particular kid and had finally verballed her. Then she learned the kid was still shopping around with schools and holding herself out as if she had not verballed. She placed a call to the kid and informed her that obviously she was not going to honor her commitment so she was letting her go, the coach would not be honoring the commitment from her end. So that relationship was over. But the jilted coach spoke to her friend from another institution and talked about the kid by name. So while perhaps the kid might have liked to go to the other coach’s team, that possibility no longer existed. I have no idea how many other coaches the jilted coach talked to about this kid but one can imagine. Perhaps she told just one other. So now there are two coaches who have written the kid off but worse, two coaches who may tell two others, and so on. So, no, a verballed kid is not committed in any legal sense but in the small town in which we dwell, a verbal is a promise, a big promise, one perhaps we should not take or make lightly.

Similarly, imagine the coach who has not honored his or her commitment to a kid she verballed. That information gets around just as quickly, or perhaps more quickly. Maybe the flow is just a trickle at first but after a while it becomes a torrent. Say you were the recruit being pressed to make a commitment to a school you knew had, in the past, not honored its end of the bargain. How would you view the school? I know I wouldn’t seek to give a verbal or allow my kid to make one without a measure of certainty being involved. In this case, you couldn’t be sure the verbal would ever be honored by the coach so why make one? Actually, if I learned some school had a habit of not honoring their verbals, I wouldn’t let my kid pursue the school.

The world is an ever-changing place and things just happen. Sometimes kids commit to a coach and that coach gets fired or leaves to take a better position. In these cases, I don’t think many kids would honor their commitments. I know I wouldn’t feel obliged to. New coaches often come in with entirely new sets of plans, training styles, priorities, etc. Having made a verbal commitment to play softball at a school is really a commitment to play for its coach. If the coach is gone, the commitment is gone, except in certain cases. Many schools would not feel obliged to honor verbals unless they reached out somehow and told you they planned to honor it. If they did and noted they expected you to honor it, how would you feel if you really didn’t like the replacement coach? Also, the communication network would likely not get the message that you didn’t honor your commitment and, even if they did, they would probably not be too upset about it. On the other hand, if you signed an NLI and the coach left, the school might indeed require you to honor your commitment. You might have to sit out a year if you decided not to go to that school.

The official NCAA word on verbals is kids are free to make them but they have no weight, they are unenforceable. In the real world, verbals are typically honored because, if they are not, word gets around quickly in the small town of college softball coaches and players. Just as in real life, when commitments are not honored, consequences follow. By all means seek out and make a verbal if you are sure about where you want to go to play softball. But don’t agree to go to the prom with 5 guys and them to cancel plans right before the big dance because the guy you really like asks you.

Camping?

Now that, in many parts of the country, the softball season is fully and officially over except for a select few high profile January showcases, folks turn their attention to things like private lessons, indoor training, and college-coach-run camps and clinics. I’m sure that I needn’t say much about the investigation of the Penn State football program and the camps run by its staff over the past several decades. I’m as sick about the accusations themselves as I am of listening to newscasts about them every time I turn on the TV or radio. I am fairly certain the two week sleep away football camp I attended in 1974 and 1975 had as one of its instructors, a certain linebacker coach from Penn State. It makes me sick to think about it. I’m sure that as parents consider the many available softball camp options, they will shy away from the sleep-over variety and stick to the partial day clinics run by college coaches. There is, of course, limited utility in doing anything in this sport for just one day. Still, clinics can be a great way for girls to learn more about the game from those they perceive as softball authority figures.

There are countless college-coach-run clinics available this time of year. Many are run to raise money for the softball program. Some are outlets for coaches’ excess energy and desire to give back to the sport they love. Others are run with an eye towards recruitment. No matter what the coach’s reason for running the camp, softball players of the right age can benefit from attending one or many.

The big question you should be pondering is whether your kid is the right fit for a softball clinic. That is a tough one. It really depends upon your kid’s age, maturity in general, years of experience in the game, level of play, and overall approach. In my mind, a good general rule of thumb is about age 13, assuming a girl has played since at least 10 and is progressing well with her fundamental skills. Girls younger than 13 years old can have a rough time learning much in a one day clinic setting. They also can face certain insurmountable struggles if the camp is mixed age. Of course you have to consider for yourself whether your kid can handle it. But you must assess your child realistically based on all that you know about her before signing up for one.

I once exchanged emails with someone who ran many clinics on softball defensive skills. He said that he generally does not like to work with girls who are 12 and younger because they are often afraid of the ball, or at least not as conditioned to hard throwing as they will be after playing 14U and older. I know for a fact that many girls aged 12 can hang in there better than many others 13, 14 and older. But as a rule of thumb I think 13 or older is the “right age” for many girls provided they are well skilled.

The clinic setting is not right for girls whose only experience is a handful of rec practices every spring. Rec ball certainly has its talented coaches who can run a practice with the best travel and club coaches. But, ninety percent or greater of rec practices are pure mush with players doing more standing around and chatting than actual skill work. College clinics do not typically involve a lot of doing nothing. Usually a skill is taught quickly and then drilled as rapidly as possible. Kids who have not experienced a fast paced, drill oriented softball experience may be able to keep up but they won’t enjoy it and may not benefit much.

I recently watched a pitching clinic in which there were no age group break-aparts and one 12 year old struggled mightily to keep up with girls as old as 17. From the look of things, I would guess that the kid played no higher than rec level. She could not perform most drills and obviously would have been better suited to a more basic class of some sort. She may one day be a great pitcher but today her mechanics are weak. She needs somebody to teach her the basics and then drill and train her to repeat them. This clinic did not do that.

Most of the other girls at the clinic looked to be fairly high club level pitchers. A few did not strike me as particularly good club pitchers. I doubt more than half pitched at the showcase/gold/premier level. But even the weaker ones were heads and shoulders above this poor 12 year old. They likely had seen about half the drills or variations of them at other clinics. They were able to complete most drills successfully and probably gained something they didn’t know before they attended the clinic. The younger girl probably survived with her dignity intact, but just barely. She gained nothing much from the experience.

At another clinic I watched last year, a bunch of club catchers ran through an intense day of drilling certain key skills for higher level players. There were a couple kids at this clinic who just could not come close to the majority of girls in terms of experience, fundamental skills, and arm strength. It was interesting to watch several kids working to get their pop times below 2 seconds and then see one or two unable to make the distance with any degree of accuracy. I felt bad for the catchers who were in over their heads. One of the kids was somebody I knew from another setting. Her parents believe she is a great catcher. Let’s just say they are a bit delusional about her skill level. Her hand-eye coordination is wanting. She can catch a 50 mile per hour pitcher with little or no movement though not particularly well. She has no fundamental mechanics. If you asked her if she knew how to block, she would probably ask you, “what do you mean?”

The best kids undoubtedly learned a lot from this clinic as real, live D1 catchers corrected their footwork and made suggestions for improving their quickness. Given this setting, it is understandable that instructors would focus on the many who have pretty good skills and sort of subconsciously ignore the girls who maybe shouldn’t be there. Put yourself in their place. Before you are a bunch of girls who may follow in your footsteps and are eagerly taking in your every word. There are also a couple kids who you think probably should not be catchers. Who are you going to pay more of your limited attention to?

I have seen similar types of things take place at infield, outfield, and hitting clinics. 10 girls step up and need little tweaks to their mechanics while a couple others need very basic help. One infielder throws miserably and 9 others need to shorten up a bit or eliminate a couple pause points. A group of outfielders is skilled but hasn’t had high level instruction yet while one or two of their number can’t really catch anything thrown more than 10 feet above their heads. A few batters just do not swing well and can’t hit a ball back to the pitcher while 15 or so are being given a somewhat serious look as potential recruits. Who would you instruct?

Before you sign up for a $100, 3 hour hitting or other clinic, it would be best to know the type of girls expected to be there. If you write an e-mail to a college coach about the clinic, most will reply unless your kid is in the recruiting window – first day of freshman year to July following the junior year. Many times the brochures for clinics discuss the level of player either directly or indirectly. They may say, “girls will be broken into groups and drilled appropriate to their skill levels.” It should be obvious that if no mention is made of this, it is possible, even likely that older kids with better skills may be there. If you aren’t sure, e-mail the coach before registering. You’ll save money and free time that could be better spent elsewhere.

Many of these college clinics are conducted for the purpose of bringing in recruits for a closer look-see. Coaches can gain just so much of what they need to know by watching girls play a few high level games. After that, before they put their money and effort in a particular direction, they want to get to know the kid. They want to interact one on one so they can really assess coach-ability. They want to see them interact with a bunch of kids they don’t know. They want to get right behind the pitcher when she throws 20 drops or right next to the catcher as she blocks balls in the dirt. They want to know that when they correct this or that kid’s hitting technique the kid will take it well and actually make adjustments per her instruction. All clinics are not run for the purpose of assessing recruits but certainly some are. You are wasting your time and money bringing your first year 14U kid to such a clinic.

On the other hand, a young high-schooler who is just not sure whether she wants to pursue playing at the collegiate level can really gain a deeper understanding of what is involved just by interacting with the coaches and players. A high school freshman who perhaps has played only rec all-stars the past several years may decide that she really does love this game and needs to start stepping it up by working skills in the basement and exercising on her own so she can make the club team her friend plays for. You never know what can spur a kid into becoming a more serious athlete. I would not be surprised if many kids become serious ball players as a direct result of some encouragement from a college coach or player.

Let me also note that many times college-coach-run clinics are not run for purposes of recruiting or making money. Lots of clinics are really intended for kids who need basic skill training. These coaches recognize that rec and club level instruction is somewhat wanting. They want nothing more or less than to fill the void. I have seen college coaches run some of the very best clinics for kids just barely in rec ball. These can not only be a great exposure for these kids, but also a great way for parents to be educated on what types of things they can do with their kids to make their kids’ skills better.

Actually given the choice between attending a team practice or one of these clinics. I think I would choose the clinic. Many college coaches, though certainly not all, are extremely skilled technicians. Their clinics alone can bring a kid up a couple notches. You just have to learn what you can about the clinic, assess your kid and then perhaps roll the dice. If you have attended a clinic in the past and your kid not only enjoyed it but also improved a lot, go to as many of that coach’s clinics as possible!

How do you find out about the clinics available within a reasonable drive from your home? The best way to find clinics is to visit college sports web sites and see if anything is listed there. Make a list of colleges within your driving radius. Perform a Google or other search of “X college softball.” Go to the site and look for hypertext links named with words like camps, clinics and the like.

These links and pages are not always updated in a timely fashion. One college near me that runs clinics will post something months in advance for clinic number 1 say on December 15 and then not up date the notice until December 15 for clinic number 2 on January 3. Others post a series of clinics by season but in, for example, early September, you won’t find anything about the series beginning in October because the coaching staff is just returning to school and hasn’t yet given it much thought. Once you have your list of colleges whose clinics you would attend, check the web site frequently until you find what you want.

Also, make sure you read the web sites carefully. In one instance, we clicked on a “clinic” link and easily found info about one clinic but nothing about a couple others. Those ones could be accessed further down the page but we never saw them. Thankfully someone we knew planned on attending several and told us about the links.

As an aside, many girls who are of that right age and skill level to want to be recruited look to the clinic experience as a cost effective way to get the attention of college coaches. I am sure that in some cases this can be an effective tactic. Yet I wonder if it works the way or as well as some think.

I have heard numerous stories of kids catching the attention of a college coach through clinics and camps. Some have been recruited and some have actually received some athletic money to help defray the cost of attendance. One actually was granted a full athletic scholarship! The rub is many of these kids attended every camp or clinic that coach held for many years while also playing showcase ball and engaging in regular, often weekly, communications with the coach. Certainly if a 6 foot 2 girl walked into a clinic and threw 67 miles per hour with a killer rise or drop and spot command of it, the coach would take notice and begin talking to the kid. But I do not believe such things happen in the real world. Most of the time, a kid gets recruited while attending clinics AND playing high level ball with that coach coming to watch her. One is not the substitute for the other. But college recruiting is beyond the scope of this piece and enough has been said about that.

In conclusion, college-coach-run clinics are a great opportunity for the right girls. Very young and/or inexperienced girls who can benefit from other kinds of coaching probably do not belong in many of these clinics. Some clinics are very well suited to younger and less experienced kids. It is hard to know the nature of the clinic you want to sign up for but asking the coach, reading the brochure carefully, or learning more about the clinic from friends is a worthwhile endeavor before you mail your check or spend an entire Sunday watching premier level players throwing the ball to your 11 year old. Be realistic about matching your kid’s skills to the clinics you find. And don’t show up there expecting the coach to find a diamond in the rough in your child and immediately offering to pay her college tuition.

Too Much Is Just Plain Too Much

Bobby writes in to ask, “How many pitches should a young girl be limited to in fastpitch?”

He gave me some detail about his daughter’s recent pitching time which I could share with you because it clearly demonstrates TOO MUCH but I don’t want to do anything which might give anyone an idea of who his kid is. Let’s just say that she is young and pitched just about every game her team played in a recent tournament including 3 or 4 during the one day elimination round. You have to figure she threw around 3 games a day and that is just too darn many for anyone.

While I certainly want to answer the question about pitching, I would also like to bridge into other positions and make some comments about when too much is too much for all fastpitch players. Opinions about this sort of topic are as common as anything on the planet. Everybody has one. I will try to give you some of the more common ones while, obviously, offering my own. So here goes:

In broad general terms, too much of anything is not good for a person. Softball, like baseball, is a sport in which there are some limitations to the benefits of practicing. If you have ever played the game for an extended period of time, you realize that you can work on things for so long but if you want to really hone your skills, you must test them out in competitive, pressure packed circumstances. The best “practices” often consist of anything from single game scrimmages to full tournament schedules with 3 or more games per day.

I remember a year during which my youngest kid had been injured during her most reason season and she really needed to get some games in. She practiced her pitching regularly. She hit off the tee almost daily. When we had time, I took her out to the fields and she worked on grounders, pops and flies. But she had spent most of the summer season riding the bench and rehabbing her back. She lacked game experience at a critical time in her career.

She made a team for a new organization which had two teams at her age level. The coaches would conduct fall practices by either 1) splitting up the girls by team and practicing them in the normal fashion or 2) splitting kids from both teams up by position and working position specific skills. Then, after about an hour and a half of this practice, the two teams would come together and scrimmage until the cows came home. It was a wonderful experience from which the girls gained a lot. My kid probably gained more than anyone as she was able to fill the gaps of a missed tournament season. She needed games and she got games.

I believe that at the oldest levels, players need games much more than they do practice. It may be apparent to a spectator that this or that team seems to need more practice than another team. But by high school and certainly beyond that, kids are just not going to improve their fundamental skills very much through practicing. I know I often see the same kids making the same fundamental skill mistakes at 18 or 20 as they made when they were 14. You can practice them until they are blue in the face and the minute they step on the field, they are going to do the same things they did before the hours of practice. Certain mistakes are so ingrained that they can never be corrected.

I am not stating that if you do X when you are 14, you will do X when you are 21 but habits are hard to correct. As a kid ages, the errant throwing mechanics or whatever are so fixed into muscle memory that it takes herculean effort to correct them. Bad mechanics can be corrected but a player must recognize the deficiency, find someone to instruct on the cure, and then spend countless hours with a set of trained eyes and a gentle, patient reminding voice to correct such mistakes. Gross mechanical errors are not corrected at softball team practices. They are corrected in frequent, voluminous private skill sessions.

So, older girls need to play games in order to hone their skills. Younger girls need games too. You can take a babe from the cradle and teach her how to field a grounder and make a throw to first until she is 9 or 10 but she will not get the reason for the training until she goes into battle and, therefore, her skills will never be sharpened by the pressure cooker of warfare. Train her, play her, train some more, then play some more and she will probably develop better. Still, there are limits to the benefits of games when a girl is in her first several years of play.

I have had opportunity to watch some very good teams play for several years. I will talk about one but I am referring to several. They got decent training at young ages which taught them to get the outs and push the envelope on offense. Their coaches had the team play well over 100 games per season, sometimes as many as 150 in a given year. At 10U through early 14U, these girls really hit the ball and won many tournaments. Many of the kids went on to higher level ball, even D1 college play. But more than half the kids had below average fundamental skills.

One kid threw in a funky way, another had huge holes in her swing. One girl picked up bunts in the way coaches had told her when she was 9 and which also happened to be, in my humble opinion, the wrong way. I must have been right, however, because she rarely threw anybody out when she picked a bunt cleanly. And she was never able to correct that mistake even though many a coach tried with her. These girls knew the game inside and out because they had played more games than anyone around. But they were below average players late in their careers because their skills were weak.

The kids who play a ton of games get really savvy about situational play. They really get to know the game. But if they continue to age with improper mechanical skills, they get frustrated and eventually can’t physically get the outs even though they know what to do with the ball once they get it. Likewise the biggest power hitter whose swing contains holes will get into a deep irreversible “slump” once she faces a battery that can view her swing once and break her down to the obvious weaknesses.

Pitchers who pitch a lot get really smart about batters. But they also get out of sync with their mechanics. I know one coach who is fond of saying that pitching ruins pitchers. I’ll add that pitching too much ruins pitchers faster! There are so many minor adjustments that pitchers and other players make on a moment to moment basis during game play that their skills often need to be corrected. If they are constantly playing games with little or no time devoted to skills, they get deeply ingrained bad habits that are increasingly difficult to break.

If you haven’t guessed it, I am an advocate for lots of fundamental skill work, especially at an early age. I believe these skills should be reinforced as girls age up but I believe there are limits to how much can be improved after say age 14. At that age, scrimmages and real games do more for a kid who really wants to continue playing the game than endless practices with her team. Skills need to be practiced and reinforced between games but she really needs to play to get better.

To bring this back into the pitching discussion, pitchers can no more practice endlessly for years and expect to take the field and mow the hitters down without any prior game experience than they can expect to remain dominant after 10U by just pitching in games, even if they pitch 10 games a week. There is a time and place for working on pitching skills and then you’ve got to get out there and face real hitters. But game pitching is not the only place that pitching skills are improved.

The fallacy which derives here involves over-extension of the notion that game play is where kids improve their games. If one or two games improves skills, more games improves skills more. And this is true out to infinity. Those who hold this as the primary directive often believe that a kid needs to pitch in as many games as possible. They look for the pitchers on their teams or even their own daughters to win the ace role and then pitch through at least the whole elimination day. Often they want the ace to also throw one or two whole games in preliminary play. They reason that prelim.s are usually time limited so their pitchers aren’t really throwing whole games anyway. Then they look around at other teams at all levels and ascertain that others are throwing only their aces on elimination days so this kid has to learn to do that if she is going to develop. We jump from the fact that game play is good to believing that game play is the only thing necessary.

What fuels this even further happens when folks sit down and watch NCAA tournament games, in particular the Women’s College World Series. There they hear announcers talking about how this team came back from the brink of elimination by shutting down their opponents while using only their ace pitcher for two or three games in a day. This is definitely true but viewers often fail to understand the degree to which these gals are trained, how much they pitched during the season, how their bodies were addressed by trainers after each and every outing, etc.

College softball players are trained like Olympic athletes in a lot of ways. They are required by their programs to perform conditioning, strength, flexibility and other exercises throughout the year. I recall a girl having a discussion with her future college coach in which she mocked her own running. The coach told her, “don’t you worry about that. I guarantee you that we will have you running faster than you ever have run in your life, much faster.” It stands to reason that college coaches don’t want your typical slow runner on second base in the last inning when their number 3 hitter comes to the plate with 2 down. They train these girls like race horses. They are finely tuned athletes by the time the season rolls around. That may not be true of all college programs but it is undeniably true of all good programs.

And the trainers? Oh the trainers!

I must digress a bit into a brief anecdote. I overheard a group of D1 players discussing a bruise and bump one had received from being hit by a pitch. One player said to the other, “don’t let Sara (the team trainer) see that or you will really be in for it.” A person similarly eaves dropping asked the girl what she meant. She said that anytime one of the players has a bruise, the trainer will “roll it out” which means basically taking a device similarly to a rolling pin, though far more costly, and rolling until the bump and bruise go away. The eaves dropper looked at the girl quizzically. The girl reassured her that any time a player has a bruise or other kind of injury the trainer does in fact “roll it out.”

If you are not familiar with the practice of rolling out bumps, bruises and muscular knots, look it up. I do suggest you try it sometime but be prepared for screaming and crying! It most definitely hurts but seems to be the best way of dealing with certain kinds of minor injuries. My wife actually uses a wooden baker’s rolling pin which my mother gave her as a wedding shower gift! She finds it better than the commercially available ones that are sold to trainers.

Another infamous tactic college trainers use is the dreaded ice bath. Many colleges have pools that are kept at ridiculously low temperatures. Most folks are familiar with this if they have ever watched one of the myriad shows about athletic training. Suffice it to say that the experience of taking a dip in a true ice bath lacks the appeal of say a hot shower or a relaxing sit in a hot tub.

Collegiate athletes have some of the best athletic training available. Softball pitchers become very familiar with the techniques employed after each and every game they pitch. These girls are treated quite a bit better than your 10 or 11 year old nascent pitcher is.

Further, if you peruse the stats of some college team’s pitchers, you should see evidence of an ace who is not asked to pitch both ends of the team’s double headers every time they take the field. Generally, colleges have several pitchers on their staffs. Often one will have a lot more innings than the others. But typically, there is a solid number 2 who gets a good deal of the workload. Is this because the number 1 just cannot pitch two games in a day? No, not at all. I’d be willing to bet that most college pitchers, having grown up in the American club ball circuit, have pitched as many as 3 or 4 games in a day during their lifetimes and could do it today, if their team really needed them to. But college softball teams just do not do this to their pitchers as frequently as club teams do. Typically, if a college pitcher is asked to pitch multiple games, the issue arises late in the season. The team needs to win a couple games in order to qualify for their conference tournament, win it and qualify for the NCAA tournament, or for similar reasons.

If you doubt my claim, please pick the college of your choice and look at last year’s pitching stats. I just did this randomly and came up with a team whose top pitcher threw 230 innings. The next girl threw 150. The other two pitchers threw very little but you have to imagine that the ace sometimes threw two games in a day but not very frequently. Delving a little further into the stats, I found that while one girl had 40 appearances, the other had 30. The team played a total of 54 games and the ace appeared in almost 80% of them but many times she probably closed for the other pitcher, throwing perhaps 1 or 2 innings, for a grand total of perhaps 9 in a given day. There is no evidence of the ace pitcher having thrown back to back complete games frequently although one can imagine that sometimes her coach wished she could.

Obviously a college pitcher is going to throw with quite a bit more force and wear and tear on her body than a 10U pitcher. But the principle is the same. You don’t use up pitchers if you want to continue to have a winning program. And beyond a doubt, 3 games in back to back days is way too much. If you have a daughter who is being asked to pitch 3 games per tournament day in most tournaments, well, it is not a stretch to say we have a bit of a problem here. She will eventually break down physically. And that is not the only potential risk to her pitching “career.”

The mental aspect is probably as big a potential risk as the physical one. I want you to consider in addition to pitchers, the plight of catchers. I have seen many club team catchers do all the catching for their teams. I have seen this at 10U, 12U, 14U and on. This is a bad situation. If it does not lead to physical break down, I would be surprised that it didn’t, but I guarantee you it will lead to mental break down.

I once had a discussion with a successful travel ball coach about Saturdays vs. Sundays, prelim.s vs. elimination. He told me that usually on Saturdays he used both his catchers about evenly but on elim. days, he only used his best. If you have ever caught, you know what a physical and mental drain it is. I remember playing two full back to back games on a hot July afternoon many moons ago. I am a heavy sweater to begin with but I doubt I ever sweated that much before or since. The straps on my shin guards dug into my skin until finally they made cuts. Sweated dripped into these cuts and made ever movement painful. I felt as if I had been tortured but I kept going. After those important, at the time, games, I undressed and went into our swimming pool for the remainder of the day. I was physically incapable of swimming. I just stood in the cool water and just spent the rest of the day bringing myself back to life. More than any other aspect of my physical fatigue was my mental exhaustion. I loved baseball and I loved calling pitches but I felt like if I had to call one more pitch it would cause me to run away into the woods, screaming. I cannot imagine what these girls who catch 3 per day, two to three times a week, must feel like.

To the extent that a girl is physically capable of catching 3 games a day on back to back days, possibly for many months, you have to call her tough. But everyone has their breaking point. And any catcher who begins doing this at say 9 or 10 years old and attempts to continue it through high school and college is going to break down mentally, if her body doesn’t break down first. The best case scenario is she is going to get stale at some point and wish she could no longer catch. I have seen this happen too many times before to think anyone can catch every game her team plays indefinitely. Catchers who catch too much at younger ages will often quit the game.

Further, most kids come to love softball in general, at least as much as they love their chosen positions. If a kid wants to continue playing, staying at one position not only cuts down her experiences but also makes the game far less enjoyable. Catchers can be made to play other positions and so can pitchers. They may not be your best third baseman, outfielder or whatever, but they are ball players and should be allowed to do more in the game than merely catch or pitch. I don’t care if you are talking about the highest level 12U club team in the country or merely the rec all stars. Every kid ought to be given the opportunity to play something else than their one and only position. There are too many games which simply just don’t matter to not be able to put your pitcher at second base or wherever.

And that girl at second ought to play a little third or outfield regardless of her college aspirations. Heck, she may be recruited to play second base for UCLA and get there to find that her best opportunity to play comes from the outfield. Similarly, a catcher may reach high school only to find the first team all state catcher, one class above her, doing all or most of the catching. All kids, but especially young ones, need to play multiple positions on the field.

Bobby’s pitching daughter needs to experience picking up a grounder and throwing the girl ought from somewhere besides the pitching circle. Anyone’s catching daughter needs to learn some other positions. Any kid on the field needs to have a broad-based experience on the diamond because there just is no way to know where she will play on her high school team or, if she is so inclined, the college that recruits her. Heck, even Stacey Nuveman was a short stop in club ball. Outfielder Jessica Mendoza went to Stanford hoping to be their starting catcher.

I want to give coaches one more thought in the analysis of playing time for their rosters. I have often heard coaches telling new team members that everyone plays on Saturday but only the best 9 will play on Sundays. Heck, many years ago I said that myself. But there is something fundamentally wrong with that way of thinking. Teams pay for their tournaments, etc. with the funds of all roster members’ fees and fundraising. It is fundamentally wrong for one parent of one child to pay the freight of another unwillingly. Maybe everyone doesn’t get precisely equal playing time but the differences should not be huge.

Yes, when we join the best club program around, we know going in that they are going to play to win, period. But when we accept a position on the wannabes or the team that usually wins one game on Sundays, we should never accept our kids being relegated to the bench for 28 innings per weekend. If the coaches can’t figure a way for every kid to play at least half of the total innings, they aren’t very good coaches. They aren’t making my kid better. They do not deserve my team fee. There has to be something better around.

When I received Bobby’s email, I happened to be arriving at a field with one of my daughters to do some long toss pitching. I read the email to her before we got out of the car. Her reaction was interesting. She said, “soon that girl will learn to hate softball.” My kid was more than once on teams which “needed” her to pitch almost every game. She hated it, though not at first. It was nice being the pitching princess. But she liked playing all the positions on the field. She liked to hit. Pitching 3 games in a day made her less of a hitter as she was frequently too tired to care what she did at the plate. She didn’t know how to play any other position. Worse than that, she came to hate pitching and had to take quite a while off before she decided she wanted to do it again. She is a tough kid who has been through the gristmill for a lot of years. When she heard Bobby’s question, she knew instantly that a pitcher, any pitcher who pitched as much as Bobby’s kid was headed for the junk heap of softball.