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Bunt & Run or Run & Bunt
by Dave
Thursday, April 22, 2010
I've been away from the blog for a while. I know it has been too long but I am in observation mode. There are a ton of games around now as age group travel ball gets into full gear and the school ball season rolls along towards championship season. In all levels of play, I am aware that "baserunning" often decides games. But "baserunning" is an overly broad topic. It really encompasses almost everything on the offensive side of the game including and especially the short game. While the high school games I have observed are beginning to demonstrate a decreased value to the short game due to the increased pitching distance, it is still an important tool. While it used to determine the outcome of most competitive games, it still can determine such. In age group play at 14U and lower ages, the short game is still absolutely key. And within this aspect of the game, I have often seen what I think is a critical fundamental mistake.
When a team finds itself in a sacrifice situation, usually it looks something like this: The game is close, say 0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 2-1. One run will put one team up, tie the game or maybe expand the lead to 3 so as to force the opponent into different choices when it is on offense. A batter walks or gets a hit with one or no outs. The next batter comes up and is signaled to bunt. Sometimes she gets it down, sometimes she does not.
We have discussed the subject of bunting at length. Every single player ought to be able to put down a bunt when needed. It doesn't matter if you are hitting .500 with mostly extra-base hits or loads of home runs. At some point, your team is going to face a tight situation and need you to get one down. But we've been over and over that and it is not the fundamental issue of the day.
Many girls will be told to sacrifice and come out with a drag bunt. Generally, when male coaches see that, they go nuts. Often they are right to complain at the batter that "you were supposed to sacrifice, not bunt for a hit." I, too, see that as a fundamental mistake but I have to admit that not everyone would agree. Jessica Mendoza, for one, notes that she always felt more comfortable dragging. She was not good at bunting in the conventional sacrifice manner. She was a very good drag bunter and very often had successful sacrifices on drag bunts. So I suppose there is some room for disagreement on this fundamental issue. And, again, this is not the fundamental of the day.
The fundamental of the day involves the actions of the baserunner who is being moved. Most often, I see a girl, say at first, get off the bag like she would on any other play, freeze, and then watch to see what happens on the bunt. If the ball is popped into the air, she may even take a step back towards the bag before waiting to see what actually happens to the ball. If the bunt is done "angle down," obviously going to hit the dirt, she may turn tail and run all out. She watches the fielder covering the bag to see if there is an incoming throw and slides if she thinks there is. The real fun occurs when the ball is struck fairly solid and, for a tenth of a second, the baserunner is not sure whether it will go up or down. She holds for that one tenth and then acts in accordance with what the ball does.
This sort of baserunning play is really what should be called "bunt and run" because it involves no particular unusual act on the part of the baserunner until the bunt takes place, until ball and bat collide. 99 times out of 100 pure sacrifices, this is what happens, at least in the games I have watched. They are "bunt and run" plays, bunt first, run second.
If a squeeze is the play of the moment, it seems like about 50/50 between the bunt and run, and the run and bunt. A squeeze with bunt and run is a "safety squeeze." A squeeze with run and bunt is a "suicide squeeze." A third kind of play happens when a team does what I'll call a "double safety squeeze" which involves the runner getting off third, waiting for the bunt, and then waiting for the fielder to attempt to throw out the bunter at first. This is really not a squeeze at all and is a somewhat unaggresive play. It often works in 12U travel ball, sometimes backfires in 14U, works only against poorly prepared 16U or 18U teams, and shouldn't happen much beyond that, although, quite often, a weak throwing, poorly drilled first or second baseman is incapable of making the play to home as it should be executed.
What troubles me at the moment is the tendency of most teams to use run and bunt only on suicide squeezes. The team that aggressively squeezes whenever the opportunity presents, many times does not play so aggressively on sacrifice situations when the run first, bunt second approach is highly advisable and successful every time your bunters have been well prepared. This seems insane to me. You've just got to run before the bunt against some teams despite the risks.
It occurs to me that nobody wants to be doubled up at any time. But this is almost unavoidable. I can't count the number of times when some baserunner got off the bag, then took off on a very hard hit, stopped as everybody in the place yelled because the SS made a diving catch and now has an opportunity for the DP, and then looked as if she would like to die as the throw was made, doubling her off. Then her parents (maybe a few others!) started screaming at her from the sidelines.
This dynamic occurs very often in my world, whether it is my team getting doubled up, my team making the DP, or some game I am watching for the heck of it. I just don't understand why people get so upset when some kid makes a great play which allows her to double the runner. It just happens and it is nobody's fault, not the base coach, not the runner, nobody. But every time it happens, it produces an even greater aversion to being doubled off for that k9id, her coach, for everyone. The coaches, all of the kids in the dugout of the team at bat, and everybody else in the place watching or participating in the game thinks, "I'm glad that wasn't me." The kid who gets doubled up vows that this will never happen again, assuming I live through the day.
This avoidance of being doubled off at all costs seems to make sense, doesn't it? It is a rally killer. It seems like it can make you lose. We're at 0-0 in the 4th and finally get a runner on base. Somebody finally hits a good shot but it gets caught. The runner at first is doubled off. Those are our last baserunners in that game and we go on to lose 1 zip. That play lost us the game, right? No it didn't. Lots of other plays and at bats lost us the game. That was just an unfortunate accident.
Worse still is when a sacrifice is called and the baserunner misjudges the ball off the bat. She gets off, waits for contact, sees it and runs. The only problem is the balled was popped right at the 3B! Double play, get off the bases, you!
I get weirded out when I see people getting upset on plays like this. Oh, my first reaction is something like "how did you get doubled off? Weren't you paying attention?" But then my better nature kicks in as I remember all the people I have seen doubled off. I also recognize that if the SS or 3B hadn't made a good play and instead merely knocked the ball down and then got the runner moving from first to second because she got a late jump, I would be just as upset and so would everyone else.
What bearing does this have on bunt and run, run and bunt? Is that not obvious?
Any very good team, one you are hopefully going to see as you make your way through better tournaments, is going to have practiced getting the lead runner on sacrifices. If they have significant talent on defense, they are going to kill some of the lead runners you tried to move and make your team's sacrifice attempt into an out you handed them on a platter. You'll be left thinking, "gee whiz, we haven't had many baserunners and even when we do, we can't move them!" You'll be mentally defeated.
Some teams will attempt to play things in a manner they see as aggressive. The coach at third will signal the baserunner to steal and the batter to sacrifice. The thought is, this is basically the same thing as a run and bunt. But you have still left your baserunner with her natural aversion to being doubled off. She is only going to have .5 of a second to get off the base and then she'll see or hear the contact. That makes her just over 10 feet from the bag as your bunter taps the ball. If she is one of those good kids, she is going to put her head down and steal like you envisioned. But as soon as she hears or sees the ball hit bat, she is going to freeze in near panic. What if the bunt goes into the air and is caught? I am going to get doubled off. I don't want that to happen! And that is exactly what you do not want her to be thinking.
As a coach, you really need to explain the difference between a bunt and run, and a run and bunt. You need to explain that the run and bunt is a deliberate strategy which is being practiced because there are going to be times when we cannot bunt and run, when we cannot count on being able to steal a base, when the likelihood of a passed ball or wild pitch is about as likely as the snack bar serving sushi. Sometimes, we are going to get into a tight game and we will need the runner at first or second to run and not worry about the bunt being a bad one, popped into the air. When this happens and the runner is doubled off, it is the fault of the play call, not of the baserunner.
Does this make sense to you? If not, I'm not explaining it correctly. There are going to be times when, maybe you are playing a top 10 or 50 (on a national basis) team and they are able to almost completely shut down bunt and run because they are that good. They have great pitchers. But so do you. You get only a handful of baserunners in the game but your kids are playing this thing to a stalemate. If you can get a runner to second or third, the next kid just might get that critical base hit and provide you the 1-0 lead you may be able to hold onto. But if you try to bunt and run, all you will end up with is another out and a runner at the same base.
Sometimes, when you are playing very good teams, they do not even look to make sure they can get the lead runner. Instead, they are so confident of their ability that they simply always try to get her. Sometimes such a team has a play which requires the fielders to go after the lead runner on sacrifices. If a coach gets overly confident in his or her team's ability to nail the lead runner, he or she may be in a bad habit of automatically calling that play. It has worked the last 20 times, why not now?
There is a very good possible outcome when you go with run and bunt against such teams. It is entirely possible that your runner will beat the throw because she has that slight edge of not waiting to see ball hit ground. If you are in a sacrifice situation, you run and bunt, the play is made on the lead runner, and she is safe, you may just demoralize your opponent. Like I said, maybe they have gotten the lead out the last 20 times, maybe every time they have tried it this year. Your team beats them at their own game. Now they might just think, "oh no! We have finally met a team which is better than us!!"
Of course, let's not forget that by using run and bunt, we are taking a risk. I hope that your bunters can get one down. If they tend to pop it into the air, well, your risk goes up. But that is neither the fault of the runner nor the fault of the play. That is the fault of your bunting instruction and preparation.
It is important to note that, just like the suicide squeeze, assuming your opponent has a very good catcher on whom you cannot steal, the batter must get the bat on the ball when you run and bunt. She can foul it off. She cannot pop it up to the catcher or another fielder. She must make every attempt to protect the runner.
Your batters should be taught that if your team does a run and bunt, and the hitter absolutely cannot so much as tap the ball, she still needs to make that bunt attempt with the bat and make sure that the bat crosses within the receiving view of the catcher. You are not looking for out and out interference but rather a healthy amount of distraction. If the pitch is eye high and the hitter cannot possibly get it down, remember, the catcher is going to catch that ball in just about the perfect position to throw out our runner. We have to foul it off and, if we cannot, we have to at least have our bat cross the catcher's field of view. This may be enough to cause her to miss the ball, however slightly, or perhaps make a poor throw. But we cannot allow the catcher to merely experience an iteration of throw-out the runner practice.
Batters cannot feel as if they are able to return to the dugout innocent of any charges because "there was no way I could bunt that pitch." If they do not even put their bats in front of the catcher and get a strike on them because they went, they have failed. It wasn't the baserunner's fault that she got thrown out on a failed steal attempt. It was the batter's fault for not protecting the runner.
Well, that's pretty much it. This is an easy fundamental concept. But unfortunately, I seldom see run and bunt utilized. Everybody seems to use it only in suicide situations. When they do use it for sacrifices, they typically do so by invoking a steal and bunt simultaneously without ever cluing in their players. That is not the best of all possible situations because your baserunners still have the natural aversion to being doubled off which may cause the momentary hesitation that gets her thrown out. Instead, explain to your team what the difference between bunt and run, and run and bunt is. Then you'll be able to execute it when necessary. It may win you a critical game. You may also want to explain this to the parents so they don't yell at their kids should they be the ones who get doubled up every once in a while!Labels: baserunning, Bunt, coaching, game strategy
Permanent Link: Bunt & Run or Run & Bunt
 
Get Dirty, Revisited
by Dave
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
I feel foolish today. I never really would have given my topic of the day a second thought if I had not finally understood something I should have noted quite a while ago. Several months ago, I wrote something for all the girls heading to tryouts and those playing in front of college coaches. That piece talked about getting dirty, you know, diving to the ground while going after balls. The advice is sound. You should get dirty on the softball field if you want folks to take notice. But, as in most things of importance, merely suggesting to players that they get dirty is not nearly enough. I'm not sure why I hadn't realized this before. Today it is patently obvious.
Decades ago, I was a pee wee football player finding my way through calisthenics and drills meant to toughen us up and make us ready for game contact. We would run in place for 15 minutes and every few seconds the coach would blow his whistle. When we heard the whistle, we were required to hit the deck, get up as fast as we could, and then start running again. Honestly, this was not one of the harder parts of practice. I considered it a joke, a break. I could have done this all day. I was used to hitting the deck. I liked it. It was easy. I think the coaches thought they were torturing us. They weren't, at least as far as I was concerned. It seemed stupid.
As an adult softball player, one of my less intelligent moments came on a line drive. I was milling about near third base when this guy hit a shot. I had no time to think. I just dove and caught it. As I got up, everyone was laughing at me. I was kind of embarrassed. We were playing on blacktop so I got pretty badly cut up. I ran to the dugout and used my drinking water to clean out the cuts before running back out to my station. This was blacktop in Manhattan. It was filthy and I wanted to make sure I didn't get any infected cuts. All sorts of folks frequented this field and who knew how many times some homeless guy, like the ones who lined the field to watch, might have spit or worse right where I had ripped open skin.
As I said, my cohorts made fun of me for diving for a ball at a meaningless softball gathering. Many of the women (it was coed and half of these had been college players), felt I should not play due to the obvious injuries. They felt I should go get first aid and call it a day. I didn't because I wanted to play and because I was used to ripping myself up like that. So, after this batting practice was over and the coach asked if I could play, of course, I said yes.
I have never given much thought to diving or not. You really can't. If you have time enough to contemplate a dive, then you should probably move into a better position to make a catch and the dive becomes a moot point. Diving is reaction. It is not a decision. It is a conditioned response. My childhood in sports had conditioned me to dive if a dive can make the difference between something getting past me or making the catch. Yes, that's true even during batting practice. Actually to be quite honest, I would dive and ask questions later if I was playing whiffle ball with a kindergarten class, on broken glass. I just can't help it. But apparently, not everyone reacts that way and I suppose that is the subject of the day.
If you grew up watching baseball the way I did, one of the more memorable commonplace plays, involved Brooks Robinson, perhaps the greatest third baseman ever to play the game, diving on balls hit to his right. I used to have a poster in my room of Brooks completely air-born on a ball obviously bounced foul. I was no Baltimore Orioles fan but Brooks' dive was something everyone who appreciates the game can agree was truly remarkable.
Brooks was undoubtedly by far the best third baseman I ever saw. There certainly are many other very good ones. I can name probably a dozen but I want to note one who was also not on a team I cheered for at the time. Craig Nettles almost rivaled Brooks Robinson's movement to his right via his own technique to his left. He would almost always go air-born on balls hit that way which were otherwise out of his reach, even when he had almost no chance of making the play.
Many moons ago, I was coaching a 12U travel team. I had a very young girl on the team who loved to "get dirty." I practiced these girls pretty hard but as I began to wrap up practices, there was always this one kid standing last in line. I would hit her the last groundball of the day while looking to wrap up and put away the equipment. But each time, right after the last grounder, this girl would say, "Coach Dave, can you hit me some balls I can dive for?" Practice after practice, I would accommodate this kid by hitting 10 or more she could dive for. I never gave it very much thought. My biggest fears were 1) she would get hurt or 2) she would dive for some ball she should have played "normally."
Some time after this encounter, I observed one of the best shortstops I have ever seen on a softball diamond. She was just about 13 and playing for one of the top few teams in the country. Normally at games like this, I would spend a lot of time watching pitchers and hitters but this kid caught my attention while she was in the field. I watched her as the pitcher went into her windmill. She got into a great ready position and crept forward as the ball was released. When a batter hit a hard grounder up the middle, past the pitcher, this kid would go to ground to stop the ball, get up quickly and gracefully, and then make a good quick release throw to her first baseman, easily nailing the runner. Nothing got past her.
When I saw this kid in action, I thought what she had was mostly mental. She was a hustler. She dove for everything. That's attitude. You can't teach that!
This past year, while in California, I was watching a fairly closely contested showcase game. The defensive team was up by a couple when this girl hit a long fly to center. The CF ran hard back to the fence and without hesitating dove to try to catch it. The fence did not give very much as she went over it, got the ball into her glove, and struck the ground very hard. The ball was jarred loose and the batter began her HR trot as coaches ran out to check on the girl. She was injured pretty badly. She had a separated shoulder and perhaps some other less serious injuries. An ambulance was called. I understand they gave her morphine for some very severe pain which caused her to go into shock. You can't teach that sort of desire and I suppose perhaps you shouldn't.
I say you can't really teach desire but you can teach players how to go to ground. I guess it never occurred to me that "getting dirty" is as much a fundamental skill as anything else. It can and should be taught.
The other night we had an indoor practice. I always look for something we haven't done or that needs tuning because our girls just don't do it right. I decided that in order to spice up our backhand drilling (see last week's piece), I would get some mats out and have the girls go to ground while performing the backhand play. As I waited for my charges to come over to me, I envisioned throwing balls slightly out of reach, each of them merely diving onto the semi-soft mat to make the play, and then each getting up to make a throw. It would be a simple drill but one which they needed to do.
My one lament with this team has been that nobody is sufficiently constituted to dive after balls. These are not some rec or JV players. Most of these girls are real athletes, playing multiple sports on the varsity level or just shy of it. These girls are almost all fast, pretty good on fundamentals, have played several years of travel softball, and are generally hard as nails. For instance, we had one girl run into another on a foul pop last year and both went down hard. Neither kid would come out of the game. And, as it turned out, one had played with a concussion from the collision. When these girls get together, they do not play dolls. They generally have mock fist fights or otherwise roughhouse like a gaggle of boys. They are girls to be sure but they are not meek nor mild. But none dives, at least not often, after balls!
So there I was with my silly little drill and each kid took their turn trying to dive after the throw I made. I was actually shocked by their dismal performance. None of them knows how to dive. I needed to teach them how to dive!!!!
So the question becomes, what is a normal skill progression to teach girls how to dive after balls. The answer is ... Let's start at the start.
I would say that before one learns to walk, the usual advice is to learn to crawl. That's probably bad advice since crawling has nothing to do with walking. And crawling ruins those cute little expensive outfits we wasted our money on for our infants. Falling forward, however, has much to do with diving. So if I were trying to teach girls to dive after balls, I would start with a simple exercise of falling forwards.
Place a mat in front of a kid. Have her get into ready position, without a glove on, and then allow herself to fall forwards to ground. The object here is not to fall to one's knees which is exactly what they'll do the first time. You want them to fall into a push-up position with hands spread slightly wider than when they would do a push-up and legs straightened. It is sort of a belly-flop. You are going to need to have them perform several reps of this seemingly wasteful exercise until they can do it properly, without landing on their knees first.
Once you have done that a sufficient number of times, place the player on one side of the mat and have them dive sideways into the same position while facing you. If you are going to dive on your backhand side, you need to have your head turned towards your glove hand side. Do this enough until they can accomplish it correctly and then once more to reinforce. Now do it the other way, to the forehand side while, again, facing the theoretical direction from which the ball is coming.
Once these three types of falls have been practiced, have them put on their gloves and do them again. Players need to learn to go to ground with one hand inside a glove. Each will probably struggle with this a bit. You have to land on the pinky side of your glove when doing the forehand side dive and the thumb side of your glove when doing the backhand. Girls need practice at this. If they don't practice it, injuries will occur.
Once your group has accomplished the task well enough that you are confident they will be able to advance, it is time to work an actual ball into the drill. Again while facing you, each girl will, in turn, assume a good ready position and then dive for the ball as you throw it. The easiest way to start this out is with a ball bounced or rolled. Later, you can work in throws or line-drives.
Keep in mind that you must watch the way they dive very closely and correct errors. You want to teach them how to dive properly and then condition in the response with frequent drilling. That means this is not some drill you do once and then never engage in again. It is indoor season and, provided you have a reasonably soft mat, you can do this at every practice or every other one for 5-10 minutes, once you have taught the skill. After initial work, you won't have to have them dive without their gloves or the ball. That stuff was to get them used to the notion of diving and to keep them off their knees. So this can become a routine and quick part of every defensive practice sequence.
The mere diving and stopping or catching a ball is just the first part of the skill. After the ball is in the glove, a player has to get up and make a throw. It really makes no difference how good of a play you make if you get nobody out. And this takes practice. At first, some girls will get to their knees to make a somewhat weak throw. Others will gather themselves slowly, get up and throw as if they have all the time in the world. The difficult things to teach them are to dive, get the ball, get up quickly and then make a quick release throw to target.
We have done the dive and get the ball parts. Now let's finish the play. Some coaches well tell you to keep the ball in your glove and to get used to doing a push-up while holding the ball tightly inside the glove. Some coaches will tell you to take the ball out of the glove while down and push off the ground using your empty mitt and while pushing the ball into the ground with your throwing hand. I don't really have an opinion. I know how I do it but there's no point in explaining that. I suggest that you just merely have them get up and see what works for them to get up quickly and make a throw. And at some point, I suggest putting a stop watch to the drill. This may encourage them to find the fastest way possible.
When you get up off the ground, I believe it is best to have your hands close together and get up while twisting into the proper throwing direction. I don;t seem to be able to put this into words so experiment. The general idea is that a player is going to dive to either her forehand or backhand side and then have to make a play to one of the bases. So, retrieving a ball and then getting up to make a throw can involve several possibilities and all should be practiced, depending on a kid's likely positions. each kind of play and throw to each of the various bases requires some thought. Your SS needs to work throws not only to first and second but also to third - that's not a bad place to remain on the knees - and, of course, to home. You can figure out the rest.
Once you get back outdoors, you should not assume that you have covered this ground sufficiently. In case you didn't notice, the fields you play on have no mats to soften the blow for a diving player. They need to get acclimated to the sometimes harder ground. You should have drills requiring your infielders to dive some on the dirt and for your outfielders to hit the somewhat softer grass. These drills should become as easy and boring as my football drills were. Gradually, over time, your team will become hardened and begin to routinely dive for balls they might otherwise not make a play on.
The funny thing is the girls will probably begin to enjoy these drills. When I ran diving drills the other day, we came to the end of practice and everyone huddled around my station. More than one asked, "coach, can I jump in here and go again?" Just as was the case with my diving youngster a few years back, I ended up being the last coach to wrap up because everyone liked the drill and wanted to go again. Y They actually like diving. It's cool! And they can see themselves making these kinds of plays because, well, they always had the desire. I didn't have to teach them that. They just never really gave it much thought but they did not know how to dive. I felt foolish when I realized that.Labels: coaching, defense, indoor, mental toughness, pre-season preparation
Permanent Link: Get Dirty, Revisited
Easy But Neglected Skill
by Dave
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Among the several skills coaches often neglect is the ordinary backhand play. Often folks act as if it is a difficult skill requiring more athletic ability than other plays but that's just not the case. Backhanding is as easy as any other skill but the fundamentals must be taught, reinforced through proper simple, repetitive drilling followed by sufficient iterations of live hit balls.
All too often when coaches hit grounders to players, they either hit them directly at them or hit too many to their glove hand side. If a coach has been properly emphasizing to their players to get in front of the ball and make plays between their legs, it is natural for girls to do this in a ground ball line, thereby getting no practice on backhands. I very seldom see coaches hitting backhand plays over and over again whether in practice or as a warm-up before games. l; the one exception is the short hop drill in which coaches hit balls sharply to girls stationed close in. That's a good drill but it only involves a limited piece of potential backhand plays. And usually no instruction on fundamentals has preceded it.
Generally, players learn backhanding of balls at their waists and above via normal everyday games of catch. Watch a bunch of players throwing a ball around for any length of time and sooner or later someone will make a bad throw requiring a backhand catch. After a couple years of warm-up tossing, most girls can handle any throw that requires a backhand catch. Often players learn to catch very well using backhand because it places a player in better position to make ensuing throws. If you want to be in position to make a quick throw, you move your body so as to catch the ball using a backhand because it is easier, most of the time - excluding outfield to infield cutoff throws. So backhand becomes the preferred way to receive a throw most of the time. Yet, on grounders, receiving the ball either to the glove hand side, beyond the leg while on the move or fielding it between the legs are the most reinforced skills. We do not automatically teach the backhand. We do not make sure our infielders and outfielders get enough drilling and practice at this very important skill.
If you can honestly say that your players do get adequate instruction and practice reps with backhand, OK. Today's column is not for you. If you're not sure or know that you have not addressed it, read on.
The first item to address is the teaching of the fundamental skill. Every infielder in a good ready position should be low. When they field balls, they should remain low. That is as true for other skills as it is for backhand. But for whatever reason, one of the most common mistakes in the backhand is a tendency to stand up or slightly erect when making a play on the ball. Ideally, the backhanding player should be very low. Ideally, her eyes should be just slightly above the level she gets the ball at. If a player's head is several feet above the track of the ball, she will probably misjudge it and end up with the ball bouncing off her glove or going under it.
Secondly, in every other instance of fielding a ball, the glove is held in front of the body. If a player places her glove at the same depth as her body relative to the ball, we correct her by saying, "get those out in front of you." It is always better to get a ball closer towards the direction it is coming from whether fielding a grounder, a fly, or thrown ball. The same is true for backhand. The glove must be placed towards the direction of the ball. You should not be attempting to make a backhand play parallel to the depth of your foot or head. I suppose it is often difficult for coaches to see how deep tor shallow the glove is relative to the player but this needs to be corrected just like it is on ordinary grounders hit directly at players.
The next most common error in backhanding occurs at the point at which the ball has struck the glove. Just as with other plays, the glove hand should squeeze the ball. Most often girls try to cradle the ball by cocking their wrists and pulling the hand in out towards the outside of the elbow. This is not only a poor way of catching the ball, it tends to put the player off balance and the glove in a bad position from which to remove the ball. Many beginning players working on backhands will do this to make sure they get the ball. Even experienced girls who have poor backhand skills will do this for the same reason. But when you catch a thrown ball above your waist in a backhand position, you don't do this. Instead, you squeeze the ball in your catching hand while holding your wrist loose and allowing the force of the ball to carry your hand backwards. This is what we call having soft hands.
The reason catching with soft hands is better is because when you cock your wrist towards the outside of your elbow, you are in a position which takes away from your hand strength. The connective tissue in the hands is stretched to a weaker position from which to grip anything and you tend to use weaker muscles in your forearm in a position from which their strength is diminished. Your grip is stronger when your hand is slightly cocked towards the inside of your elbow which is what occurs when you use soft hands. You are also in a better position to deal with the impact of the ball when your wrist is slightly loose and you catch the ball in front of you. Your body acts as a shock absorber.
The last fu tndamental mistake we want to deal with today occurs after the ball has been successfully caught and a throw needs to be made. The girls I have coached tend to stand upright at this point. They want to gather themselves and then make a strong throw. But usually you can make a stronger, quicker throw if you stay low, plant the correct foot while turning your body and removing the ball from the glove simultaneously. If you are a righty, that means you stride with your left leg, get the ball, and as your glove comes back towards your body, you step with the right leg, plant the right foot while turning your body so that your left shoulder faces the target and then make the throw. Staying low and planting your throwing hand foot beyond your glove hand foot is the key to making a strong, quick throw.
I would begin my backhand practice but talking about the points I have just gone over. Then I would demonstrate the correct way to make a backhand play. After that, I would use a few very simple drills in a progression which gradually goes over the skill.
The first item should be merely retrieving the ball using a backhand. All that is needed is for each girl to get in a good ready position and a coach to bounce balls at them. The player and coach can be just ten feet apart with the coach to the glove side of the player. Have her take a single step with the glove side foot, across her body while staying low and fielding the bounced or rolled ball. The coach can roll several reps and then bounce several more or mix it up anyway he or she wants.
After this drills, you want to increase the difficulty slightly. From the same basic position but two additional strides away from the player, the coach again rolls or bounces balls but this time the player must take three strides to retrieve the ball. The player strides with her glove side leg once, then again with the throwing side leg, then finally with her glove hand leg. Stay low! Then she fields the bounced or rolled ball.
If players do not take the right steps, I suggest having them walk through it once or twice, as needed. if she still struggles, stand in front of her with your back facing her. Then each of you do it as she watches you and makes sure she is doing the same thing as you. In the case of a three step drill, which is usually where the footwork first gets mixed up, I would make the demonstration while calling out 1, 2, 3. The turn around and watch her walk through it while you call 1, 2, 3.
You want to get as many reps as timne permits doing these drills. Once you have a reasonable number in, you can add to either or both drills by making players get into throwing position after fielding the balls. Again, a slow numbered walk through should teach the steps if anyone struggles.
If you only have time to do the first two drills, with no throw maneuver, because your time runs out, that's OK. Thge next time you get together, run through the basic drills quickly and go into the throwing maneuver next. Each time you work on backhands, begin with the basic drills for a couple warm-up iterations. Then go into the throwing maneuver. Next run these two drills with more than a mere throwing maneuver by having the girls make an actual throw to a point on a diagnonal from where they field the ball.
After this, assuming you have sufficient space, I would perform the same two basic drills but have girls make throws to each of the various bases from all the potential points on the field from which they would have to make such a play. After these drills have been run and only after they have been run, you can start to hit live balls for the purpose of reinforcing the fundamental skills in more realistic circumstances. At each of your practices in which you do the old normal ground ball drills, you should make a couple minutes freed to do some bakhand practice both from close points requiring a single step and from further out requiring more of a run. Obviously, with respect to your outfielders, the run should be much further. But your middle infielders need to learn to take several strides and then make a backhand play.
After you have done these things, you can get into more complex drills using backhands like diving for balls, getting up and making the throw. But for now, these very fundamental skills which are almost always neglected, should vastly improve your infielders' and outfielders' play.Labels: coaching, defense
Permanent Link: Easy But Neglected Skill
Outfielder Drills
by Dave
Friday, January 22, 2010
If you came here to grab some outfielder drills, you may have come to the wrong place. What I mean is, I don't like to just list out and describe a bunch of drills so that you can quickly grab them for your practices. Rather, it is always my goal to make you think about things and understand an approach rather than merely provide a handy cheat sheet. It is more important and useful to understand the approach than it is to have a pocket full of drills for a particular part of the game.
I often get questions e-mailed to me like "can you give me some drills for (outfield, infield, catcher, pitcher)?" Sure, I can give you those drills but I don't need to - you don't need me to. That's because, if I give you some drills without explaining their objectives, you are not going to use them properly. If instead, I spur your mind to consider the goals of drills, you can adapt practices to cover goals instead of merely having a series of drills with nobody thinking about the goals.
For example, if we consider what we might do for a pitcher in terms of defense, I could say have her throw pitches and then hit balls at her. That's simple enough. But what we want to consider is the sort of defensive plays a pitcher might make, the skills needed to successfully complete such plays, and what we can do to instill the skills while correcting errors. If we do that, we first develop a list of situations, then we think about how we would like to see the desired outcome accomplished, then we develop the skill set required, and the drills just come to us. We might decide that balls would be bounced back to the circle with: 1) nobody on, 2) a force play at second or third, 3) no force play on but a runner on second or third, etc. We might then decide that the pitcher needs to be able to move left and right, make good throws to each of the bases, etc. We then can see that she must do these things after making a pitch. The drills we would use become obvious at this point. The same is true for other defensive plays made by the pitcher as well as every other position on the field. The drills we can use become obvious once we consider the various plays and skills needed to accomplish each.
Many times when a coach has a mere list of drills, he or she runs them as he or she believes they should be run but with several mistakes. Further, the drills are run without explaining the objective(s), without describing the manner in which the play should be made, and without adequate correction when fundamental mistakes take place. This is not just a less efficient way to run drills but also a great way to reinforce bad habits and to make sure the player(s) in the drills will never develop the desired skills.
What's worse is when a coach has a particular drill, doesn't understand the goals of it, and then tries to modify it to make it their own. Many times I have observed coaches take a very good drill, teach it badly, and then later try to adapt it to make it more meaningful or harder without ever considering what the goal of the original drill was in the first place. I'm not going to give you specific examples because it angers me when I contemplate this. Let's just say that I have coached many times when someone has either taken a drill from someone else and then run it almost completely wrong, or has taken the drill and tried to change it in order to accomplish some totally different skill unrelated to the objectives of the original drill. The result is a pile of mud and practice sessions which merely fill time and accomplish less than optimal skill development.
A common mistake is to combine several drills into one and thereby proceed with the mistaken assumption that you are covering all skills needed in the shortest possible amount of time. It is often OK to combine drills in certain situations but when you try to accomplish 4 goals in one drill that should be four, you often don't get the desired result. For example, let's say that you have a drill which teaches infielders to deal with short hops the way a corner infielder often must. You also have an ordinary ground ball drill. You have a quick release throwing drill and yet another drill for dealing with slow rolling balls on the ground. You could run four discreet drills, each taking 5 plus minutes, or you might combine all of them into a single one and do it for ten minutes. You saved 10 minutes by combining them and that means you get to do an additional ten minutes of batting practice later. But in the course of combining the drills, chances are pretty good that you will miss one of the goals of one of these drills, fail to teach one or more of the skills properly, and give your players too few iterations of the drill to instill the skills.
Many, many times, I have coached with someone who really liked my drills one year and the next decided that, in order to save time, they would rather combine things. The result is a single drill covering four or more skills which the other coach does not really understand or teach to the kids. The kids practice but they do not develop the skills. Everybody is happy until game time when those players can't make a good play on a ball stopped on the ground. The coach says, "but we practice that all the time." But the kid has not been taught the skill and has not had enough practice iterations working it to have made it part of her game.
Further, the logical extrapolation of combining various skills and drills into a single element of practice is to simply line up the kids in the field and then hit balls at them while expecting them to make the plays. That saves time, doesn't it? You hit the ball to a player while telling them to make the play to X base. They throw it in and then you hit another. Each kid gets five balls hit to them and every practice involves a different set of five such plays. That's just great! This approach is to be avoided. That's why we conduct drills in the first place. If you want to merely line the kids up in the field and hit balls to them for a half an hour or so, go ahead. See what the results are.
When you line kids up in the field and hit ball after ball, invariably something gets missed and you bore the kids to tears. I once talked with a girl whose team practiced this way. She told me that she would often get so bored after 15 minutes of just standing there that when her turn came, she wasn't paying attention or had gotten so cold that she couldn't make the plays the way she was supposed to. She noted that during many practices, the coach would forget about her and get so distracted that he actually forgot to hit her any balls at all! She suggested that this happened during more than half the practices. She came to think of practice as a time during which she had to stand in the outfield for half an hour before being sent to the batting cage to take some swings. That's an absolutely dreadful way to run a practice. By contrast, this girl who was then on our travel team would get completely exhausted at our practices while having to do 25 of this, 25 of that, 25 of some other skill, etc., etc. The two practices were so completely different that she could not contemplate the two as both being practices. One was practice, the other was a joke. And I hate to tell you what she thought of her coach as a result of the poor manner in which he conducted practice.
Today, we want to consider drills for the oufielder. So first let's consider the various plays she might make. Obviously, grounders, line drives, and fly balls might be hit directly at her, to her left, to her right, and over her head (at her, to the left, to the right). If the outfielder is RF, we must consider balls hit to the line that are fading - spinning away from her towards the line. If she is LF, we have the same issue but in the other direction.
RFs have to consider hard hit line drives which strike the ground in front of them on which they can make a play at first. LFs should consider the same play when runners are on first and second when there may be a play at third. They should also consider making a play with a runner on third when the ball is hit hard enough that the runner freezes and then heads for home right as the ball hits the ground.
In the case of both corner outfielders, we have the issue of flies into foul territory with runners on base tagging up. Tag ups are important to consider whether the ball is hit fair or foul but we want to make sure the OF considers and makes her throws on fly balls hit into foul ground. It is a fairly common mistake for OFs to forget about tag ups on foul balls. Obviously, we have to consider tag ups in general as well as those where the ball is hit into foul ground.
CFs have slightly different plays to make though many of them are very similar. Let's not forget that all OFs need to be able to vector a ball off the bat - from home plate - and that they must track balls while running over grass covered ground. Sometimes they must take their eyes off balls, run to a spot and then pick the ball up again.
With all the possible balls on which a play is made, we have to consider the various throws to bases. Each one requires different footwork. Each, arguably involves a different sort of throw. Each kind of play involves slightly different skills that need to be worked on. So the next element of coming up with some drills involves creating lists of the various plays and the skills we need to develop. Then we ought to be able to design drills for our practices and even come up with new ones on the fly in order to make practice more interesting and, therefore, meaningful.
I want to emphasize this point. When a practice involves everyone moving and being kept interested at almost all times, it is more fun, interesting for the players, and accomplishes more. If you have 12 girls standing in various places in the field waiting for their turn while each play involves just two of them, you have at least 10 bored girls at any given moment. If, instead, you provide just enough time for each kid to get her wind back before having to do something, you are running a better practice.
Many times, the OFs get the least amount of real consideration when their skills are contemplated. Some coach takes them all out to the outfield and hits fly ball after fly ball from one of the sidelines while the infielders work many and various complicated plays over and over again. There is a value to hitting fly balls to the outfield but they need more than that. A worse kind of "drill" occurs when all 8 or 9 defensive players are put into the field and each one gets a few balls hit at them. This is an OK pre-game warm-up but each and every practice cannot be conducted this way.
It would be better to design drills and keep all OFs moving for most of your practice time and then hit some flies towards thje end of a workout. For example, you might form a line in left and throw balls to the fence which after trying to catch them, they must retrieve quickly from the fence and then throw to a cutoff standing near the infield. In another drill, you might want the OFs to run with their backs to you and then pick up a ball hit or thrown high into the air. You may want to work hard hit balls hit right at them which will strike the ground before they get there and on which you want them to make a quick release throw to a base.
One of my pet peeves is when OFs are lined up in one place and a series of balls is hit to each in turn and the only emphasis is on the OF performing the loopy crow hop before throwing the ball back. Yes OFs need to learn the crow hop in relevant situations but that is not the only relevant footwork. How many times have you seen a RF make a play when she could get the runner at first but she does that OF crowhop and gets the ball there too slowly. Contrast that with those times when an infielder plays right and the same situation occurs. More often than not, the IF will get the out which the crow-hopping-trained OF cannot. In other words, your OFs need to do some short quick throws in their drills. In other words, you need to have a drill which teaches, emphasizes and reinforces making those short throws.
So I strongly suggest that rather than reading this and copying a set of drills to use in your practice, you step away from the computer with a couple sheets of paper and a pencil. Then jot down a list of plays you can come up with on your own. Now spend more time thinking about the skills need for each one. &nb sp; Then jot some short notes for some drills you would like to do. Now I'll do the same thing and here is a specimen workout for the OFs that I come up with:
1) Take all your OFs aaway from the IFs. Have them warm-up throwing balls back and forth from 40 feet, move back to 60 after 5 minutes, and then move back to 80 after another five minutes. Once they are reasonably warmed up at 40 feet, work in the footwork needed to make quick release throws. Correct players not doing it right.
I forgot to mention that you want to make sure you have ample room in which to work. The outfield while infielders are doing their own drills is probably insufficient. If you have two adjacent fields, take the OFs over to the vacant field. If your field does not have fences and instead has a large open grassy area, use that by moving far away from the IFs. If you are stuck in the OF of the only field your whole team has to practice on, there's nothing you can do so adapt accordingly.
When the girls are moved back to 60 feet while throwing, have players on one side throw line drives at their feet and have the other side field them like sharply hit balls on which they need to make a quick throw to the infield. Have them charge, scoop and quickly get into throwing position to throw the ball back to their partner. Then, obviously switch sides.
When the girls are 80 feet apart, have one side not throw the ball to the other player and instead have her bounce it to her partner. The retrieving side should make a play on the ball, crow hop, and throw strongly to the other side. Then switch sides. You now have fin ished 15 to 20 minutes of your OF workout.
After this throwing, you want to make the examples more extreme. You want girls to really run before retrieving balls and making throws. Line up girls at one spot and then move to a place 80 to 100 feet away from them. Cones would be useful to establish the line and a target point to which to run. each girl in succession runs at the target point and then when they get to a certain point, throw a ball into the air which requires the fielder to run hard in order to make the catch. Do this in each direction causing the fielder to make plays requiring a forward and backhand catch. This can be accomplished by you moving to another point after each girl has a turn in one direction. Emphasize hard running, not mere jogs. Make the plays somewhat difficult to make.
After this is done, you have another 10 minutes more of practice completed, bringing you to about the half hour mark. The next drill might be to keep the girls right where they are and move to a point from which you can throw pop flies in front of them which require a long run to catch. In each drill, you want to make sure that things move along quickly. You, the coach, should break a sweat. If you aren't sweating, you probably are not moving fast enough. RTe minutes more has passed and we are 40 minutes into the overall practice.
The next drill will involve less distance. Give each player a ball and have them each in turn throw it to you and then start running. You will throw it after about one or two seconds and then have them run the flies down. Do a turn throwing the balls to their right, another to their left, another directly over head, and several more varying where you throw the ball. This is another 10 minute workout and you should probably give them a couple minute break for water.
Once they are back, work some outfield fence plays. if you have a fence, try tossing the balls back to it and having the OFs make plays while finding the fence and catching the flies. Then work an outfield retrieval drill where they can't possibly make the catch and instead must race to the fence and then make a throw to another player. You are probably about an hour into practice and now you can liune the girls up to hit a series of fly balls.
If you are on a free field with nothing else going on, hit balls from home. Keep those girls who are likely to play corners in the corners and those likely to play center in center. Alternatively, you can have each rotate to the various fields after say 5 balls. Also, have some of your Ofs take turns covering bases and have your OFs make attempts at throwing to each. Do this sequentially so that each OF gets the opportunity to throw to each base except you don't really need to have CF and LF throw to first and your RF really should work on making a cutoffable throw when her turn to go to third comes. Hit the balls hard and then hit some soft ones. Hit balls directly at them and, if you are able into the gaps. Make sure that on every ball a girl is yelling for it. It is most common in this softball world for college and high school coaches to want their players to yell "ball, ball, ball" when calling for it. I suggest you use that. I don't really care for that - I'd prefer I got it. But when we coach,m we prep for the next level so use ball, ball, ball and don't try to fight city hall.
I suppose I forgot to work a drill into the early sequence which does nothing more than have OFs in two locations judge whether they should make a play or allow the other OF to make it. We do want to have such a drill and make sure that one girl is going for it and calling it while the other is backing up properly. If you forgot too, work it into your next practice. Don't just assume you will cover it when you hit to the whole field.
I suppose that when I go back and read this, I will realize that I forgot several drills. I don;t have time to list out every possible play, skill, and a drill for each. That is yet another reason I want you to use your own brains to develop drills. I doubt I have offered up anything here that you couldn't have come up with on your own no matter what your experience level is. So your takeaway from this piece is, sit down and make your own list of drills. If you have taken sufficient time and put in the effort, you will cover all the skills your OFs need. And if at some game or other situation, you realize that you have forgotten something, just add to your list and make sure you cover it in the next several practices.
As a final note, if you live in a cold region and are now working indoors, you should still take this approach. Works out the skills and design your own drills. You will do much better this way than you would by copying someone else's drills without understanding the objectives of each.
Have a good practice!Labels: coaching, outfield, practice
Permanent Link: Outfielder Drills
Parent Trap
by Dave
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Before I begin today, let me say that I do not know what it is like to be a mother. I am, of course, a father. I was the last of 5 siblings to have children. I have daughters, not sons. Before I became a parent, I was an uncle. My sisters all had boys. So while I do not have personal experience being a father of a son, I can say that I have observed, up close and personal, the different ways fathers and mothers relate to their sons and daughters. There is a difference. Also, parents are not particularly aware of the ways they relate outwardly to their children and how their behavior appears to others. The discussion I want to engage in today, one about parental conduct in travel softball, is very difficult and I expect many just won't get it. My perspective is as a father of daughters, but it also, I hope, can be applied to mothers and fathers of both sons and daughters since I have observed all the various permutations.
This discussion concerns the way parents outwardly relate to their children within the context of travel softball teams and tournaments. The reason why this is critical is because it really does matter, mostly to the kids themselves but also it can have unforeseen and unintended consequences with others.
I have observed parental conduct as a newcomer to a team, as one with a daughter guesting, as member of the old guard on a team, as mere spectator, as a head and assistant coach, and from just about every other imaginable point of view. I have seen all kinds of behavior and I'm not sure I am positioned properly to judge all of it. But I can tell you about some of the more extreme examples and how I interpret them.
I want to draw on some images. So I have to tell you some stories.
I have a friend whose daughter has played gold level ball for a few years. Back when she got involved with it, I ran into the father at a showcase. He told me of the instruction he had received from the staff of the showcase team. They warned parents against the sort of conduct they had observed over the years in younger aged tournament ball and gave several examples of what to avoid. The gist of that went something like, "make yourselves invisible at showcases if you want your daughter to make favorably impressions with the college coaches."
This father began his experiences observing his daughter playing showcases by sitting beyond the outfield fence. He arrived at the field, made sure his daughter had her stuff including water and money, and knew how to get in contact should she need something. He saw her off to join her teammates. And then he disappeared from her life for the day.
I say I ran into him but I went to a game his daughter was playing. We had talked by phone prior to this so I went to see if I could find him but had a little difficulty locating him. He told me he would be in the outfield and I scanned the fence to find him but he wasn't there. I expected to see him leaning on the fence. There were some people doing that or sitting in chairs next to it but he wasn't one of them. So I gave him a call on his cell and he said, "look at rightfield and now I'll lift up my arm so you can see me." There he was! He had been lying down in the grass, almost completely out of sight! He had done this purposely because he wanted to be virtually invisible.
This is the model of good behavior for a parent at a showcase tournament.
There is a girl, now off to college where she plays softball, who was a youth and high school pitcher. She tried out for and made various teams over the many years of her career. You could always find where she was playing tournaments even if you didn't know her team because her father always stood out. You wouldn't find her if you looked at the girls on the bench. But if you scanned the dugouts and sidelines, you would invariably not miss her father.
I say "you" because I mean you, the reader. You don't know the girl or her father but you would know them if you happened to be where she was playing. He'd be the guy constantly talking to his daughter and giving her signs about which pitch to throw and where. He was frequently on the coaching staff of these teams but when he was, he was exclusively concerned with his own daughter 100% of the time. Sometimes he might talk to others briefly but he was focused on his daughter. That wasn't just true when she pitched. That was true when she played SS or any other place on the field.
This conduct by the father occurred not merely in travel ball but also in HS. She was a varsity pitcher and I was shocked to see the same sort of behavior there. For a couple years, he merely signaled pitches to her. Then, he actually wormed his way into the dugout and called her pitches directly from there. No matter where this kid played, the father was involved a bit more than he should have been and trying to control what his daughter did on the field, even when she was as old as 17!
I was at a high school game with different teams once when a group of parents happened near my perch along the outfield fence. They were discussing some pitcher on one of the teams. I don't know this girl and it was several years ago so I never really figured out who she was. These parents were talking about the pitcher's prospects with a certain college. They said, and I have no way of verifying it though it does sound within the realm of possibility, "she convinced the college coach to come watch a high school game and she came only to see the father calling pitches by sign language from the sidelines. She packed up and left after crossing the kid off her list of prospects."
Again, I cannot judge the veracity of these comments but they sound plausible. If a coach were looking for a self-sufficient kid to fill the circle, you can imagine what she might think. If a coach merely wanted an effective pitcher, she might ignore the strong parental influence, assuming the kid had several effective outings in front of her. On the other hand, unless the father was planning to go to college with the kid, I know I would want to see how she pitched without him calling the shots. I'd like to observe how she worked with catchers.
Compare and contrast these three stories. How do you analyze them? How do you see yourself fitting into the spectrum of possible behaviors? Are you more like the father sitting, hidden out by the fence, or the father calling all his kid's pitches, perhaps worming his way into the dugout to be a pretend coach?
Let me tell you, I am not like the father by the fence. But I aspire to become like him. I am a nervous, tense person most of the time. I find I can turn this off sometimes, rarely, but I have yet to do that at a softball game. I find that any softball game can make me tense. I get tense watching games at every age level whether I know someone on one of the teams or not. My kids' softball games make me really tense. I suppose I like to be tense and that is why I like softball. But I do not want to ever do anything to harm my kids. I want to do everything I can to make my kids' softball experiences as good as they can be.
When I was an older "kid," about age 20, I had a friend who stood something like 6 foot 4, was otherwise rather large, and was very loud. We regularly referred to him by his nickname, "big and loud." I was known as "not as big but just as loud." I don't know where I got my voice from. It is too bad that it is married to abject tone deafness or I might have been an opera star. When I played ball, I annoyed more people than I would want to admit because I never shut up. I talked so much that many of my teammates mocked me. But I did it on purpose because I was catching and it broke hitters' concentration. Still, that need to talk nonstop with full voice pervades my being whenever I am at a game including my kids' softball games. You would easily find my kids by looking for me at games, unless I am coaching in which case I show a little more discretion and restraint!
Early on, my kids were busy trying to perfect their pitching motions and pitches. I provided nearly constant vocal reminders to them while they were in the circle. I just couldn't help myself. Do this, do that, faster arm, snap it off, hit your spots, spin it hard, etc., etc., etc. almost constantly sprang forth from my pie hole. When my youngest started out in 10U travel at the age of 9, I sometimes went so far as to signal her pitches. The team coach was someone I knew and he began to encourage me to do that. he said he didn't mind because he had no idea and wanted her to be successful so the team would win. So I started acting just like that father of the high schooler I mentioned earlier, acting as pretend coach.
In later years, I started getting involved in coaching so that I was no longer merely calling or signing from the sidelines. I enjoy coaching, particularly coaching other people's kids but I don't like coaching my own. I found myself too involved with my own kids, especially when they pitched. I started calling pitches for all the pitchers on my teams. And I was constantly coaching my daughters when they pitched. That's fine, I suppose, but the reality is they would not be able to grow as pitchers unless I took a step back.
At some point in my kids' softball careers, I attended a large clinic at which kids of all ages were present. Somehow, I got into a conversation with a guy whose daughter had been playing showcase ball with a well known gold team from the southeast for a year or so. She was a very accomplished player who was being recruited by a couple schools. This fellow talked to me for a while and then asked if I was coaching my daughter. When I told him I was, he said I should look to cut that out soon, "by the time she reaches 14." He went on further to say that otherwise she would not develop fully as a ball player. He did not speak about how others might interpret a player's father being a coach, but rather was focused on how that might effect my daughter, herself.
Since I heard these words, I have tried to extricate myself from coaching my kids' teams. Unfortunately, I have been cajoled into coaching by someone who knew me or been convinced to help out on teams that were short-staffed. So I have not yet succeeded in pulling back fully. I keep trying and as I say that, I hear Yoda, the Jedi master saying, "Try not, Do, Or do not, There is no try." Wisdom aside, I suspect there are many of us who coach our daughters' teams against our better judgment and the advice of others.
Many of us who do not directly coach are more like Sandra Bullock in the recently released movie "The Blind Side." (I highly recommend this film to anyone - I no longer go to see movies very often as most really stink. This would be the exception.) In the film, Bullock watches over her soon to be adopted son very closely, especially when he is at football practice. At one point, she gets frustrated with the coaching, marches onto the field and proceeds to give instruction to her son with the help of some of the players.
The story is a true one with a happy ending. The film is very good. But this particular scene got under my skin because it tends to support a bad notion, the idea that it is right and good for parents of young athletes to walk out onto the practice field, perhaps even the game field, in order to instruct their children about what they are doing. This is not a great thing.
In case you might think that parents would never do anything of the sort, I assure you that you are mistaken. Parents very often do exactly that. I was once running an indoor practice in which we set up an infield and ran situations, especially bunting situations. I pulled the girls into a circle before we started and explained what it was I wanted them to do. Then we ran plays. Unbeknown to me, one father was sitting behind the protective net by first base where his daughter was playing. He constantly gave her instruction. He also instructed the other 1Bs. His instruction was directly contrary to what I had told them. I couldn't understand why they could not perform a relatively simple play the way I had instructed them to do it. later I learned what had been going on and corrected it. I gave the father a stern talking to. Thereafter, he stayed in his car during indoor workouts.
On different occasion, we were playing a game in a tournament and suffering through some pretty bad umpiring. Everyone was on edge because most of the calls had gone against us and some were ridiculous. After one call, as it happens a legitimate one, a father walked onto the field to question the umpire about the call. I stood in stunned amazement as the father entered the playing field. Fortunately one of my assistants caught him before he crossed into play and told him to go back and sit down. I gave him basically the same talk I had given the other father.
Lots of the sort of bad behavior is displayed after parents become familiar with the coach and team. They engage in regular conversations, get comfortable with everyone and then lose their heads when games get stressful. Usually this does not happen right away because, just like on job interviews, people have their guard up the first couple times they meet you. But some folks are not at all restrained. Some folks act badly as early as tryouts.
I have had my kids go through tryouts annually since we got into travel ball. I9 wanted them to get experienced trying out so that when they had to do it for real, it would be no big deal. I practiced this in my life at times I was not looking for jobs. I would send out resumes and go on interviews years and years before I was ever actually looking for a job. I figured it would be good for my kids to do the same. Also, I wanted to see how other teams conducted their tryouts so mine would be more professional looking. In any event, what I saw at these tryouts frequently left me speechless.
I can understand a little good natured cheering at all times around the softball diamond but at tryouts, this should probably be a little less loud and frequent than it is at games. Some parents insist on giving their kids encouragement even in this tryout setting. It can be a little absurd but there is nothing wrong with it per se. I guess I prefer to be pretty quiet when it comes to tryouts others are conducting when my kid is involved. I watch but keep my mouth shut. Many parents cheer but others are much more involved than that. They scold their kids when they make mistakes. They walk over to the dugouts when kids are coming off the field and give instruction to their kids. Some transgressions are worse than that.
A travel coach friend of mine wrote in to say, "I think that parents really need to know they can actually do more harm than good during try-outs. The last thing a coach wants is parent issues. I have seen kids rejected due to their over-the-top intense parent. I don't want to deal with that and neither would you. One guy actually went out on the field during try-outs and caught his pitcher-daughter. When asked to let a player catch her, he called pitches from behind the back-stop. Unreal. Dad was told he was the reason the kid was overlooked. She is a very good pitcher, but not worth dealing with dad ... Best thing to do is stay in your car or on the bleachers and just observe!"
In my own experiences, parents can be problematic at tryouts and coaches should always be on the lookout. I had one set of parents behave themselves through tryouts, occasionally cheering but never saying anything directly to their daughter. Then after the tryouts, they questioned me excessively long. I kind of got a bad feeling from them but I ignored it. That was a mistake. It is OK to ask questions after tryouts to learn about the team and organization. But there are common sense limits.
For example if your daughter is asked to be on my team today, right after tryouts and the rest of the roster is also set, there is no way I can "guarantee" her a certain amount of playing time at a particular position. I can say that today she is the best or second best pitcher, catcher, infielder, or whatever but that does not mean she will perform so in games or that some other kid is not going to earn her position next spring. So, why ask about it? Why ask, "can you guarantee my kid infield playing time?" You can get a sense of how many other girls are pitchers, catchers, etc. before committing to the team. But you will never receive a contract and you shouldn't ask for one unless you want to scare off a coach.
I heard from one coach who was asking some girls to play for him. One of the girl's parents called the coach to ask questions before committing. That phone conversation lasted an hour in which the parent needed to know if a couple other girls were being asked to join and then whether they were likely to get the kind of playing time they would be looking for. This parent couldn't commit unless the other kids were coming. And they wouldn't be coming unless ... So on top of asking about her kid's prospects on the team, she had to be concerned with the others as well. The same lengthy conversation took place several times with a parent of each of the kids. After the last conversation, the coach drew a deep breath, pulled out his list of phone numbers and called each family back to inform them that he had completed his roster and their offers were no longer extended. He was not going to deal with these people for an entire year.
I held a tryout once in which I really only needed a couple kids, a pitcher if someone stood out, perhaps a catcher, and a utility player. The rest of my team was set. 7 or 8 kids showed up. One wore these super-kewl sunglasses despite it being very cloudy out that day. Those represented her attitude. She was pretty sure she was all that and more. Her mother felt the same way about her kid. She figured out who my wife was and sat next to her apparently on purpose. She talked non-stop and afterward my wife had a migraine. Not a good start!
Thuis kid wore a weird smirk on her face too, another attitude thing. She was convinced she was a good player and going to make this team. She wasn't and didn't. Back then I always liked to catch the pitchers because I wanted to observe movement and speed for myself. I caught what she suggested were fastballs, changes, curves, and drops. To tell you the truth, I was not able to discern between the pitches. Worse, the mother sat there and told my wife how she "knows your daughter is fast but my daughter is more of a finesse pitcher. She doesn't have your daughter's speed but she has better movement and you'll see that as they get older, movement's more important."
Why on Earth would you say such a thing to a coach's wife if you wanted to make the team? the kid had no movement, not even close to my daughter's. She couldn't change speeds even if she could throw moderately fast. Her curve and drop spun but didn't move at all. It was as uninspiring as it could be and the kid was not even close to as good as my younger daughter who played down an age group. I wouldn't take her on ability alone but I really was not going to have her anywhere near my team once I heard what the wife had said. What if she had been marginal? What if I was seriously considering inviting her?
In another case in which I was not a coach, there was a girl who was perfectly nice and a decent player. Her father, on the other hand, was another story. I won;t go into details but he had absolutely no restraint when it came to what he said and his choice of words to say it. After the first season with the team, a few girls left the team and they held tryouts. After the tryouts, the coach called the father and said, "I am not asking your daughter to join the team this year. She made the cut but you did not." The fgather had to be removed from the team and, therefore, the girl was not invited. That is a shame.
OK, so those are some stories about parental conduct in the softball setting. I said at the beginning that fathers probably relate to daughters differently than mothers do. I guess I didn't develop that so much as just give you examples of each. In the end, I want you to walk away from this understanding that your conduct as a parent of an athlete has an effect on numerous intended and unintended others. It will effect your kid, perhaps in ways you don't want it to. It might color her prospects at tryouts or with her team. It may effect the way college coaches look at her if that is where you are. You must restrain yourself. You have to think about the way others perceive you and your child, and how you would like them to perceive you.Labels: coaching, Conduct, parenting
Permanent Link: Parent Trap
Why Stress Fundamentals
by Dave
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
If you spend time on any large softball forum, you will see very little discussion about real fundamentals. The subject is just not exciting enough for a good read or heated discussion. Instead what you generally see are these convoluted discussions about sophisticated topics, using words you have never heard, brought up by either real experts, those pretending to be such, or people who have no idea what they are talking about. People would rather use big words and engage in the complex then deal with what really matters, fundamentals.
I want to tell you a story that just happens to be extremely timely at this moment. Once there was a young man who was what you would call naturally gifted athletically. By gifted athletically, I mean he was both fast and quick, had good flexibility and strength, was gifted with good hands and eyes, as well as the coordination of the two; he could convert coaches words and descriptions into action; he could watch others play a sport and copy the good parts of their mechanics without taking on the bad; he was motivated to be good at the sport of his choice and became one of the most renowned prospects within it at a young age. This young man rose through the ranks of his sport rapidly and as he got older, he began to play with and against others who were similarly "gifted" with "natural" ability.
The young man became a professional in his sport and rose up to its highest levels. When grouped with the other top athletes, he still stood out. But as his game began to be scrutinized, he was compared unfavorably to several.
The young man was named Derek Jeter. His sport was obviously baseball. His defensive game was compared unfavorably to everyone from the other local MLB team's SS to others within his league and outside of it, not to mention the gentleman who plays the next position over from him. In fact, at times, minor league SS prospects were compared favorably to Jeter in terms of range and other aspects of the position. Most recently, the negative comparisons have died down quite a bit and the man was recently named American League Gold Glove Shortstop as well as Sports Illustrated Magazine's "sportsman of the year."
Wha happen?
Not for nothin but, if you live anywhere near da Bronx, you know wha happen.
Wha happen were several things. First off, the team replaced their stocky, hard hitting, poor foot speed, lousy fielding first baseman with a certain tall, athletic Gold Glover. That made a huge difference to be sure but there was another basket of changes that made a bigger impact.
A certain coach worked with Jeter, watching his fielding mechanics and various aspects of his defensive game. And you know what? This coach changed some things Jeter was doing. For one thing, he moved him deeper. That changed the path he took to the ball. More importantly, he adjusted or corrected Jeter's ready position.
Let me say that again for effect. One of the biggest improvement Derek Jeter made, the thing he did which moved his status from defensive liability or second rate SS to Gold Glove winner and arguably the most heralded athlete in his game was an adjustment to his ready position.
Are you getting this? I just said that a professional athlete who is assumed to be a member of a small elite club of fellows who are, at least potentially though probably at this point likely, first ballot Hall of Famers had his ready position adjusted and that has made all the difference.
Ready position? Isn't that the first thing anybody teaches? How can a professional get that far without a nearly perfect ready position? The answer is we can all always improve even the most fundamental aspect of our games. Professional athletes, even HOF-destined professional athletes, are no exception. If you want to improve your game, look at the basics, not the sophisticated stuff.
If you examine what professional hitters do when they get into difficult times, you will find that they always go back to the drawing board. They go back to the tee and examine their fundamental mechanics. They do not ask ace pitchers to throw batting practice for them. They do not go into the batting cages and tell the coach to turn the speed up above 100. They do not read books about new and better hitting mechanics. They do not start emulating the swing of somebody who happens to be hot right now. They go to the batting tee and review videotape regarding their hitting fundamentals.
While examining the college recruiting game in softball, I have heard several stories which do not seem to compute in my puny head. Once somebody said, lots of times coaches don't even watch the actual games when they go to showcases. Many like to watch warm-ups because they get a better sense of the kid from that than they do from the games. Players are warned against being nonchalant before and after games, and most especially during warm-ups. I can accept this but, on the other hand, I have watched so many teams warm-up like professionals and then when we got into the game, our band of scraggly goof-offs have kicked their butts. What on Earth can you tell from warm-ups?
There are lots of things you can see from an individual player during warm-ups. &nbsop; You can judge attitude, seriousness, approach to playing the sport, etc. More importantly, you get a really good sense of a kid's fundamentals from warm-ups. It is virtually impossible for a kid with poor fundamentals to pretend to be a really well-schooled player repeatedly while fielding simple grounders. Likewise, it is almost impossible for an extremely well skilled kid to go about her business using bad mechanics during a warm-up. On the other hand, when 3 to 10 balls are hit into play during the course of a game, it is almost impossible to gain a sense of a kid's fundamentals when she fields somewhere between 2 and none of these.
Also, it is very possible that some kid with absolutely fantastic skills will have a tough day because her grandfather died the night before, she was forced to stay up all night to complete a school project, she caught a stomach bug from her little brother, her boyfriend gave her heck because she spends too much time playing softball, the teacher in her otherwise favorite subject gave her heck because she spends too much time playing softball, or for any number of reasons. maybe the pitcher throwing today always misses her marks and the SS finds herself out of position because she was expecting an outside pitch for a ball and a perfect, down the middle strike was thrown. There are so many possibilities for something external to a particular player to cause her to look bad that it defies reason.
There once were two catchers on a team with two pitchers. One pitcher hit the mark all the time. The other missed more than 50% of the time but she was a hard thrower and still found success. The catcher who caught the control pitcher looked like an all-star in almost every game. The catcher for the less accurate pitcher spent way too much time with her back to the field while chasing balls bouncing around the backstop. At some point, folks watching the two drew the conclusion that one catcher was much better than the other. Then, one day, the good catcher caught the wild pitcher and the bad catcher caught the controlled one. Everyone's opinions of the two catchers changed instantaneously.
If you were evaluating catchers, would you feel more confident in your assessment if the catcher were catching somebody who always hit her marks or one who always put the ball in the dirt? If you were evaluating infielders, would you feel better about your assessment if you watched a game in which she fielded two or three easy chances cleanly or you watched her field 20 reps in a row during a practice? If you were evaluating a pitcher, would you feel comfortable watching her mow down a team of batters about whom you knew absolutely nothing? Or would you rather focus on her mechanics, speed, movement, ability to hit spots?
OK, enough of that. My point is recruiting coaches often watch warm-ups because they want to observe fundamentals. It is easier to judge fundamentals in drills with repeated reps than it is to see them on display in a game. They want to watch fundamentals because fundamentals are critical. And why they are critical is what this is really all about.
If you watch some games at various age levels, before long, you should form an understanding of why fundamentals are critical. At 10U or 12U, girls who are the best athletes make all the plays. It does not so much matter if they are fielding balls properly or throwing correctly. They are athletic. They move well enough to the ball and get there because they are fast and/or quick. They pick it up cleanly because A) they are confident in their abilities and B) the balls just are not hit as hard as, or with as much spin as, they will be soon. They make the throws accurately because they have experiences making good throws under little pressure, not because their throwing mechanics are right.
Take the successful athletic kid with poor fielding mechanics and move her gradually up in age group. Her success will begin to falter because her mechanics are bad. I have watched some middle infielders who make all the plays at 10U or 12U but who do not get in good ready positions, don't field with two hands, or otherwise make a travesty out of what are normally viewed as sound mechanics. These girls get rather frustrated when everyone catches up to them athletically or strength wise, when the balls are hit so much harder, when everything seems to have a weird spin on it. They also have difficulty getting outs when the kids' baserunning speeds pick up. They do not field properly to make a quick throw and when the girls start getting under 3, they make a lot of late throws to first. l; Then they start rushing everything to make up for their poor mechanics and the wildness begins.
Throwing mechanics, in particular, hold kids back as they get older. I have watched many otherwise decent outfielders cause major problems because they are side-armers. A couple RFs come to mind immediately. Maybe you have seen this sort of thing? There's a runner on first when a basehit reaches right field, down the line. The RF rushes over taking a good line, picks the ball cleanly and fires a side-armer to third trying to nail the runner from first. The ball sails past the line and out of play, more than 60 feet up the left field line! Ugh!
As girls age, like I already said, balls are hit harder and with more spin, runners are faster, and there just is more and more pressure put on players to do everything right, to do everything extremely fast. Girls who have sound fundamental mechanics seem to rise and those who do not, fall. Give me the super-athletic kid with sound fundamentals every time. But if given the choice between the weaker athlete who has sound mechanics and the superior athlete with poor fundamentals, I'll take the former. At some point, you just cannot help a kid who is completely disinterested in fundamentals or who has atrocious ones. That point is probably sometime between 13 and 14. So work kidsensively on fundamentals from the time they start playing until ... there is no until as Derek Jeter can attest to.
Yesterday I wrote a piece about improving softball by improving rec ball by improving pitching and fundamentals. Today I am not fixated on the lowest levels of the sport, but rather the highest. Ignore fundamentals in favor of what you deem more important aspects if you must but consider what happens when the kid who knows where to go with the ball can no longer pick it. Consider the accuracy of the strong armed girl whose throwing mechanics stink. Consider the success rate of the infielder whose foot position is always is improper. Consider how well your team does when everybody fields with one hand, pulls their gloves to their throwing hand while taking excessive amounts of steps, and then fires a rocket to the base after the baserunner gets there.
Football is perhaps one of the most complex games on the planet. We often hear broadcasters talk about the "skill positions." These broadcasters have never tried to put a block on somebody. If you do not have blockers who are capable of blocking properly, you cannot run the ball and the only thing that will come out of your passing game is a continual line of star quarterbacks sidelined with concussions, or broken bones. Blocking is fundamental. Blocking is boring. Blocking is critical.
If you coach a basketball team on which everybody could teach Coach K a thing or two about sophisticated plays but on which nobody can dribble, set a pick, make a pass, or shoot properly, good luck. It makes no difference how much your kids know about the game if they can't perform the fundamentals well.
So why do we put girls on a softball diamond and then worry that they know where to go with the ball? Why do we put the course in back of the cart? Why do so many of us not spend time on fundamentals because they are boring when those fundamentals are the single most important aspect of the game?Labels: coaching, defense, instruction, parenting, practice, throwing
Permanent Link: Why Stress Fundamentals
Now Is The Time
by Dave
Monday, November 30, 2009
Many, if not most, of us are in the off-season. Yes, elite travel players aged about 14 and up are working towards winter showcases in Florida and elsewhere. Many warm weather states are playing their winter seasons. And in the cold states, some few are making plans for indoor winter ball or their indoor workout sessions. But that's travel ball and what I'm about to discuss has nothing to do with that. Right now, my thoughts are with rec programs around the country. Officers and other league officials are making plans for the coming season including tryouts which will happen for many right after the holidays. In going with the catch phrase of 2009, how about thinking about some sort of "change" for the 2010 season?!
When my mind drifts back to rec ball, a couple images come to mind. For one thing, there are those eternally long games between large teams (15 or more) of girls aged 7 to 10. Another image that comes to mind is of girls in the 12U division who really are not interested in playing softball at a high level but just want to get out and socialize with their friends. The final image that comes to mind is of the older divisions which have depleted rosters either because most of the skilled players are somewhere else, perhaps in travel, or because softball is competing with school and other activities.
These are macro images and when I think of each, a couple sub-set images come to mind. In the 10U age group, typically you have about half the girls who have never played anything beyond tee ball and about half the girls who have already played a full year, possibly more, of real softball. Of those who have played some, there is a smaller sub-set of girls who have attended clinics on their own or possibly gotten involved with travel ball someplace where they played 50 games outside the rec league, practiced all winter and developed their skills well beyond the newbies.
Generally, the pitching stinks in this category except for a very small group of girls who have actually taken lessons, perhaps even pitched travel ball for a year. There are not nearly enough of these girls to go around to all the teams and because the league restricts girls from pitching more than say 3 innings a game or week, the games almost always degrade into walk-fests with a few hits when the pitcher finds the strike zone and the wrong kid, some travel kid, is at bat.
Games usually have some sort of time restriction like 2 hours and thank goodness for that because nobody could take any more. A game might start out with a bunch of walks and then somebody hits a grounder that exceeds the reach of any infielder and rolls past the outfielders. Finally the last outs are recorded and the teams switch. the next half inning might proceed like the first or the other team might have one of those travel pitchers. In any event, it continues until the score is pretty high, the travel pitcher ends her permitted number, or some such. Nobody has really gained from the experience. But everyone goes out for ice cream or speeds off to a family party or other event. Meet back here Tuesday or next Saturday and we'll replay the same game against another team.
At 12U, most of the girls are more coordinated and there is more "quality" pitching. A few teams have one travel pitcher, possibly two. Some teams do not. Generally the teams that have pitchers will make it to the playoffs by blowing out the others. And then there are some quality games, quality for the more serious players, that is. The less serious, less skilled kids will be either at home because their team is no longer playing or stuck out in the outfield and overwhelmed by the opposing pitching. Games are shorter throughout the season and particularly in the playoffs. Bragging rights are established. And many girls start considering leaving softball for something a little more interesting and exciting, or something they can actually excel at.
In the older age categories, there is a massively reduced number of players because girls have left for other activities because they have absolutely no confidence on the softball diamond. Some play although they are not serious about the game because they can still hold their own and there is nothing else much that interests them. When basketball or some other event conflicts with their rec softball games, they choose the other activity which causes teams to have trouble fielding 9. There are fewer and fewer teams and age groups are often combined in order to have enough teams with enough kids to play games.
This is the rec softball pyramid. We start out with too many kids to count at age 7 or 8 and end up with too few kids to bother counting by 15 and 16. Competition stinks in the early ages. It gets marginally better in older ones and then degrades as the number of participants depletes. It is a shame for a truly great game.
But what do we do about it? Like I said, right now is the planning stage for many rec programs. If I have accurately described rec softball, ultimately, We can really do only one of two things. We can leave it alone and assume nothing will make it any better, or fooling with it might make it worse. Or we can try to make some positive changes. What some of these changes could be are the subject of today's discussion.
Some leagues divide up the girls between 8U and 10U or 8-9 and 10U while some have leagues where 7 and under are relegated to tee ball while everyone over 8 and under 10 plays in a single league. The differences in coordination, strength, athleticism, etc. between a youngish 9 (let alone 8) and an older 10 is considerable. IMHO, girls aged 8 should not be playing with the 10s. It would be preferable if programs could establish separate leagues for 8U and 10U, even perhaps divide up the 9s and 10s into competitive and less competitive play.
If for example, you have 8 teams of 10U in which all different skill and age levels are represented, what would be wrong with creating 2 divisions, based partly on age and partly on skill. These would then play against just 3 other teams rather than having a single 8-team league in which some kid who could not field a grounder or make a decent throw to first must play against another who has played a year of travel ball in addition to rec. So my first recommendation is to consider dividing up your 10U league into competitive and less competitive divisions. If you do not wish to do this at 10U for whatever reasons, consider doing it for 12U.
Next, it is almost painful to watch the pitching at 10U in most rec leagues. Yes, there are some which train their pitchers and that is generally a better league. Many just conduct tryouts and leave the teams to their own devices. One team has one great pitcher and many poor ones. Other teams have decent pitchers who do not walk the world. But overall, the total quality of pitching is very poor.
Right now, when budgets are being established and plans for the season are being laid out, why not consider addressing the pitching issue? What you can do is bring in a professional instructor to train a group of pitchers at weekly clinics. If a professional trainer is not within the realm of budgetary possibility, comsider talking to local high school coaches to get a kid pitching at that level who would volunteer to work with the kids. Every high schooler who aspires to go to college must perform a minimum number of hours of community volunteering. This would be a fun way to earn one's required points.
These clinics could be conducted during the late winter months in some school gymnasium or other facility. Presumably the local rec league can gain access to a school gym for free or some sort of nominal charge. You get your space, some balls, an instructor and see how things develop.
The pitching clinics should not be some sort of free benefit provided by the league that anyone who wants to come whenever they want to come can feel free to attend. It should be mandatory for all girls who state they want to pitch in the league. There could be a nominal fee to cover expenses. If a professional instructor would accept $200 for a two hour clinic and you were able to squeeze 20 kids into a lesson, $5 - $10 per kid is not bad for one or two hours worth of Saturday afternoon baby sitting for a girl to gain the opportunity to stand in the circle. Add to this the other costs and divide by 20 or have the league pick up those costs. The point is, this could be accomplished for very little cost per aspiring pitcher.
One league I have spoken about in the past puts the word out that anyone who wishes to pitch must attend their pitching clinics which have a paid instructor plus some high school volunteers. A good instructor can easily handle 20 kids but give him 2 high school aged, softball playing girls and everything goes very smoothly. Attendance is taken at these clinics. Girls who want to pitch must attend, regardless of excuses provided. If your clinic consists of 8 to 10 sessions, you might allow any one girl to miss 2 but more than that and they are no longer pitchers. yes that's tough politically but if you want your league to provide a quality experience, trust me, this is a necessary step.
Girls who attend their own private lessons, could be exempted or have a reduced number of sessions, provided that it is clear that they are actually attending lessons and do not need additional work in a group setting. This can easily be seen in tryouts or at a first clinic session at which skills are evaluated. Don't simply accept anyone's word that a particular kid is in lessons and therefore has a valid e4xcuse not to show at your clinics. Otherwise, you will most certainly see more kids laying claim to being in lessons while your league's pitching improves only a bit.
The point about improving pitching is not merely some way to alleviate parental pain caused by sitting through horrendous walk-fest games. There is a better reason to take the plunge and do this. While hitting is very much a mechanical issue that should be addressed in a vacuum, it is also critical for hitters to see decent pitching, as mush as possible. When walk-fests take place, nobody benefits, not the struggling pitchers, not the bored fielders, not the batters who never get to take swings. When a league's 10U pitching improves, everybody benefits. Batters take their cuts. Fielders field balls because batters are hitting them. And the game moves along so nobody is caught yawning either in the stands or out in right field.
It should be noted that when 10U pitching improves, 12U games are better too as kids move up having actually pitched somewhat well. Others have fielded real grounders or flies. And batters have real experiences of seeing strikes and ripping at them.
As a side note, there is another pitching related issue which can be addressed to improve your local rec league. That issue can be addressed either in a non-competitive 10U or, if you have a 9U or other pre-10U league, there. That issue is walks.
One way to deal with the issue is to alter the number of balls required before a batter is walked. At young ages, 6 might be the magic number which changes the game for the better. If that doesn't cut down the number of bases on balls, there is another approach which is guaranteed to. Abolish them. That is, do not permit walking. When the pitcher throws 4 or 6 balls, have a coach pitch.
One league we were involved with had a rule which limited walks to 4 per inning. After that, a coach pitched the rest of the inning. That did not really work all that well. Almost every inning began with 4 walks followed by, of course, coaches pitching. if you want to do that sort of thing, why not put 3 runners on base, give the batting team a run and then have coaches pitch the whole thing? Of course, this also solves nothing. So, instead, consider doing away with walks, just at this low level, and allow pitchers to try to throw strikes to each and every batter without facing the risk of boring their teammates to death.
A peripheral issue involves the way teams are set up. Say you have 8 teams in your league and 16 kids have attended the clinics. That works out nicely since 2 pitchers could be placed on each team. But that is never the way it works unless you design it as such. if you want to improve your league's games along with the pitching, conduct separate drafts of pitchers and other players. The teams which go first in the pitcher draft go last in the player draft. And do not allow two parents who also happen to have their kids in pitching lessons to coach on the same team. Split them up. I don't really care who is friends with whom. The league exists for the good of the largest possible number of participants, not to ensure that Sally gets to play with her best friends.
This raises an issue unrelated to generally improving a rec league but I want to address it nonetheless because it is a thorn in my side. How many times have you seen this kind of thing happen: Matt, Sara's dad who is coaching the Marlins or Phillies has Sara, an ace pitcher on his team. His daughter knows Jane and Mollie who are very good softball players that can also pitch in a pinch. They know Maggie, Allie, Kristen and Lauren, also good players. The group conspires to go to tryouts and not really try. Matt is able to draft all 6 girls plus his daughter and they crush all comers in the league once games start. One of the 7 always pitches, another always catches, and the others make up the infield. They bat 1-7 with the "other girls" filling in remaining spots and sharing tim e on the bench. This kind of stuff cannot be allowed to go unpunished. It happens all the time across this nation and most other league participants are hurt in some fashion by it. Enough of that. If a league president knows about such shenanigans and is too spineless to put a stop to it, he or she should not be president.
So that is pitching and two related draft issues which could be addressed in order to improve a rec league. I believe that this issue alone, if it is resolved, will lead to a better rec league. But I'm going to delve a bit further into other areas because I do not believe resolving this issue alone will lead to better participation, particularly as girls age up.
Another area which can be addressed is fundamental defensive skills. So many kids progress through rec softball without ever really knowing how to field a ball or make a throw or catch that it is mind boggling. Kids come out for the lowest levels and coaches do make an effort to teach their teams how to field and throw. But before long, they come to the conclusion that half the kids can do it and the other half cannot. They also conclude that the only way they are going to win games is to take the kids who can field and throw, put them in the infield, and then teach them where to throw. They encourage these more naturally gifted kids to take over control of the game. If the ball is hit to the outfield and you can get it, go get it. Don't wait to allow the others to try to make a play. Just take charge and make every play you possibly can. While there is nothing wrong with the philosophy of going for everything in general, it can devolve into the old "Bad News Bear" scene in which one kid races back and forth and catches the ball right in front of another kid. That's not good.
A better approach is to require coaches to teach basic skills. That's tougher than it sounds since most coaches: A) do not have the slightest idea of what basic skills are, let alone how to teach them; B) see the rec league as a way of raising their own egos or providing their kid with a winning experience; or C) do not want to be told how to coach or structure a practice since they played college ball and the league officials did not. Leagues must coach their coaches.
If you go watch a very good rec league, one of the elements of play which will strike you is the fundamental skills of the players. This league might just be blessed with better water or soil which yields a better crop of athletes. But if that happens year after year, most likely the water and soil have nothing to do with it. There must be another reason. Most likely they teach all the participants those fundamental skills.
Many towns have certain requirements their coaches must meet. They have to attend the safety training class. They must attend a meeting which tells them that they should emphasize certain things like fun, basic skills, and team work, not winning. But even when these perfunctory meetings and classes are conducted at which all the good intentions are laid out, nothing much changes. We have to find a way to force or coerce coaches into teaching sound fundamentals, putting the emphasis on the right thing, or otherwise improving everyone's experience and learning.
The first issue is to make sure coaches know fundamental skills. For this, perhaps a film session followed by an open discussion would suffice. There are videos out there which teach fundamentals. Most are addressed to players but there is no harm in having coaches watch them. An alternative is to bring in a competent local high school or travel coach. I say competent because there are plenty of incompetents. I know of some high school coaches who parents of players would like to sit down and teach the basics of the game to. If the local high school coach is merely taking additional pay for the least possible amount of effort, perhaps a travel coach would be willing to come in and help out. If he or she pulls many of their players from the local area, this can only benefit their program.
The second issue is finding a way to make sure the coaches teach the skills to their players. It is nearly impossible to draft up a specimen practice regimen, require its use, and then enforce the requirement. Nobody takes kindly to this sort of control from league officials. But some sort of requirement for teaching skills is absolutely necessary at young ages.
There are a couple ways to resolve the issue. One is to require coaches to conduct practices of a certain duration consisting of a certain amount (say half of practice) of fundamental skills teaching and practicing. [; The second half is theirs to do with as they choose. This can be tough to police unless a league rep can attend practices regularly and watch in order to enforce the rule. A secojnd, more effective way to enforce the requirement of spending a certain amount of time working fundamental skills is to take away the practice time and put it into "clinic" time. You have 8 to 16 coaches looking to practice their players. You have say 160 girls looking to practice. Rather than conducting separate practices by team, use half the time to conduct clinics at which the team coaches are instructors under the supervision of a coordinator who directs what is to be done, when and how.
A league which, for example, plays its games on Sunday and Wednesday could establish some sort of Saturday clinic schedule and then allow teams no more than one practice outside the clinis per week. Coaches might work with their players for some of the time but be supervised by league officials or the coordinator while conducting the drills. There are many ways to conduct these clinis but you can figure this out for yourselves.
As a final comment about clinics as opposed to practices, I find that many leagues do this sort of thing but only at the youngest age levels. It would be best if these kinds of skills clinics could be continued at least through 10U. It would be better if they continued up to at least 12U, though in more sophisticated form.
And as a final comment about coaching or policing coaches, some sort of evaluation program should be implemented. It should be formal and standardized. It must involve the players, parents or both. Each participant's family ought to receive an evaluation form concerning how the team was run. The form should contain a questionnaire which grades coaches ability and willingness to teach fundamental skills. The questions must be objective such as:
"Fundamental skills" (circle all comments that apply)
"I (my daughter) was taught fundamental skills more than / less than half of all practice time"
"I (my daughter) had ample / insufficient time to learn these skills"
"The coach was knowledgeable / needs work on his understanding of skills / ability to communicate those skills with the kids."
I think you get the idea. No, I don't have a specimen questionnaire for you to use. You need to draft one up which mirrors your organization's values. But keep in mind that you want a high level of participation in the process. Getting 50% or less of these questionnaires back is not only a good thing, it makes the entire batch completely useless. You cannot evaluate coaches based on a half return rate. You need a minimum of 75%. Also the process must be anonymous. Specific comments, if you allow parents to provide them, cannot be read back to the coach. When the process is over, the overall grade is the only thing which you share with the coach.
For example, a coach might be told, you had an overwhelming response which indicated that you do not like to teach fundamentals or you need to work on your communication skills. A coach might be told that the majority of respondents felt that you put winning too high on your list of priorities. Again, I think you get the idea and can do for yourselves.
So, these are my suggestions to you to improve your rec league. I have no vested interest in this. It really just popped into my head this morning. I suppose I know where it all came from. I was discussing some softball issues with a web friend. He directed me to a forum which discussed all sorts of softball issues in his state. I was struck by how similar the discussion was to similar forums regarding my state. I was also struck by how many of the same issues pop up all over the place.
One of the issues which was raised had to do with "how do we bring our state's softball up to the level of California?" In that discussion, one of the readers wondered why CA players were so good. All sorts of reasons were givewn and most I take issue with. For one thing, there is this assumption that the only good ball is played in CA. Last I looked Florida is making some large inroads. Further, there is very good softball being played in Texas, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Michigan, Georgia, etc, (sorry if I missed your state).
For another thing, everyone assumes CA has better softball because it has such great weather. yes, they do have great weather but not everywhere in the state. Some places are way too hot to play ball in the summer. Some places actually get snow. Some places are just grand to play softball 365 days per year but, you know, I know of some teams that play in colder, less pleasant climates who play over 100 games per year, play indoors whenever the weather is no good, and otherwise ought to be able to compete with CA teams. Yet there must be other reasons because one particular organization which does this and who I am thinking about is good but hardly the best around.
The fact is CA has been at this fastpitch thing longer than most places. In my state and many others, girls were playing slowpitch or modified for many decades before they gradually moved over to fastpitch. Heck, there are some high schools which still play slowpitch in a few places around the country. Fastpitch hasn't really been around many places for very long. I think that people either don;t know or forget that colleges in the SEC and ACC have not fielded softball teams for very long, mostly less than two decades. Until the game has been around for longer and things have sorted themselves out, just a few places will continue to yield the largest, highest quality crop of softball players and teams. The question cannot be what does CA have that we'll never have which allows them to produce better softball. The question has to be, what can we learn from other places about how to improve our softball. One, important place we can improve is the quality of our rec leagues. If we drastically improve our rec leagues, the entire game in our region will improve. But not only that, also more and more girls will come to appreciate our game. More and more girls will have fun p[laying softball well. That is why I wrote this today.
"Change" is the catchword of today. We do need to make changes in many aspects of our lives. It cannot be change for change's sake. It must be change for the sake of improvement. I've laid out a few areas in which our rec softball leagues can change. Pitching is key. Fundamentals are almost as important. As you, the league officials, plan for the coming rec season, how about thinking about some positive changes?Labels: coaching, fielding, instruction, little league, parenting, pitching, pre-season preparation, Youth recreational softball
Permanent Link: Now Is The Time
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