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Top Academic Honors
by Dave
Friday, October 14, 2005
The National Fastpitch Coaches Association released Monday its 2004-5 Academic ranking of softball teams for NCAA Division I, II and III; NAIA; Junior College; and High School. Congratulations to the Division I top ten programs which are as follows (School, GPA, Coach):
- University of Detroit Mercy, 3.591, Bob Wilkerson
- Saint Louis University, 3.544, James Molloy
- Cleveland State University, 3.533, Julie Jones
- St. Bonaventure University, 3.528, Mike Threehouse
- Seton Hall University, 3.490, Ray Vander May
- Eastern Michigan University, 3.461, Karen Baird
- Bradley University, 3.458, Buddy Foster
- Iona College, 3.452, Andrea Farquhar
- Indiana State University, 3.428, Brenda Coldren
- Southern Illinois University, 3.415, Kerri Blaylock
Congratulations also to the schools from different divisions as well as the high schools which made the grade. This is one of the most important aspects which differentiates us from other sports and men's sports. Girls and women who play softball get good grades! Even though the eight teams which comprised the Div. I Women's College World Series are not well represented at the top of the list, many other schools which competed well in the NCAA tournament are.
Thanks to the NFCA for Tracking this very important metric of high quality softball programs and reporting this to us.
Permanent Link: Top Academic Honors
 
Be The Best You Are Softball Coaches Clinic
by Dave
Friday, October 14, 2005
Bringing some of the biggest names in US softball together under one roof, the Be The Best You Are Softball Coaches Clinic will be held Thursday, January 12 through Saturday, January 14, 2006 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The event will include Mike Candrea (Team USA Olympic Head Coach as well as head coach of perennial powerhouse Arizona), Carol Hutchins (Head Coach of NCAA Champion Michigan), and Jennie Finch (who presumably needs no introduction).
While the clinic is suitable for the most advanced coaches, it definitely can provide any coaching staff with invaluable tips, drills, and perspectives. What is rather remarkable about this is the cost which is an unbelievable $95. That is not a misprint. The cost is just ninety five dollars, American. There are three available hotels within walking distance of the site and while that will certainly add to the cost, this is still an entirely reasonable price tag and one which will provide benefits far in excess of the cost.
The choice of Cherry Hill as a location is an excellent one as it is within easy driving distance of New York City, New Jersey, Delaware, some parts of Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, even Virginia. Some of the sessions available are:
- Aggressive Offensive Tactics
- Drills to Develop a Top Hitting Team
- Building a Championship Program
- Hitting Principles and Concept
- The Basics for Every Young Pitcher
- Jennie Finch's Favorite Drills to Improve Speed and Movement
To learn more about this important seminar, check out the Be The Best web site, call (732) 528-5392 or email: bethebest@bytheshore.com to obtain a brochure.
If you can get there, don't miss this unique opportunity to learn from the games very best people.
Permanent Link: Be The Best You Are Softball Coaches Clinic
Developing The Young Pitcher - Phase Two
by Dave
Monday, October 10, 2005
At the "phase two" point of a pitcher's development, I'm going to guess a girl is around 10 years of age, give or take two years depending on when she started. She has learned the correct fundamental mechanics of the general windmill motion. She fully opens her hips and shoulders, drives hard off the rubber, closes down at the right moment, and with a good hard snap of her wrist delivers a fast pitch that is near the strike zone more than half the time. She'll need to constantly work the same drills which got her to this point so she can further lock down her motion and increase her speed as her body matures. I'm also assuming that she throws 3 or 4 times per week and at least one of these workouts is around 100 pitches depending on age and physical development. She is ready to take the next step.
A fastball is a great pitch but without a few elements added to it, inevitably hitters will catch up to the speed no matter how fast it is. You can get away with just a straight, flat, hard pitch at 10U but even at 12U, the batters begin to drive your fastball. You don't need to develop a whole stable of new pitches to combat this yet but you do need to take advantage of location, deception, pitch angle, and ball movement to get hitters out. These four are linked but in order to understand them better, it is best to break them down.
LocationLocation is the single most important element to pitching at all levels. By location, I mean the point at which the ball crosses the plate. There is not room here to go into every aspect of location - that will be covered in a subequent article - but suffice it to say that location refers to the ability to throw inside or out, high or low at will. This takes a lot of practice to perfect but it is really the next logical step after achieving the ability to throw a fastball strike almost every time.
Initially, the catcher will move his or her glove to one of four spots, inside high or low, or outside high or low. After a pitcher is able to hit the glove placed in one of these four basic spots, the next step is to be able to hit spots regardless of where the catcher's glove is located. Most often pitchers do this by "aiming" for one of the catcher's knee guards or shoulders. I used the term "aiming" to describe what a pitcher does when trying to locate but even as I used it, I got sick to my stomach. I think I better explain what I do and do not mean by aiming before I go further.
Aim is accomplished by force of will not by altering body movements. The first thing my mind conjures up when I use the term "aim" is a rec coach yelling to his pitcher to "Just get it over. Just throw a strike. Take a little off and let the batter hit it. You've got fielders behind you. Use them. Let her hit it." That's not what I mean. That's bad advice. "Aim" is a psychological term closely akin to what the movie "Star Wars" referred to as "The Force." You do not aim by consciously altering your delivery. You don't step in a different place on the pitching plate. You don't alter your delivery. You don't change your release point. You aim by using the thousands of pitch repetitions you have done in practice. You do it with your mind. We are practicing pitch location in order to build up the experience of throwing at different places.
Let's go back to the catcher for a moment. The catcher moves his or her glove to various points inside and out, high and low. At first the pitcher won't be able to hit those points except by luck. That's fine. Eventually she'll get "luckier and luckier" until she can hit points by sheer will. It would be almost cruel to just get a pitcher to be able to hit the glove in the middle of the zone and then pull the rug out from underneath her by getting angry when she can't hit a glove inside and low. So work this in slowly. You begin during normal pitch workouts where she is just trying to throw strikes by telling her to "hit the glove." Then gradually shift the glove outside then in, high and low. Take special care to praise your pitcher when she hits the target. This will help build the experience we are after. Work the "hit the glove" thing at every throwing session at least a little. Gradually over time, you'll be able to make it the focus of all sessions.
As I said, as girls grow older and more experienced, the location of the catcher's glove should become less and less important. Indeed, good catching coaches do not encourage a catchers to always move the glove to where the pitch target is located. This is because it is too easy for players on the opposing team to call out pitches when they see the catcher move. It is a small matter for a bench player or runner on base to yell "inside low" when the catcher moves into position. It is best initially to move the glove around in order to learn to locate pitches but after this is mastered, using other targets is preferable. To reiterate, an experienced pitcher should use various aim points on the catcher's body to locate her pitches.
There are only two reasons for a pitcher to practice simply throwing to the middle of the plate after she has begun to locate. One is you are trying to build her endurance early in the season. Another occurs when she is exclusively working on a new pitch and all you are after is getting her to throw it inside a large zone. Most workouts should focus on location above all else. With pitching practice sessions, I like to think of a workout in stages. First there is a warmup and, again, there is no reason to locate pitches while initially warming your arm up. Next a pitcher throws hard for a stage and really gets the heart racing and muscles burning. I figure at this point you've thrown maybe 50 real pitches, excluding all warmup drills. At the 50 pitch point, every pitch should be a location exercise. Work five inside and high, 5 outside and high, 5 inside and low, 5 outside and low. Then begin working a different location on every pitch. If the pitcher misses a location, do it again. If she misses several, move on to something else and come back to it.
Encourage her that she can hit the spot - "just allow yourself to hit it." Don't force things. You're practicing and that's what practice is for. Probably in a lot less time than it took her to throw a strike, she'll be able to locate her pitches at will.
DeceptionBy deception, I mean everything a pitcher can do which deceives a hitter. Think of a batter taking practice at a pitching machine. The coach holds up the ball and places it into the machine using the same general sequence every time. The machine delivers the ball at the same speed in roughly the same place every time. After a couple of swings, a decent batter adjusts perfectly and hits every pitch pretty hard. Hitting a pitching machine is pretty easy. There's no deception. But alter the sequence of placing the ball into the machine, the speed or location and the batter usually swings and misses until she adjusts to speed and location. Now remove the machine and place a pitcher out there. If she throws with exactly the same smooth motion, at the same speed and in the same location on every pitch, the batter will begin to treat her like a pitching machine.
Presumably once a girl has locked down her general motion, has begun experimenting with a change-up, perhaps even a screwball, but even before using either in game situations, she can still deceive hitters by changing speed and location or by altering her delivery sequence a bit. We've already gone over locating pitches. That is the single most important tool a pitcher has but the seond most important one is speed. You can throw a fast pitch every time and your actual speed will probably vary little. But with lots of practice, you can probably alter your pitch speed by as much as ten mph at will. Again, this is not something you do with large changes in your delivery. You have to learn to do this with your mind. It is more about will than it is physical. Experienced pitching coaches often discuss "taking a little off" or "adding and subtracting in small increments." In practice, once you are up to full speed, work at throwing harder and slower. If you have a radar gun available, that can help but if you do not, your catcher should be able to give you an idea of whether you have accomplished the goal of adding and subtracting.
As you gain more experience and practice, try this out in games at proper times. Don;t throw a soft pitch to the opposition's number four hitter with the bases loaded in the last inning with a two run lead. Work the lesser hitters first and try throwing hard, then a little slower and then really hard. if you mix this up with some good location, you may end up making batters look foolish.
Another aspect of pitching deception is making sure you do not do precisely the same thing on every pitch. If you take precisely five second between pitches and act like a pitching machine, batters will begin to become too comfortable with you. Step off the rubber every so often. Snap the ball into your glove every other pitch or every third. Stretch your arm every so often. Mix up the sequence of what you do before every pitch. Take a few seconds longer some pitches and one or two less on others. There is nothing more uncmfortable to a hitter than standing still waiting for the pitch for a couple extra seconds. The muscles become stiffer and the ability to pull the trigger is diminished. If you vary the sequence, speed and location, batters will never be comfortable with you and that's what we're after.
Pitch AnglePitch angle is another aspect of pitching which can throw the batter off. This is really for more advanced pitchers who have done tens of thousands of pitching repetitions, and who can locate and change speeds. It is the next logical progression but not something that should be played with. Try standing on different points of the rubber and stepping in different locations with your landing foot. You are not after drastically different places but rather slightly different. Slight changes result in greater changes to the batter as the ball moves across the forty foot distance to the plate. If you are truly comfortable with the previous aspects of pitching, you will eventually be able pitch from either end of the pitching plate. The difference between pitching from the first base side of the plate and the third base side is a drastic ball angle difference which can completely throw the batter off.
I want to explain something about pitching rules at this point. Strictly speaking, you are supposed to have your feet inside the two foot channel between the pitching plate and home plate when you release. Think of a straight line drawn from each end of the pitching plate and homeplate. You are supposed to land with your landing foot inside that channel on every pitch. But this is seldom enforced. It is too difficult for an umpire to watch the pitcher's feet that closely while also calling the pitch for a strike or ball. Umpires generally do not enforce that rule. And in softball where most calls are judgment and where often that judgment os wrong, there is nothing particularly offensive about leaning on the rules. Batters brush away the lines around the batters box even though this is expressly illegal. Slap hitters often step just outside the batters box before making contact. The sport is full of "lesser rules" which are seldom enforced unless one team or the other demands that one be enforced.
With pitching from various points on the plate, you need not be bending the rules or even breaking them. You do run the risk of stepping outside the channel if you are not really careful. I just don't want you to get overly excited about the possibility of being called for an illegal pitch. It is unlikely but it may happen. And if it does, so what! Ball one! If you are confidant in yourself and your ability to sometimes move to one end or the other of the pitching plate, it is often worth the risk of having the umpire call an illegal pitch because he or she saw you step outside the pitching channel. So practice this and use it And when you really need just a little something extra, try doing it in extreme.
Ball MovementWell, we've covered some important aspects of pitching but now we come to my favorite and the one which really makes all the difference between two very good pitchers. I spent a lot of time as a baseball catcher in my youth. I remember catching all sorts of pitchers who pretty much threw the same kind of pitch but at different speeds for many years. The next thing every kid wanted to do was throw a curveball. There are piles of arms wrecked by these first feeble attempts at getting ball movement but that is less a problem in softball than it is in baseball where the motion is less natural. Still I learned a valuable lesson in those days and that is you can get ball movement before you start to worry about the "movement pitches" like curves, screwballs, drops and risers.
I remember the first time I caught a really good baseball pitcher. He threw me a fastball and it jumped so much I missed it with my glove and the ball hit me square in the facemask. I asked him what he had thrown and he replied "fastball." Over time I must have caught his hopping fastball thousands of times. He wasn't the fastest pitcher around but nobody could hit him. I watched that fastball over and over until it finally occurred to me that there was something funny about the spin. He was holding the ball different than other kids. His father, who knew the game, had taught him to hold it a certain way and that combined with his unique arm motion caused the ball to dart around.
When a baseball or softball is thrown very hard, the laces of the ball react with the air. Put simply, a ball experiences varying degrees of resistance as it flies towards homeplate and the spinning laces create friction. This is a slight difference but one which moves the ball just enough to make a batter (sometimes an inexperienced catcher) miss it. To go back over things, a plain flat pitch at the same speed in the same location where the pitcher uses the same smooth motion is something every good batter will learn to hit. You vary speed, location, etc. to confuse the batter but you can also get a little motion on your pitches to really make her look foolish.
Movement is created by changing the way you grip the ball. When you are just starting to learn to pitch, you use the grip which gives you the greatest degree of comfort and control. But after you have mastered control and your hands have grown larger, it is time to start playing with different grips. This can be experimental or someone who knows there way around the pitching circle can make suggestions. You often see pitchers talking about different grips. They're sometimes talking about grips for "movement pitches" but often they are discussing different ways to get movement on the fastball. This is similar to the brotherhood of magicians who only discuss tricks with other magicians but if you don't have such a handy resource available, you can still learn to get good movement. All you have to do is try different grips with an idea towards getting different spins and the resulting differences in resistance. What you really need is a good experienced catcher who can give you feedback about movement caused by different grips. It's as simple as that. If you can reasonably rely on your practice catcher - preferably one who is older and experienced, play with your grip and see what happens. Once you have a couple grips that result in movement, practice throwing those hard and have your catcher tell you when you did and did not get movement. Once you can get the movement you want 75% of the time, use them like other pitches - mix it up.
SummaryWe use two different words when we discuss "throwing" and "pitching" precisely because one has little to do with the other. You have to throw to pitch but throwing is just not enough. A pitcher learns to locate her pitches, work to deceive the batter, alter her pitch angle, and get some movement on the ball. Pitchers can go pretty far with just these skills without having to learn new pitches. And these skills will prove invaluable when she does learn to throw change-ups, curves, screws, drops and rises.Labels: pitching
Permanent Link: Developing The Young Pitcher - Phase Two
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