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Recreational Pitching Philosophy
by Dave
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Michael from New Hampshire writes in with the following question:
"I'm coaching my daughter's team. We have girls from 1st - 3rd grade and are in a kid-pitch league. I read your article on starting with beginning pitchers and am interested if you think beginning to work on the windmill technique would be appropriate for kids at this age level too. Personally I'm not even sure we should be doing kid pitching at this point anyway (girls are swinging at pitches that roll behind their back and are getting not help in hitting with this), but I digress.
Prior to finding this I have been focusing on having my pitchers getting used to stepping toward their target and using straight arm motions - almost doing a slow pitch technique, but without the arc. Your article is starting to convince me that we should be doing more toward the windmill. What are your thoughts?"
Let me begin by saying that it is totally appropriate to have kids pitching as early as possible. I understand how anyone would feel about the quality of pitching by girls who might be as young as 6 (first graders) and this does make for some very long and very boring games where every batter is walked. But girls have to start pitching and, perhaps more importantly, facing pitching at some point. I can't say that I have any particular wisdom as to when real pitching should begin but I suppose this age is as good as any. Whenever that real pitching begins, it is likely to be pretty pathetic.
I know of a very high caliber recreational league which encourages pitchers to windmill beginning at about 8. The league provides regular instruction clinics for girls who want to be pitchers. Girls who don't attend clinics (assuming they don't have private coaches which some do even at these ages) are not permitted to pitch. But no batter is ever walked. If ball four is reached, a coach comes in and pitches. By the time these girls are ten, they are pitching fast strikes and the batters are accustomed to facing fast pitching. This league produces some of the best softball players in the world.
When my youngest was in second grade, we started her in with some general softball instruction with a private coach. We weren't trying to produce the next Cat Osterman. We were trying to enhance her experience so she would enjoy the game more. At some point, I'm not sure when, the lessons began to include windmill pitching. She walked around the house almost constantly doing what parents of young pitchers often refer to as "the dance" which is windmill motion without the ball. She caught pitching fever. But our league did not promote, teach or even really accept windmill as appropriate for her age group. They offered a one-day-per-year, one hour clinic for pitchers who were taught the basic windmill motion. Needless to say, that is not sufficient for the task.
When my youngest began actually pitching windmill, she was pretty wild, though fairly fast. The coaches of other teams were afraid their girls would get hurt by this fast throwing kid. They discouraged her being "allowed to pitch" if she insisted on using windmill. This year she is in both recreational and travel softball. She insisted on playing rec ball because she wants the opportunity to show all her detractors from the year before what she can do. In around 20 innings, she has about 59 strikeouts, 5 walks, no hit batters, and has given up one hit and one run. The coaches have been organizing to see if they can get the league to prohibit her from pitching since "it just isn't fair." They wonder "what if she hits a kid?" I say, if she does, that will be the first time this year. But you know, the batters are beginning to catch up to her fastball. They can't hit more than an occasional foul ball yet, aside from the one lucky hit, but they are getting better because she is good. And other girls are beginning to practice their pitching more.
Will my daughter be the next Cat Osterman? No, she probably won't. And I don't live vicariously through her or feel like my ego gets a boost because of her success. All I want is, years from now when she's out of college and maybe facing some difficulty on her first job, her to have an experience to draw on which tells her that she is a very capable human being. That's the point of athletics, isn't it?
But let's get back on subject. If Michael from New Hampshire was talking about a single player and was asking if I felt she should be taught windmill at a young age, my answer is yes, absolutely. If he were running a league and asking about my feelings on encouraging the league's girls to pitch windmill, my answer would be yes, absolutely. But because Michael is one of several coaches in one age category of an entire league, my answer is no, don't try to teach your players windmill.
There is no way to learn the windmill method on an occasional rec league practice schedule. In order to learn the motion, a girl really needs private, one on one instruction. That can be in the form of a weekly clinic for pitchers like the one in the high caliber league I wrote of. That could be in the form of a private coach. But whatever the form of regular systematic coaching, she also needs to practice a lot. Pitching windmill requires instruction and dedication. It is very frustrating to learn but with repetition, it can be done.
A single, solitary pitching girl should be encouraged to learn windmill. But you cannot fight city hall when it comes to an entire league. You can lead a team of horses to a water trough, supplied by a well, driven by a windmill, but you can't make them all drink from it if they're afraid of the windmill. A single, solitary rec coach cannot change the entire league's mindset and philosophy.
That being said, there are a number of things Michael can do with his pitchers. He's alluded to some of them in his question. For example, he can insist that they keep their arms straight. Girls often "short-arm" it in order to "just get the ball over, just throw strikes." This should be actively discouraged. A girl isn't actually any more accurate because she bends her elbow. She just thinks she is. Most rec coaches cannot teach the windmill motion but they can teach their girls to pitch with straight arms.
Michael also said he is encouraging his girls to pitch without the arc. That is exactly right. Just as we wouldn't teach a boy to throw softly in order to get it over, we don't teach girls that way. Straight arm, hard and straight is what we're after. By doing this, we're at least teaching girls the final part of the windmill, after the arm swings down. Teach your girls to step straight forwards with the glove-side foot while pushing off the pitchers plate and simultaneously swinging the ball backwards. Then teach them to bring their throwing arm forwards as fast as they can with a straight arm and then snap the wrist to deliver the pitch. That certainly is not windmilling but it is the end of the windmill. And if you can teach girls to do this properly while delivering a fast pitch, everyone benefits. Eventually some of these girls will attend lessons and learn how to pitch.
I've answered Michael's question but I'm feeling verbose so I want to continue. I recently attended a couple pretty good softball tournaments. I don't think there were any national top ten ASA, NSA or even PONY tournament teams there but several teams will play PONY Nationals and one or two might qualify for higher competition. I was struck by how well these girls hit the ball. It is simply amazing to see an 11 year-old take a 50-55 mph fastball and drive it 150 feet. I saw plenty of that at one tournament.
The teams with the best pitching invariably had the best hitting too. Guess who pitches batting practice to these girls? It isn't some forty year old father-coach who stands out at 30 feet and throws bloop pitches to the hitters. These girls are schooled in hitting fast pitching, and not just by turning up the speed on the jugs machine. They have a lot of experience facing fast pitching by real windmill pitchers.
I saw a couple games where teams did not have any pitching depth. They put in straight underarm throwers or very slow windmillers who were good at getting the ball over but had no zip. At first the really good hitters struggled to hit the slow pitches. Then, after a few batters, all of a sudden they began rocking the ball. The hitters had become accustomed to fast pitching, learned to deal with it, and forgotten how to face little league, dad-thrown batting practice pitches.
There are two lessons I have drawn from this experience. The first one is, if you are in a position to impact a league's approach to girls fastpitch softball, convince them to encourage windmill and to establish regular clinics for pitchers. Not everybody can afford that private coach but every league ought to be able to fill the gap. Whatever you do, if you have a say in the league and you want to improve it, do not encourage slow pitching for the sake of speeding up games or giving fielders better experiences. It harms batters as much as it does pitchers. Batters who face good fast pitching are made far better by the experience.
The second lesson I gleaned from my experience watching pretty good tournaments has more to do with the young pitcher. If you want to increase your pitching success, learn to throw a change-up. If I think of those girls having trouble hitting slow pitching but eventually adjusting, my next thought is how the heck would they adjust when one pitch is fast, the next very slow and the next fast? Well-schooled batters can adjust to a pitcher no matter how fast she is. Good batters can adjust to a pitcher no matter how slow she is. What even good, well-schooled batters cannot adjust to is a good fastball followed by a good change-up. So my closing advice is learn windmill, practice it often and learn a good change-up!
Permanent Link: Recreational Pitching Philosophy
 
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