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For LOVE Of The Game
by Dave
Friday, October 31, 2008
Last night, I read an article in "Fastpitch Delivery" written by Margie Wright, 24 year head coach of Fresno State and NFCA Hall of Fame inductee. I found it to be an interesting perspective but wrong on a number of levels. Today I want to offer up a refutation of many of the article's points.
Before I begin, let me acknowledge that Wright has much more perspective on this subject than I do, having played and coached the game for longer than I've been an adult. Further, she's been involved in the game at a high level in the most competitive "market." I should not have a better perspective on girls competitive fastpitch softball than Margie Wright and I suppose I really don't. She knows the subject inside out. Still, there are some obvious discrepancies in her positions and it is these I want to point out for the purpose of examining the sport and hopefully improving some folks' understanding.
Wright first praises the growth in our sport from the point of view of the benefits Title IX has bestowed. Coaching women's college softball has become "financially sound" in terms of higher budgets including more scholarships, better facilities, and legitimate recognition. There are more opportunities than ever for girls to participate in "competitive softball at all levels."
Wright claims that the huge growth in "exposure tournaments" has become a "lucrative business." She believes this and some other changes have made the game more about money and less about the "original reasons girls and women wanted to have the opportunity to play sports," which is for love of the game.
In order to bolster her arguments, Wright discusses the history of the game and notes that back in the good ole days, there were no age groups in softball. Young girls had to play with older ones or have no opportunity to participate. This provided opportunities to develop leadership skills as the older girls with greater experience necessarily had to teach the younger, less experienced girls what was expected of them. There were very few scholarship opportunities. Tournaments were always competitive ones - fastpitch showcases hadn't evolved yet. Opportunities to play professionally or in the capacity of representing the country were minimal. So players could play only for one reason, love of the game.
Before I get too into my refutation, let me say that "lucrative," "financially sound" and other measures of "success" are apparently in the eye of the beholder. It is relatively easy to acknowledge that women's basketball is a much more financially sound operation than softball is. Further, I know no person who has become particularly "wealthy" as a result of participation in softball.
Measures of wealth are obviously relative but among the most successful people involved in the sport, I believe very few have become wealthy directly from softball, at least in terms of what most people in this country would call wealthy. Many private coaches who run clinics and schools do make significant chunks of change. Some top college coaches are paid pretty well. Those who sell equipment or tutorials often earn a good living. There is money within the sport and some are better than others at piling it up. But the opportunities to earn significant sums are extremely limited and available to but a select, decided minority of even the best known names in the sport.
Women's college basketball coaches make far more money than do softball coaches. The very best earners, while not making anywhere near their male sport counterparts, often earn top dollar when compared to their peers in the general public. A local D-1 basketball coach, who happens to be among the top earners in the sport, makes a living which is among the top 1% of all earners in the country. She makes somewhere between a half million and a million dollars annually. But her university decided to pay her this money because it brings prestige to the institution and draws in women of all sorts for many different kinds of purposes. She does not earn this income on the strength of ticket sales for the institution's home games. She promotes the institution in ways completely unrelated to athletics.
I went searching for college softball head coach salaries. I'm pretty sure there is a broad range. Top D-1 coaches obviously make more than those plying their trade at D-3 at American Cumquat College in East Nowhere, Maldives. But across the broad spectrum, what I saw most often were figures in the range of $40K to $60K. By contrast, many lower level, assistant women's basketball positions advertised greater salaries than D-1 head coaching positions.
I'm fairly certain that tope clinicians in this sport can earn a very nice income. I expect there are less than a dozen individuals in these United States with sufficient reputations to earn top dollar and those individuals not only run clinics but also distribute videos they have made. On a local level, I can think of several private instructors who make significant sums. These folks' instruction is highly sought after. Their schedules are booked solid. And they work long hours, including all day long on Saturdays and Sundays. Most of the top local instructors are unable to go out and watch games any longer. The toil away in poor facilities, often run by them, rent out cheap space in schools or use their backyard or basement batting cages to give lessons.
From what I have observed running facilities can be a financially risky proposition. Over the past year or two, we have seen a number of new facilities come into being. Recently, we have observed a number of them close. There has been a net increase in local facilities but that's after about a 50% failure rate. And most of the facilities which have survived do not merely cater to softball. They opened up offering both baseball and softball, added agility and other types of training, and then expanded into other sports like soccer. The amopunt of money in softball is extremely limited.
Also, I challenge the notion that exposure tournaments have become a "lucrative business" for the coaches who run them. Certainly there is money to be made at these things but much of that money is channeled back into the game. My daughters' softball organization partially hosts one of the more important exposure tournaments in the country. It is held at our complex and we get to earn whatever we can make from the snackbar. The fellow who runs the thing has made money outside the sport. His whole reason for running the thing has to do with fundraising for the exposure team he runs. He does not have some huge house or expensive car as a result of running the tournament. It is not a lucrative business for him.
Our organization pretty much makes its money exclusively for the purpose of keeping itself afloat in order to provide a place for a hundred or so girls to play softball, recreational and travel. Were it not for that money, I'm not sure the organization would last a year. The funds go to field maintenance and other run of the mill expenses. There is nothing left over.
You know, when I was a young man, I took a job working in a retail store until such time as I could figure out what I wanted to do. I rose up within the hierarchy and became one of the most respected employees. When someone above me was fired, typically ownership would evaluate the position and decide if I could be moved up. This happened several times until I was the number 2 employee. That provided great opportunity to earn more and more which paid my way through college. I think the top salary I made in that job was $30,000 per year.
That was in the 1980s and was not a bad salary at the time for a 20 year old kid with no degree yet and no previous experience at anything. After college, I made more but at the time I earned $30K, I felt really good about it. I felt like I was earning a lot. No I didn't feel rich but I was making as much as I needed and really had no concept of what making say double that would feel like. A few years later I was earning twice as much but I was in debt, trying to start a family, and generally felt as if I really needed to make a lot more to pay for the things I wanted. Earnings and wealth are mostly relative.
I expect the college coach who made $30,000 per year for several years and then only gradually made her way up to $60,000, maybe $100,000 would feel as if the amount of money in the sport was really skyrocketing. But at the same time, I have to acknowledge that in my area, some elementary school teachers with advanced degrees, paid for by their employers, who have as much experience as Margie Wright earn close to $100K, with a select few making more than that. The average salary stands at near $75K with top earners (holding doctorates and with several decades of experience) making as much as $125K in one school system I reviewed for this article. Softball coaches are not extremely well paid.
In regards to college scholarships, there certainly is some money out there. The cost of tuition, books, room and board, etc. has become quite a nut to crack. Receiving anything at all towards that nut must be seen in a positive light. Achieving a full ride, obviously is a good thing from a purely financial point of view. But, according to stats I saw in the same issue of "Fastpitch Delivery," there were in excess of 370,000 girls playing high school softball last year. According to one web site I saw, there were less than 6,000 full ride equivalent college softball scholarships at all D-1 and 2 schools last year. That's a coverage ratio for all high school kids of less than 2%. That's not a lot. Softball is not a lucrative pursuit for the majority of girls playing the game.
Of those who actually do attain a softball scholarship, I imagine an estimate of the total value would be in the neighborhood of $30,000 to $40,000 per year. I'm willing to be high or low in the interests of just roughing this out. Right now, the cost of your average travel program is somewhere in the neighborhood of one thousand dollars per year. If the average 11 year old were to play travel softball - that's where the scholarship money comes into play - for the duration of her pre-college years, the cost would be a mere $8,000. $160,000 (4 years of college costs) would be a nice return on $8,000. But there are many other costs and evaluating this from an investment perspective yields all sorts of variations on the theme.
For one thing, taking that $8,000 and investing it over the course of say 8 years should cause it to double. Further, nobody I know who attains a fairly high level within the sport ever considers the cost of the travel team to be a particularly large piece of the overall cost structure. There are private hitting lessons, clinics, speed and agility, videotapes, seminars, somewhat significant costs of traveling to run of the mill tournaments, significant costs of travelling to one or more out of state tournaments, greater costs when girls compete at older age groups or go to those "lucrative" showcase events, etc. There are the little incidentals like composite bats at $200 a pop (often at least once a year), the expensive cleats (especially for pitchers), the hundreds of dollars in catching gear every couple of years, doctors bills, etc., etc. and so forth.
One father told me he expected to spend around $20K this year alone (aoll in and including his travel expenses and lodging) for his junior with some chance of obtaining a small piece of money at a lower level D-1 or a D-2 school. Another offered the more modest sum of $10K for his sophomore daughter. That's a one year cost. The sophomore family will spend $30K over the three years before graduation.
If you take all the financial costs of travel softball, played at a high level, and treated it like an investment - putting a little aside gradually and earning a return on it, and compare that to money saved on college costs, I expect the return would be significantly less than what one would hope for. No Virginia, softball is not financially lucrative for anyone but a few involved in the sport.
With respect to fastpitch softball's ability, or lack thereof, to produce leaders today vs. those it may have produced yesterday, I have to disagree with Wright that any drop off has to do with the growth of the age group game. For a very long time, boys have played baseball according to their ages. That's because 12 year olds cannot play baseball with 15 year olds of any decent skill level. Its just not possible. Oh, a few kids sporting 70 mile per hour fastballs who are "natural athletes" (meaning their fathers have them out working every day of the year) may be able to survive playing boys 3 years older than them, especially if those boys are not particularly good. But across the broad spectrum, middle school boys cannot hold their own against boys varsity players. They can barely engage in a game of catch or running bases with older boys. So it has always been.
Of course, there have always been more boys playing baseball than girls playing softball. It is a relatively easy matter to pull together a full league of four or more baseball teams in a small town, even when limited to an age span of just two years. So because there are enough boys and because boys cannot play with those much older than them, age group ball has reigned supreme in the boys game for many decades. Still, leaders are born of youth baseball leagues. There is not any real dearth of leaders on the baseball field.
I believe that if you take any group of people and put them into a situation, some kids will rise to the level of leaders and others will not. Leadership skills can be taught but in any given population, some will rise and some will follow. This has been proven over and over again via various studies. A year or so ago, there was that ridiculous reality TV show in which a group of kids was put into a pioneer town and tracked. The kids ranged in age from around 8 to around 13, I think. Some kids rose up and took leadership roles and many did not. Some of the oldest were reluctant leaders and became followers. Some of the youngest took charge and led groups older than themselves. This was more personality driven than age or experience driven.
I believe leadership comes about through via a complex recipe involving environment, experience, maturity, personality, opportunity, and some intangibles which we are not completely aware of. I do not believe for an instant that given a group of softball players, every time the older girls who have played more will necessarily become the team's leaders. Further, I believe that many of the societal influences on our lives create or fail to create leadership qualities in individuals. In other words, to the extent that we are failing to create leaders in the softball world, this reflects the overall society and does not exist separate and apart from it.
In the current societal environment, our nation's children have far more done for them than current adults do. Further I believe the same was true for the previous generation. The reasons for this are many and complex. I do not wish to delve into them as this might open up a can of worms I cannot shut. I will tell you that in one of the better moments of my life, I paid a visit to the Jack Daniel's distillery in Tennessee. There I learned that young Jack was a mere teenager when he founded the business. That was after years of an apprenticeship and some other business dealings. In Jack Daniel's day, kids took lots more responsibility than I and my peers did.
I know I worked for the first time at the age of 14, illegally, and had self-earned money in my pocket as early as 10 when I would walk along the train tracks, unbeknownst to my parents, pick up returnable bottles, bring them to a candy store and convert my earnings into bubble gum which I sold, against the rules, at school. By eleven, I was arranging to sell seeds via an advertisement I had seen in "Boys Life" magazine. I never asked my parents when I sent in the form. They learned of my endeavor when the seeds were delivered to the house. I walked door to door for three miles, visiting people neither I nor my parents had ever met, selling those seeds, turned in the money myself and arranged to have my reward, a tent, shipped to my house without ever seeking guidance from an adult. I was home alone when the tent arrived. I remember this because I didn't seek any adult guidance in putting the darn thing up. I never noticed the little loops on the side of the tent. I hammered the stakes right through the tent material just like I had seen on cartoons! The tent was garbage after that, although I did use it for several years.
I am hardly the picture of an early starter when it comes to learning how to be self-sufficient. Generally I would say I was far behind the curve - I lived a protected childhood when compared to many I knew. But my kids, by contrast, practically live in a bubble. I was caught hitch-hiking at age 8. My kids were not out of my sight long enough to walk to another house by that age. My friends were busy stealing sun glasses at a department store to sell to friends by age 9. I never engaged in that enterprise because I had been grounded for getting into a fistfight or for hitch-hiking. My kids have never been left alone long enough to get into a fistfight or to steal anything. If they did steal something, I would find it and ask where it came from. If somehow they managed to hide the contraband, they would never have any opportunity to sell it and if they did, I'd know about the money. My kids are growing up in a different environment than I did.
But back to softball. When my kids began playing the sport, I bought some balls and other equipment for them to use. When I was a kid, I was lucky if my father bought a single baseball, perhaps for Christmas or maybe for my birthday. I never remember a time when we had more than one baseball lying around. If I lost it, it might be months before I got a replacement. We have several dozen softballs laying around.
When I was a kid, mny father was a pretty well respected baseball coach. He coahced the 12Us when I was 9 and playing 10U. When I reached 11 and played 12U, my father coached 14s. I was the oldest boy. My father did not coach any team on which he ever had a kid. He did catch my pitching practice, however. I think that was maybe 6-12 times .... during my life. I caught my two daughters that many times (each) during August, our "rest month." Understand that I'm not complaining about my father. He did more than most. And I was never around anyway - I was never around. I usually left the house at about 7 am, every day of the summer, returning by dinner time on most days, lest I receive severe punishment. That routine probably started around age 8. If I wanted to pitch some practice, it was entirely up to me to find a catcher. My kids don't have that option. ' I'm pretty much it. It is a different day.
I believe this has much more to do with the development of leaders in softball than anything else. I do not believe for an instant that we would in anyway increase the development of leaders by combining younger kids with older ones in age group ball. I believe that has nothing to do with the equation.
I do believe there is one tendency of today's youth coaches which hinders the natural development of leaders. That is the fear of loosing control and/or unwillingness to see the development of leaders as a necessary part of putting a good team on the field. We live in a very structured world in which time is very precious. As I believe I noted a moment ago, we manage our kids' lives much more than our parents or their parents ever did. We begin indoor workouts in a highly structured form and continue this into the warmer months. If a kid disrupts the flow f practice, we pull her aside and talk to her about being more focused. That, of course, seems necessary. We don't want to allow practice time to be broken down. But when I was a kid playing youth baseball, that never happened.
When I was a kid, if there was one kid disrupting practice, we had a way of dealing with that. We beat him up and told him to quit it lest he suffer another beating. If we were running a batting practice and the pitcher was trying to strike everyone out, we told him to just throw it over the middle. (I don't wish to go into the error of our ways with this approach here and now) One of us would tell him to just get it over and stop trying to strike the kid out ... or else. It was understood what the consequences of not obeying would be. That could not happen anywhere in this country in a boys or girls sports environment today. Our "leadership" would be squashed immediately. And this extends well beyond the examples provided.
Some of us out here in youth travel coaching land do see the need to identify and develop leaders but we're not really sure how to do it. If we do understand, we are seldom willing to give up the degree of control which has a reasonable chance of building real leaders. Building leaders requires us to give up control and provide the environment in which anarchy can prevail. That is too difficult for most of us. So we err on the side of stucture and that prevents leaders from flexing their muscles.
My points are, there are certain situations which must prevail in order to develop leaders and today's adults do not provide much opportunity for such a development to occur. It has nothing to do with the relative ages we bring together on teams. It is more a societal/cultural thing.
To wrap this up, everything in my experience indicates that: A) Softball is growing - has grown quite a bit from the time of my youth to today; B) Money is not a significant part of the changes in the sport - nobody does this for exclusively financial reasons; C) We do not create as many leaders as we might in this sport - but we don't create as many leaders in any other sort of venture either due to societal forces having nothihng to do with softball, and D) Girls do indeed play this sport for LOVE of the game.
You know, it is impossible to imagine anyone doing something which results in the amount of pain and unhappiness softball induces for any reason other than LOVE of the game. Think about it this way, why would you ever try something with the high likelihood of a 30% success rate being the best you could possibly hope for in the long run? Why would you stand 40 feet from another girl with a big stick trying to hit a projectile at you at hopefully 98 mph? Why would you practice four times a week, year round in order to maybe defeat 60% of the other girls in the game while risking taking the blame for defeat from your closest 10 or 11 friends? Why would you choose to do something in which at least half the people you encounter, probably more like 90%, hope you fail? The only reason someone would choose to do something like that must be LOVE. This great sport of ours is growing precisely because more and more people each day develop a LOVE for it, not in spite of LOVE, nor for financial reasons. if we fail top develop leaders, there may be some things wrong, some things perhaps we can fix, or perhaps not. But its got nothing to do with diminished LOVE for the game.Labels: coaching, parenting, players
Permanent Link: For LOVE Of The Game
 
Concepts Of Visualization
by Dave
Thursday, October 30, 2008
I remember discovering visualization by accident when I was ten and playing football. Nobody ever told me to do it. I just started one day as a way to calm my nerves before a game. I sat there contemplating the game I was to play and began picturing how it might play out. That lesson carried into baseball and other sports I played in an organized fashion. It always provided an edge which might not otherwise have been there. And so, I'm now going to share with you some of my observations and the concepts I have discovered in my travels.
First of all, I'm afraid that many do not understand or even know about visualization, let alone practice it. Select few coaches ever teach it to their players. That's a shame since every major athlete in every sport practices this "secret technique."
I don't know exactlty how to prove to you how prevalent this practice is but I'll try. When you see someone in a sports contest turn away from the game and seem to stare off or go through some private ritual, they are either visualizing or invoking some element of a prior visualization. When you see Kobe Bryant listening to an ipod while dribbling the ball back in the corridors, waiting for his team to take the court, he's visualizing. When a baseball pitcher goes to the back of the mound and engages in a prayer, yes he is praying but he is also invoking something from a visualization exercise. When a player squats in the on-deck circle and closes his or her eyes, he or she is visualizing. When the track star makes a slow motion exercise out of their running form, swinging their arms, etc., they are visualizing the race. I absolutely know they are visualizing because I have done this myself many times, found it to work, and seen it cause the seemingly odd athlete behavior we often see at sporting events.
The reasons why visualization works are many and complicated. For one thing this practice instills confidence since the athlete thinks more about success than failure which is always advisable. Also, it helps one become more focused as one waits for his or her turn to perform. Probably more important though not often discussed is something I saw recently in a show about technology.
What I saw indicates that visualization is a powerful form of practice. You see, when a human being thinks about doing something, his or her nerves fire as if the motion is actually being made. A technology show I watched recently involved a man thinking about moving one limb or another. Scientists connected electrodes to the neurons which triggered his movement. The man was told to move a cursor on a computer screen by thinking about moving one of the limbs but not actually moving it. He was able to spell out a word by moving the cursor and then clicking on the appropriate letter by thinking about moving each of the limbs. Of course this was time consuming but it has uses beyond imagination that were spelled out in the show. That doesn't interest us right now. The important part is thinking about moving a limb or a muscle causes the neural pathway to fire in a way intended to make that move. Thinking about moving fires your nerves for moving.
We've been over the concept of motor memory and how that impacts a player's game before. Everything in sport is related to proper motor memory including not only the movement of muscles in a proper way but also the firing of nerves. The concept of use it or lose it tells us that if we were to remain stationery for a very long period of time, we would lose some of our muscular ability through atrophe and through inactivity of our neurons. Further, use of neurons and muscles causes the growth of surrounding tissue and makes making any particular movement easier the next time.
Let's say that active muscle fiber 1 is surrounded by inactive fibers numbered 2 to 10. When we use fiber 1, the surrounding fibers are activated in a manner meant to replace 1, if it should fail. In the case of muscle fibers, we actually do from time to time burn one out and the ones surrounding it come to life to replace it. I'm not sure of the ratios or precisely how this works but the concept is identical to this: Fiber 1 dies and fibers 2-10 are activated. Then later, our work kills off fibers 2-10 and fibers 11-100 are activated to replace them. Essentially, we replace used up fibers with ever increasing numbers of back-ups.
In the motor memory environment, when swinging a bat or making a throw, we could initially activate any of muscle fibers 1-A through 1-Z instead of fiber number 1, if we somehow make a mistaken move. That would result eventually in fiber number, say, 1-G dying off and being replaced by fibers 2-G through 10-G, and so on. We would, in essence build up the muscles to do something incorrectly. We hold the potential to reinforce good muscle fibers or bad ones for making a particular mechanical move.
With respect to nerves, neurons number 1 through 10 are each potential pathways for some sort of action. When we fire one particular nerve, that action causes the myelin sheath - the fatty tissue surrounding nerves to get larger. With every succeeding firing of the nerve, the sheath grows more massive. The more massive the sheath, the better the conductivity of the neuron. In other words, if the "correct" pathway is used more frequently than the incorrect one, it becomes more reactive, it becomes more functional and quicker. The same is true for the incorrect pathway. If we use it too much, it becomes stronger than the "correct" pathway. We hold the potential to reinforce good neural pathways or bad ones for making a particular mechanical move.
These are the reasons why it is so important to learn proper mechanics and to practice them frequently. When we learn a proper mechanic and then make it a part of us, we make it not only easier to properly re-perform it, but also less easy to do the wrong thing in the future. The neurons supporting proper movement are more developed and conductive so they tend to be the first choice of a pathway. The right muscle fibers are built up to perform the task and can override wrong muscle fibers efforts to, uh, muscle in on the action.
This concept is at the heart of the grace and smooth movement we see whenever we observe great athletes. Some people come by some of these motor-neuron actions naturally but most people come by most of them via practice - through repeated deliberate firings of the right neurons. Certainly there are some genetics at work but just as certainly, nurture is at least as important as nature. Even a natural born great athlete can be completely lethargic, inactive, uncoordinated, if he or she doesn't use his or her "gifts." The less naturally gifted person can accomplish great things through proper mechanics by building up the right neuro-muscular pathways.
And this ties into visualization because thinking about firing the "right" neurons actually causes them to fire. If a human being could be a complete blank slate, never having moved or fired their neuro-muscular system for making a throw before, and that person were taught to throw completely correctly - to fire only the right neurons and use only the precisely correct muscular fibers for some period, the neurons would become so conductive and the muscle fibers so relatively built up that she would never be able to throw wrong. Performing visualization alone - firing the neurons but not moving the muscles - makes the right movement easier. This is the concept we try to employ in practice sessions and it is the concept we should employ via visualization exercises.
The way I came by visualization was to picture a particular situation requiring a particular movement. Football was my sport at the time and the movement I was interested in was the tackle of a ball carrier. As I obsessed about the circumstance, I began to "be there" in soul and mind, if not in body. My senses felt my presence on the field. I saw (hence the term visualization) the runner moving to get away from me. I felt the ground at my feet and began to run (in my head) to make contact. I experienced everything about the potential event in my head long before it might happen and completed the tackle using proper technique. I did this over and over again. Later, during a real game, I made such a tackle. I remember the coaches talking among themselves and saying something like "I never knew he was such a good tackler." At that point, not having any understanding of what I had done, not knowing that this was called visualization, not understanding that there was a direct correlation between the exercise and my success on the field, I was still hooked. Before my next game and the one after that, I visualized and was successful as a result.
A long time later, I began mistakenly visualizing some failures. I had no idea that this had any impact whatsoever on my performance. I still didn't know what the technique was called nor that it had any real impact on play. I began to have this visualization "nightmare" in which I reached the quarterback right after he released the ball. And then, that happened in reality too. But that's a lesson we'll get to a little later.
I remember in college that I was working very hard and obtaining very good grades. I found myself a mentor in the form of a priest who was teaching my required philosophy class. He taught me a great deal about philosophy. He also taught me a great deal about visualization which aided me immeasurably in terms of school performance.
This priest noticed that I worked incredibly hard, probably too hard. I always read everything about twice as many times as everyone else. I often performed my homework twice. I sometimes went to both sessions of a particular course in order to witness the lecture twice. By the time the exam came around, I was often able to teach the course and easily aced the test. This priest, this professor, told me that I didn't need to do that, that I was wasting my time. He strongly encouraged me to work a little less hard and start working on visualizing success. He told me that once I read a work, I could recall it if, rather than reading it again, I allowed myself to recall it. He asked me if I knew anything about visualization and then taught me about it. That's when I learned that what I had been doing all along had a name! And that's when I stopped working quite so hard yet received the same grades for my efforts.
When we are very young softball players, we go to some sort of instructional clinic and learn to throw or hit or perhaps pitch. The instructor tells us something about what we'll be doing. Then perhaps she demonstrates it. Next she breaks it down to smaller parts and teaches one of them. We perform the skill and receive correction. Afterwards we are told to practice these moves. In the next session, the instructor goes over the moves from the prior session and evaluates our progress. She gets a frown on her face as she realizes we did not do our homework. She tries to correct our mistakes, encourages us to practice, and then moves on to the next skill. The next sessions go similarly. At some point, the instructor is likely to observe someone doing the skills properly and will generally give that person more attention. She recognizes that this kid has been practicing and that's the kid she is going to try to encourage even more.
There is no question that the key to learning a mechanical skill is repetition. If we have the time, opportunity and place to work on the skills we most recently learned, it would be an excellent idea to follow through with practice. In that manner, we teach the neuro-muscular pathways to perform the skills properly and we become a better player. If we do not have the opportunity or will to practice, we still get some benefit out of the clinic but not nearly as much as the kid who leaves and works on the skills. That's just the way the world turns.
If in addition to performing a skill for an additional half hour or so of practice, we try visualization as a means of learning the physical skill, certainly we don't use the same muscles but we do activate the neural pathways. We get at least part of the benefit of practicing. If there is some way in which we can actually act out some of these skills, though without a ball for throwing or a bat for swinging, we still get the benefit of activating the pathways and using some of the muscles. And as we do this, it becomes increasingly easier to reperform the desired mechanical skill in the proper way.
The same thing works for visualization - that is, trying visualization makes you better at doing it. So, now I'm going to try to teach you how.
To begin with, your brain and body need to be relaxed. I recommend finding a place where you will not be interrupted. If you are interrupted during a visualization, you must star anew. That's aggravating so try first to find someplace lonely.
The next thing you want to do is get into a comfortable position. You may be in this position for a while so make sure you are not going to move around a lot.
Now start taking some deep, relaxing breaths. In and out. In and out. Focus only on your breathing.
Now, gradually picture your breathing self somewhere else, someplace off in the distance. It's a ballpark. Well, what do you know about that?
Engage your senses gradually. Smell the turf. Smell the scents coming from the snackbar adjacent to the field. Feel the early morning cool air which is beginning to be heated up by the sun which is rising behind your back. Feel the rays of sunshine on your neck. Did you remember to put on sunscreen before you left the house for the fields?
Smell the dirt, feel the sun, hear the sounds around you. Kids are doing drills, stretching, etc. Off in the distance a game has started. The girls are doing cheers. The umpire just yelled "STRIKE." Somebody just hit a ball but the shortstop fielded it and threw her out at first.
Somebody from your team has arrived so you pick up your equipment bag and head for the dugout. You clip your bag to the fence and take out your glove. "Do you have a ball? Want to warm up?"
You go to the outfield and begin throwing. Work hard to make a good throw. Use proper mechanics. When the return throw is offline, move your feet to make the catch. Hop quickly into a good position and make a strong, accurate return throw.
Other girls have arrived and one of the coaches wants you to take some swings now. You walk back quickly to your bag, put your glove in, and take out your bat and helmet. You take about ten swings at the stick and move over to the soft-toss station another coach has set up. Your swing was very good. You used proper mechanics just like your hitting coach showed you. Then when you swung at the soft-toss you made solid connection on every ball. Everything felt light and easy.
The girls are all here now. Blue just walked up and your coach is talking to them and the other manager at home plate. "We're up first ladies." You know you're hitting third so you get your gloves on, fix your hair and put your helmet on before going behind the dugout to take some swings. You watch the pitcher. She's fast but nothing you haven't seen before. You can hit her. It smells like somebody is cooking bacon at the snackbar. You'll go there after the game. You take a couple swings and hear the ump call' "ball four," the first batter walks.
You go over to the on-deck circle and watch while your number two hitter takes her at-bat. She watches ball one, fouls off two and is in a 1-2 hole before watching 3 consecutive balls and walking. Two runners on and you;re coming to bat. I hope she finds the plate - I don't feel like walking, I want to hit. Her first pitch is off the plate and you take it for a ball. meanshile, your two runners have moved up abnd they're now at second and third. You don't want to walk so you get yourself ready in case she throws anything close.
The next pitch seems to be coming right down the middle so you begin your swing which is as nice as it was during warm-ups. You rip that ball deep into left center and leg out a double. Two runs in, still nobody out.
Exercise over!!!
That is how you engage in visualization. You begin with a quiet, out of the way place you won't be interrupted. You relax and then start fantasizing a complete picture filled with stimulation of your senses, smells of grass the snackbar, the air; sounds of others around you and the game in general; any other sensations you usually associate with playing softball. Then you start picturing yourself performing skills in a manner which represents the best mechanical practices you know. This is very important, especially when visualizing, you do not want to perform skills perfunctorily, carelessly. If anything, you want to perform the skills with the absolute best mechanics you know. Go slowly if you must but in all cases do the skills the way you want to do them.
If there is a player or demonstrator who did the skill you are visualizing particularly well, picture that person doing it. Then picture yourself doing it. You can start with an external image - you are watching yourself doing the skill pefectly - but you want to eventually see it first hand. This is a mistake in visualization that many make. You can see yourself externally doing the skill but you need to internalize it, make it firsthand. watch yourself do it from outside but then see it as you are doing it and making all the right moves.
You can start visualization with some very simple skills like swinging the bat, fielding a grounder right at you, throwing a pitch right down the middle. But I want you to progress to more advanced skills right afterwards. Get that tough grounder up the middle. Make an unreal catch on a throw to the base you are covering and come down making the tag. paint that outside corner. Hit that really tough pitch far into the corner. Run out some extra-base hits, not just singles. throw that change-up or curveball you've been working on. Do the swing mechanics just right and really hit the ball hard.
Visualization, like all skills, is something you are going to have to work on. the first time you do it, get as far as you can. The second time, get farther along. Then, perhaps one day, you can play an entire game in your head. You don't need to include the actual entire game but just the parts which relate to you individually. It shouldn't take you all that long.
As you progress with this exercise, you should more and more easily lapse into the self-hypnotic state. You should be able to conjure up the smells and sounds more and more easily. Visualization gets easier every time you try it. You should need less and less solitude. Eventually you can accomplish it even in the car ride to the game despite the fact that your father is playing his favorite AC/DC CD on the car stereo. Eventually, you will find that you can visualize an at-bat right in the on-deck circle and that's where I'd like you to take it.
What I mean is when we start visualizing, it is best to have optimum conditions. You are secluded and protected from being interrupted. You have time and opportunity to get into a relaxed state. You can take your time to build the mental image. But eventually, you'll be able to do this anytime, anyplace you want to. And when you get that good, I'm going to want you to try it out right before your at-bats, right before you actually make a pitch.
Keep in mind that given what I told you at the start, part of what we are trying to accomplish is to do skills right, with proper mechanics. So when you see others pe4rform skills well, you want to take special note of it and incorporate it into your own visualization exercises. if you are lucky enough to attend a professional or high level college game, watch the players closely and pick out something you want to emulate. Then try this out in your home or in the car on the way home. If you're playing a tournament and some kid makes a spectacular play do the same thing.
When you visualize, always move from the small to the big. Always start out somewhat slowly with a small element of the mechanical skill and then move from there to the bigger picture. You do not jump immediately to hitting the ball over the fence. First you take a very good swing. Then you hit the ball hard. Then you might hit that homerun.
An important aspect to visualization is bringing as much actual experience, as much reality as you possibly can. If you've ever hit a ball really hard, made a great play, or thrown what you would call the perfect pitch, use these instances in your visualizations. And as you grown and grow, improve and improve some more, find new instances of great play with which to conjure up new visualizations.
Visualization will make you hit some balls really hard. When that happens, use the most recent hard hit in your next visualization. Repeat this often. With every great play or performance, incorporate these recent accomplisments in order to make your visualization more effective.
Stay away from bad experiences like swinging and missing, throwing too fat of a pitch, or making a bad play. we all do these things but there's absolutely no reason to harp on them. Visualization is the exclusive domain of positive experiences. You can take a called strike but let's leave that for 3-0 counts where you chose not to swing, where your objective was merely to watch the pitcher's delivery so you could hit the next pitch really hard.
Finally, one of the things I am after here is your personal confidence. Yes, I want to reinforce good mechanics by practicing in your head. Yes, I want you to gain focus by learning to concentrate better. But as much as anything else, I want your confidence as a ball player to grow and grow. Make all the usual plays but also make some good even great ones. Hit singles with nobody on but also drive in the winning run with a walk-off homerun or double. Visualize great things for yourself.
And along with your visualization, I want you to practice some affirmations. I want you to tell yourself, "I am a good ball player. I was a good player in the past but I'm much better today. I'm going to be a better ballplayer tomorrow, next week, next year. Eventually, I'm going to be one of the best around. I'm that good already and I'm constantly getting better. I just need to remember to practice harder each time while allowing myself to succeed. I just need to picture myself having success and winning. if I do these things, there's no stopping me. I'm going to be the very best I can be."Labels: coaching, mental toughness, parenting, practice, Visualization, work ethic
Permanent Link: Concepts Of Visualization
Of Pops And Drags
by Dave
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
OK, I have to admit that this is one of my pet pieves. I was invited to watch the college recruitment video of a catcher. I saw something I have seen repeatedly for many years of travel ball. This is not something particular to this catcher. It is commonplace. Most catchers do it. And it is fundamentally flawed. I have reached my breaking point and I need to rant about it.
The catcher in question got herself into a good runner-on-base receiving position - established a wide base with feet flat, not merely up from a squat (giving the sign) position. She had her throwing hand in a fist, back behind her back. As the pitch reached about five feet in front of the contact point of the batter, she pulled her throwing hand out, opened it up, caught the ball, basically with two hands, and then pulled the ball to a throwing position.
OK so far? What the issue?
Well, lets start with the throwing hand behind the back. That's a position intended to protect the fingers from foul balls. I'm OK with the concept and most catchers at whatever level do it. I've seen plenty of major leaguers from Johnnie Bench to Pudge Rodriguez to Jason Varitek do that. Almost every catcher in softball likewise takes up this position. But when I see travel ball players, whether college prospects or not, do it, one thing sticks out to me. They invariably pull their throwing hand out before the ball arrives, just as it is most vulnerable. So what was the point of keeping the hand behind them to begin with?
I once got into something of an argument with a coach against whom my team was playing. My catcher kept her throwing hand out in front of her, behind the glove, closed in a fist. He tried to tell me that I should school her to put it behind her back or leg. I told them that's interesting but it is quite wrong.
"Let's take your catcher for example, why does she keep her hand behind her? To protect it, of course. But let's watch her as the pitch comes in. When the ball is halfway in, she removes her hand from behind her and puts it out, in an open condition besides her other hand until the ball pops her mitt. Her hand is protected from foul balls only while the pitcher is winding up. As soon as that ball is in the air, she puts her hand in the worst possible position. And you want me to teacgh my catcher to do the same thing?"
Let me say it one more time because this cannot be said often enough. There is absolutely no reason to teach catchers to keep their throwing hands in a fist behind their backs or behind their legs if they are not also going to be told to keep them there until the ball pops the mitt. All they are gaining by this is the false impression that they are protecting there hand.
Secondly, the throwing hand should be he held in a fist until it actually grips the ball. That fist should be made first with the thumb and then with the fingers. It isn't the kind of fist you would ever want to use to punch somebody. But it does protect the hand including the thumb from any borken fingers. Again, hold out your hand. Close your thumb. Wrap your fingers around your thumb. Keep it that way until you actually grip the ball.
Some folks might think not opening your hand from its fist will slow down gripping of the ball and thereby add time to the pop. That's not true. If you try this out, you will quickly see that making a thumb-in fist and then grasping the ball with this is easy and fast. After trying it a few times, you will probably be able to do it faster than reaching into a mitt with an open hand. That's because your fist fits more easily into the semi-closed glove. Also this aids in getting the ball to your fingers rather than having it embedded deeply in your palm, something to avoid when throwing hard. When you shove a fist into your mitt, you get a better grip more quickly. Besides, this is a much better way to protect your hand than keeping it behind your back and then pulling it out before the batter even has a chance to foul tip the ball!
Next, if keeping your hand behind your back is not protecting it because you are motivated to pull it out early, then why keep it there? As I said, my catchers keep the throwing hand behind their mitts until the ball pops. Is there anything safer than a catcher's mitt to protect something? No. Heck, if you could hide your whole body behind a large catchers mitt, I would advise it.
Human beings have the natural tendency to protect themselves using their hands. When you watch those murder movies in which the victim was stabbed to death and has "defensive injuries" indicating that he or she put up a fight, those injuries always involve the hands. Think about it for a second. If some maniac were attacking you with a meat cleaver, what would you do? What would you choose to defend yourself with? Would hands be a useful article with which to defend against a very sharp instrument? Of course not. The knife would cut through them like, well, hands.
Here's another example for you skeptics. Man in water. Shark in water. Shark attacks man. What does man do to defend himself? He puts his hands in front of him. That should stop a shark! Think about it for a minute. National Geographic has all those shows called something like predator and prey. Almost every one of them has a script which goes something like "then he turned to bite me so I put up my hands." Nice move, that'll stop a shark, a lion, a tiger, etc. Put your hands in front of his teeth.
But human beings cannot help themselves. They lead any defense with their hands. We are prewired for this. And catchers, while unquestionably a breed apart, are definitely human beings. So the catcher's first instinct when a projectile is inbound at 60 is going to be to put her hands up. And since she wants to throw out the stealing runner, her next instinct will be to open the hands. There is no reason to keep a closed fist behind your back if your first move will be to pull it out and open it up.
So instead of teaching this, I choose instead to teach catchers to make that fist and then place it behind the glove between the thumb and index finger of the catcher's mitt. I'm on the fence about whether that hand should come into contact with the glove since, there is shock which comes when the ball strikes the mitt. I have heard several of my cohort suggest that you don;t want the hand to suffer that shock. On the other hand, it is behind the glove, further away from impact and much more protected than the catching hand. And having experienced the pain of tendonitis in my catching shoulder and elbow, I do believe the shock which causes that tendonitis can be mitigated by bracing the glove with the throwing hand. I'll leave final disposition of this point to you or another day after I contemplate it some more.
So the inbound ball strikes your catching mitt behind which is your throwing hand held in a fist. You come up to throw while simultaneously sliding your throwing hand around the mitt, still in a fist and as you reach the ball embedded in your partially closed mitt, pull both hands towards you ear, pull your throwing hand right up to your ear while allowing the mitt hand to begin dropping, and boom, you shoot. Note that as you slide your throwing hand around the mitt, your mitt hand is also opening sideways towards the left handed batter's box. The transfer from mitt to throwing hand is a partnership between the two hands, not a one-sided affair.
The most common error I see catchers make when transferring the ball to throwing hand - after the ball has popped the mitt - is the obne which causes the ball to be thrown out of the mitt, behind the catcher. What's up with that? This happens because the catcher is pulling the mitt to the throwing hand rather than bring both hands up to the ear like I just told you. Think about it for a second, if all you are really doing is pulling your hands up slightly towards you ear, there is no major backwards shift of the ball. If the ball is lost, it should pop up into the air. But it doesn't. It goes backwards, behind the catcher because she is pulling backwards. She is pulling backwards because she is pulling her glove to her throwing hand. That's flawed.
If you have your hand behind your mitt, if you have it closed in a fist and then open it as it reaches the ball, and then and only then do you pull both hands upwards towards the ear, dropping the mitt hand about halfway through this motion 0 as it reaches two inches in front of the cheek, there is no way the ball can go backwards, behind you. If you watch a bunch of top level catchers, say in the major leagues, make the play and lose the ball, 99% of the time, the ball ends up in front of them or just off to the side. When you see the ball end up in back of them, this demonstrates poor mechanics. usually this only happens when they make a one-handed catch and then pull the glove to their throwing hand.
Additionally, when you pull both hands up towards your ear, it is imperative that the glove fall away from your face before reaching the ear or your cheek. What I mean is, it is good to position your body by using the moentum of your hands and arms to help swing around into an open position but once you get that initial thrust and grasp on the ball, your catching hand need not continue moving in that direction. It is easier to make a good throw if it is forwards of your face and moving towards the bag. This clears the ball's pathway as you actually throw and it is quicker than pulling the glove all the way to the ear.
I see so many catchers in warm-ups over emphasize the pull to the ear with both hands. That is not something I would encourage. Instead, I want the glove hand to begin falling away at about two to three inches from the face. At that moment, the ball has not yet reached cocked position but the body has. Then the catching arm is already moving forwards as you reach the cocked position and throw, removing a common pause point for catchers. And every time you throw down, whether in practice, warm-ups, or in a game, that same motion should be used to make it automatic.
Last, I feel the need to remind you that a catcher's throwing mechanics are shorter than an outfielder's or infielder's. The traditional way I teach throwing is to make a full circle from the point of removing the ball from the glove to the follow through. That's general throwing and is intended to keep the player from sidearming it or not using the soulder to support the motion. When I teach infielders, I want a shorter mechanic in which the ball is pulled to a point at which the arm forms a right angle straight out from the shoulder. the elbow starts forward and then the lower arm is sling-shotted into the throw. But the catcher's needs to be even quicker than that. Thus we teach catchers to pull to their ears, throw the elbow out and snap off the throw. This is a fluid motion with no stop points. I can't demonstrate this in words very well but if you think of having very large protruding ears and trying to slap at your ear or chasing a fly from it without looking, that's the motion I'm after. It very quick.
My pet pieve is catchers being encouraged to keep their throwing arm and hand behind their back. It is ridiculous to do so when in the moment of danger, she pulls her open hand out and then catches with two hands. Now that's dangerous. Put a closed fist throwing hand right behind the thumb and index finger of the catcher's mitt. When the ball pops the mitt, slide it as the mitt is turned sideways. As the two hands reach a couple inches from the cheek, allow the mitt to drop away as you finish the pull back to your ear. Now swing the elbow forward and throw. This should be faster. Any one of these elements should take a tenth of a second off your pop time. All of them should result in a time that is three tenths faster.
What is the difference between a 2.2 pop time and a 1.9? Well for one thing, playing time. For another, playing at a higher level. For yet another, possibly some money towards college.Labels: catching
Permanent Link: Of Pops And Drags
One For The Team
by Dave
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
I forget whether I've mentioned this before or not. An acquaintance tells the story about how he was coaching a youth tournament team in (I think) a championship game which had gone tied into the final inning with bases loaded and two outs, his team at bat. The girl at the plate either hadn't had a hit in quite some time or was in some sort of slump. He was sure she would not now get a game winning hit so he called time to go over and talk to her. He told the girl to lean into the pitch in an attempt to be hit by it. He promised her: 1) it won't hurt and 2) I'll buy you an ice cream after the game, if you do it. So the guy went back to coaching third and the kid stepped into the box. She did what she was told to do and was hit by the pitch. But it did indeed hurt. The girl laid on the ground near home, screaming at the coach, "you said it wasn't going to hurt!" That was the coach's first broken promise. The second was he welched on the deal - he never bought that ice cream!! On the other hand, his team did win the game. I won't pass a value judgment per se on this tactic. It's a good story. But I do want to discuss the overall issue from a couple different angles including the ramifications of girls intentionally getting plunked.
In professional baseball, leaning into the pitch is considered an acceptable strategy. I went to college with a fellow by the name of Craig Biggio who played for the Houston Astros. Biggio was "plunked" 285 times during his major league career, 2 short of the all-time record held by Hughie "Yeehah" Jennings. I cannot be absolutely sure whether Biggio, jennings, or any other particular major league player had himself deliberately plunked but one can imagine at least one of the all-time leaders may have employed this strategy.
I grew up watching Ron Hunt play ball. Hunt's motto was "Some people give their bodies to science; I give mine to baseball" within the context of a discussion about the fact that on a per at-bat basis, Hunt was plunked more than any other player. Hunt was once hit by three pitches in a single game. He set the modern era standard of being plunked 50 times in one season - Jennings was hit 51 times one year during the late 1800s. At retirement, Hunt was the modern era career leader in HBPs with 243. That record was broken by Don Baylor and then Biggio. But Hunt always insisted that he did not deliberately throw himself at pitches in order to be hit. He just leaned in over the plate to hit the ball. Still many question whether Hunt, Jennings, or Biggio might have done this just to get on base at opportune moments.
I haven't heard anyone complain about Baylor since he had over 2,000 hits and was an RBI machine for most of his career. More likely than Baylor leaning into pitches in order to get on base is another strategy employed in baseball - that of intentionally plunking a batter!
I'm not talking about the "plunk" in a vacuum. There are going to be some points in all this, when I am done. But before I get there, I need to tell you some more stories.
Several years ago, my then sleepy 11 year old played her first year of travel softball. At one of our tournaments, there was a very good pitcher lined up against us. She threw hard (55) and had pretty good movement for a 12 year old. My daughter got up to bat against her in a situation which did not hold any opportunity to win the game or even make a serious dent in the score by getting hit by a pitch.
My daughter was, as I said, a sleepy little kid who was also playing with girls much older, larger, stronger, more experienced and skilled than she was. She had really just begun to hit the ball. She was not particularly afraid of being hit by pitches and didn't shy away when facing fast pitchers. She did not and still does not stand particularly close to the plate, choosing instead to stand so as to cover the outside corner with about two inches of bat unless facing a curveball pitcher. But her reactions were a little slow back then so when the pitcher threw an inside screwball, she began to swing, stopped, and was plunked by the pitch while not making a real effort to get out of the way.
She hadn't tried to get out of the way because she thought the pitch was hittable not because she wanted to be plunked. There was no discernible reason to try to get plunked. The pitch was a screwball which moved towards her quite a bit. It was a good pitch which started out looking as if it might be a strike but sliding well into the batter. Still, the idiot umpire called a ball and refused to award the kid first base.
Along the sidelines, many people unrelated to the team had seen this occur. Most couldn't believe the call. They were rather incredulous. They could see what the pitch was - the area behind the backstop was very large and that's where most people were. Not one person I talked to agreed with the call but that's the call that was made. After the kid was tended to and helped from the field, a pinch hitter was sent up and she struck out ending the inning. The rest of the game was filled with screams at the umpire for being a jackass from numerous people including myself. teh manager was on him from that point forwards. People I had never seen before gave him grief. I'll never forget that umpire whose name is known to me but not important to you. Every once in a while he tries to engage me or my acquaintances in conversation at some game. I expect he doesn't understand why we're so cold to him. But the man is a jackass. He's made many other bad calls.
Still, such a call is a perfectly normal occurrence in softball, presumably with good reason given the tactics I and others have seen employed. You almost always see the batter awarded first when plunked in baseball. I don't know if I've ever seen a baseball ump not award first.
In fastpitch softball, many times softball umps refuse to give the batter first. I've seen pitches which plunked the batter be called strikes several times. I'm not sure why in baseball the umps do not make similar rulings - I believe the rules are the same in both games. The one thing I am sure about is that the rules of fastpitch softball do indeed give the umpire the option of awarding first or not based on whether the batter makes what is deemed to be an acceptable attempt to get out of the way. I'm not aware of any set of rules under which the umpire doesn't have discretion in these cases.
Usually such a ruling occurs where the pitch is within 2 to 3 inches of the plate or over it and the batter fails to turn inward and back. What I mean is, if a right handed batter is up and a pitch is close, she can avoid this call by turning in towards the plate and back, facing the umpire. Otherwise she risks being told to remain at bat after being plunked. They don't always make such a call but I've never seen an ump refuse to award first where the batter makes such a movement even though it really is not a sufficient effort to actually get out of the way since it does not move her further away from the pitch.
Part of the problem in either baseball or softball is some of the worst injuries occur as a direct result of being HBP. Baseball players have had their careers ended. Some have suffered effects for the remainder of their lives. And in fastpitch softball, I believe the forces are often greater due to the larger weight of the ball.
I imagine some will disagree that the forces are greater in softball but, to those folks, I point you back to the "Sports Science" episode in which the force of a Jennie Finch fastball was compared to that of a hard throwing minor league baseball pitcher. The baseball pitcher threw several balls which struckj a plate set up to measure impact. Jennie Finch then followed in kind. Her first pitch broke the measuring device. Conclusion: pitched softballs, despite the slower speed, carry greater force.
Of course my proof involves a TV show and one which is kind of prone to putting sensationalism before fact. A more cold, calculated approach is probably appropriate here. Force is generally calculated by a formula in which mass (weight is a reasonable proxy when we limit our analysis to Earthly mass) is multiplied by speed. A good approximate speed for a pitched softball is about 65 mph at professional levels while that for baseball is about 90. A softball weighs in at around 6.8 ounces while a baseball weighs about 5. Multiplying the weight of each times the given speed yields 442 for softball and 450 for baseball. That means the force for a pitched baseball is slightly larger but hold the phone. We aren't talking about professional ball. Instead, we need to look at youth ball.
In the Little League Woprld Series for each sport, which involves 12U level play, baseball pitchers threw right around 65 most of the time. A few hit 70 but most were in the area of 65. In softball, pitchers threw around 53. I believe a few were closer to 60 but the majority were about 53-55 and I want to err on the conservative side. Multiplying 53 and 65 mph out yields a force proxy number of 360 for softball and 325 for baseball. That's quite a larger difference with softball representing more than a ten percent higher force.
So my conclusion is the force of the fastball in youth softball is greater than that in youth baseball. And I believe this has something to do with why umpires enforce the rule for the batter not getting out of the way more than they do in baseball. I think it is a matter of safety for girls playing softball that they be discouraged from leaning in and trying to get plunked.
Indeed, in the instance the e-mailer sent me, the batter who was plunked was hit in the helmet. And the helmet cracked. I've never seen a helmet cracked in a youth baseball game though I have seen more baseball than softball games in my life and, as a player, I was plunked quite a few times in the head. Can you tell?
More to my point, while I understand that many men are involved in coaching softball, most do not take the trouble to calculate the force with which their batters would be hit if they dared to lean into a pitch. If they did, perhaps the practice of telling kids to try to be hit in certain circumstances would cease.
What got me going on this issue today was an e-mail I received from an angry parent. The parent had observed a game the night before in which a hitter came to the plate and was plunked. The parent noted that the girl's team appeared to be a very well coached, disciplined, aggressive squad which went on to win the "pretty large" tournament. The parent saw the kid apparently lean in on an 0-2 pitch but wasn't sure about the "lean in" part. In her next at-bat, the count was 0-1 when she again got plunked. But this time the ump called "strike" and the batter was not awarded first.
The coaches for the girl's team became "unglued" and an argument of almost ten minutes ensued. Later the kid came to bat again and was plunked yet again on an 0-2 pitch which the umpire called strike three, batter out. This time coaches were ejected after the ten minute argument. That's twenty minutes wasted over a by-the-book call as old as the game itself in a time-limited game in which one team apparently employed a strategy which is questionable at best.
Further, the team with the hit batter, the one which had argued for about a third of the allotted play time is well known in the area where this tournament was played. Lots of people were there, saw what happened, questioned the behavior of the team coaches and talked about it on the sidelines at length. This raises an even more important issue and one which this all is really about.
What is the saying? It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and an instant to ruin it? The problem is nobody involved in softball really likes the tactic of "taking one for the team." If you are watching some sort of championship, a kid for your team takes one and the result is a win, you may be happy for a while. But aside from this fleeting moment, nobody approves of or likes the idea of a batter leaning into a pitch as an offensive tactic. Some may admire the tactic within the setting of professional baseball. But nobody thinks it is a good idea and nobody likes it when youth sports team try it out.
This practice had a couple lasting effects. I'm sure that when any team plays against the team which employed the tactic, words are going to be shared with the intention of pointing out to umps that this team is know to do that. I wouild do that in a heartbeat, wouldn't you? Then I might just have my pitcher throw inside quite a bit to get their girls off the plate. And the we would try to get them out away. But that's a tactic for beating a team. That's mere gamesmanship. That's not a good lasting effect. Here's a better one.
The parents at this game talked along the sidelines how this team and its coaches employed the deliberate strategy of training their kids to get plunked. Then they went home and over the next weeks, will undoubtedly talk among their softball friends and acquaintances about the team. Some may point to a kid here or there who was permanently injured after being hit by a pitch and a general impression will be built within the softball community that the team which employed the tactic is to be avoided so long as those particular coaches are involved.
Oh, this may seem to be pie in the sky. Nothing happens that fast other than a tsunami. But the seeds have been planted. The reputations have been ruined.
The person who sent me the e-mail closed it by telling me what she would like to say to the coaches. She said:
"To the coaches of the other team I say you have done a great job at teaching the game, but how will they play the game of life in 10 years. Yes, coaches in one game you underminded, disrespected and tried to tear away all of the years of teaching and professionalism that women coaches have fought for (in this game). What a shame that you so readily think you are entitled to the respect that your female counterparts earned. What a shame that you will never have the opportunity to coach a girl (my daughter) who lives for this game but who would never disrespect it as you have."
I guess I would have to agree with that sentiment. Although the team is nowhere near (more than a thousand miles away) where I live, I wouldn't put my kid on such a team. I imagine most of the readers of this blog feel the same way.Labels: coaching, game strategy, rules, umpiring
Permanent Link: One For The Team
Reality
by Dave
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
I'm not in the teaching mode when it comes to the ropes of the college scholarship hunt. Instead, I'm a student. You can learn lots by reading books like the one by Cathi Aradi. You can learn much by digging around the internet in various places. But what I'd like to do is provide some fundamentals for those now looking at this as a possibility for the first time. I want to explain a few basic elements, dispel some myths, and generally encourage you, if that is what you're after.
A friend of mine has a son who is a very good baseball player. He may not be major league material or he may be. Who can really say? But, one thing is for sure. He won't be coming up to pitch in the World Series one year after graduating high school. He's good but he is not quite at that level.
This boy and his parents always considered the possibility that perhaps he would be drafted or receive an athletic scholarship offer but they were completely in the dark about how the college process works. The kid played on top level travel teams (including Legion) and gradually heard stories of this kid or that receiving athletic money. They were intrigued and decided to dig a bit deeper. What they found surprised them.
First of all, this particular kid was going into his junior year of high school when he and his parents started to dig into this strange new world. He had never heard of the NCAA eligibility center. They had an inkling about showcase tournaments as their son's team had participated in some. But they had no idea about how to go about actually being recruited by a school.
They were surprised mostly that they were coming to the table a little late. Many kids start in their freshman or sophomore years. That's probably more true of softball than baseball where boys mature more slowly. This boy had enough time to accomplish what he wanted to with a good start right at the beginning of his junior year. But I strongly urge anyone looking at this to get started during the year prior. Sophomores may not get looked at hard but they do begin to learn how the system works and make a few contacts while interacting with many other girls deep into the process.
My friends decided to find out as much as they could. They sought council with the only person they knew who was a relative expert in the college recruitment process. She also happened to be a Gold level softball coach who had been a scholar-athlete herself and had since learned to work the system from the inside out. She taught them a few things including getting oneself registered, making contact with coaches, and working the relationship part of the process. She taught them other things as well and they learned much on their own.
There are a bunch of misconceptions and myths surrounding college scholarships. I have heard all manner of people discuss factually incorrect things as if they knew them to be true. I suppose there is enough of that to go around in every facet of our lives. This is why I am writing the piece.
First of all, the biggest myth of them all is the one told about how "if you're that good, they will come knocking at your door or find you through the mails." They will not come looking for you or find you by accident. There are mechanisms out there made for the purpose of providing college coaches and prospect athletes the opportunity to get together.
The man or woman at your kid's high school game wearing all that UCLA or Stanford garb is probably not a college coach. More likely, he or she got that garb as a birthday present from a relative. Even more likely, he or she graduated from that school decades ago and bought the outfit at Sports Authority or some such store. If he or she happens to be a real-live college softball coach who just happens to show up on the day you or your daughter had a great at-bat which ended with a deep fly out to left against that stud pitcher and made several great plays in the field, chances are decent that he came to watch the stud pitcher who has already signed with the school and he really doesn't care much about anyone else on the field that day regardless of what they did in the game.
The only place I know where somebody just shows up to watch a player who has had their name all over the newspapers recently is in the case of a major league baseball scout. And even there, the player has been pre-vetted through a process aimed at identifying propects. College coaches are not going to show up at high school games to "scout" recruits they have never met personally nor corresponded with.
Secondly, every athlete is a "prospect" the day she steps into high school. But only those who are registered with the NCAA Clearing House will ever be looked at. College coaches in softball do not scout out 8th graders playing in any old "AAU game" and then seek to recruit them. I say "AAU game" because I have actually heard people use that term. College coaches may be present at 16U ASA "A" Nationals or other large tournaments but they are not there cold prospecting. They will not approach some kid because she made some great play, got some big hit or pitched a perfect inning. They may jot down a name or two after something like that but if they never hear from that kid, the name may be lost forever after.
The main way in which recruits are identified and "recruited" is via showcase tournaments in which a prospect has previously contacted a coach to express interest in the coach's institution, played or otherwise shown herself well, and a relationship has developed wherein the coach wants the kid and the kid wants the coach. There are other ways but all involve a pro-active approach on the part of the player.
Third, while some coaches of showcase teams actually do train their players and train them well, that is not their primary purpose. They are mostly there as a liason between the athlete and the college recruitment process, as well as the college coaches themselves. The players are responsible for their own skills and approach to the game. The coach of a showcase team will not bring your daughter's game to the level it needs to be in order to attract interest from college coaches. The coach will attempt to attract interest to players who are interested in a that institution. But theirs is a supplementary role - the athlete has to make first contact. The best showcase coaches are not the ones whose teams win the most games or earn a berth to ASA Gold nationals. They are the ones who know the coaches and who the coaches trust to bring qualified, interested kids to their attention.
Fourth, contrary to many comments I have heard which imply or state the contrary, grades are very important in the recruitment process. I have heard many individuals proclaim that the top college coaches always get the best players because they are out recruiting them, based on their sports skills, regardless of grades. That may be the case to some degree in men's football or perhaps men's and women's basketball. But that does not describe the recruitment process in softball.
I was discussing this a while ago with a friend who said he knew of a college coach who took all the letters she received and put them into two piles. Pile number one was for all kids whose grades were 3.0 and above. Pile two was for everyone below 3.0. The second pile would not be completely disregarded but suffice it to say that if your letter is in pile two, you need to be a far superior player with many more mitigating circumstances than those in pile one. Pile one was the stack which would get the biggest piece of her attention. Pile two might hold a Bustos level player but the ordinary expectation is that it does not.
The way to think about the recruitment process is not from your own point of view but rather from college coach's. She has so much money for athletic scholarships and so many positions on her roster. The two do not nearly meet. Even schools with twelve full athletic scholarships could use some help filling out their rosters.
But athletic money is not the only resource available to coaches and athletes. Many athletes receive academic money. So, if a coach can put together a team which consists of kids who merit such awards without completely exhausting her athletic money, that has to be a good thing. Let's say she can save a full ride for a kid who is a real stud, a true ace pitcher, and then spread the rest of the money around among several players who earn full rides primarily, or in significant, part via academic scholarships.
Further to the importance of academic credentials, if you, knowing nothing but GPA and board score, had to choose between two players you watched last year and judged to both be pretty good, how would you decide? Let's say one girl had a solid 3.6 average while taking a rigorous, mostly honors schedule and a relatively high board score. The other took a normal academic schedule and received a GPA just under 3.0 while sporting a board score just above your institution's average. If you knew nothing but this information and judged the girls to be approximate equals on the field, who would you pick?
Even further to the point, attitude is everything in this game and we'll dig a bit deeper in that direction momentarily. The college coach has to make a bunch of judgments about the type of kid she is dealing with while using too little information. She has to judge the kid's character, maturity, ability to handle difficult circumstances, etc. She has to make this judgment based on interaction with a kid who is presumably on her best behavior for the express purpose of making a favorable impression. On some level, she has to be at least a little suspicious that the kid is really who she appears to be.
I've known people well for four years who have surprised me towards the end of that four years. Yet the college softball coach has to find and commit to several "new friends" each year on the strength of pretty minimal interaction. She is going to try to find people with ceratin of the aforementioned qualities but she cannot know that these girls possess all the right stuff. Grades are a decent indicator of what a particular kid is made of.
Yet, even further into the academic direction, once the coach has her kids assembled, let's not forget that the kids are now in a virtual candy shop with theoretically limitless cash and no parents supervising them. That's what college campus life can be like. There are many things inappropriate for a discussion in a family friendly environment like this blog but I think you know what I'm talking about. Among a coach's other worries are how the kids will handle this new, strange, wonderful environment. For any number of reasons, kids with better grades generally stay out of trouble to a greater degree than do average to poor students.
There are a number of other considerations beyond 1) getting registered with the Clearing House, 2) making contact with coaches at institutions you want to go to, 3) making sure the college coach gets to see and know you at a showcase or via some other means, and 4) presenting yourself in the most positve light possible - getting good grades. Much of this is subtle between the lines stuff which relates to conduct of the athlete in ways that have nothing to do with the fundamentals of the game.
For one thing, as a coach of travel, I always get a little uptight when parents try to interact with the kids during games. Dad comes over to give a batting tip to Sally who is on double deck and Sally promptly strikes out looking with the bases loaded and two outs. Worse is the kid who has been led to believe that she may leave the dugout at any moment in order to seek such consultation or to just tell her mom something. Worse still is the kid whose parent notices that perhaps her non-diabetic kid's blood sugar may have dropped some so she brings over a snack in the third inning. I get uptight and I'm dealing with very, very young kids. I really have to laugh when I see such things go on at 14U, 16U and other games.
I recall a year or two ago, one kid - not at all interested in ever playing college ball, by the way - who interacted very little with the girls on her team. She looked for moments to go out and talk with her mommy or daddy. One day her boyfriend came to a game so she looked for opportunities to go see him ... during the game. Sometimes a friend would be in attendance and would sit close enough to converse whenever the girl was in the dugout. This girl was 15 years old. That's a bit over the top though I can understand this in a girl who really does not want to be playing softball. When I really cannot understand such conduct is when a girl is participating in a showcase tournament. And I have seen similar stuff happen even there.
To be honest, usually this sort of behavior is not initiated by the player. Usually it is the parent who interacts more than he or should with their kid during games or warm-ups. A certain normal interaction thing develops over the years and parents do not seem to change as the kid grows older. I am lucky in this regard because my 14 year old told me long ago to "go away" during games. In one of her more talkative moments, she told me "I can't hear you anyway during games so you are better off not saying anything." We've decided to take up residence along the outfield fence. I do not suggest you do likewise but I suggest you at least consider it.
I also suggest that, if you have grown accustomed to being your daughter's equipment "caddy," you consider giving up the job. I'll carry one of my daughters' bags from the field at the end of a tournament, if: the day is exceptionally hot, she pitched very well and made some noteworthy plays, if she can't walk well do to some minor injury, AND if she asks me really nicely. But players looking to get positive attention from college coaches should carry their own equipment and generally take care of themselves.
Next, there is no doubt that every coach on the planet wants the kid who does well in real competitive games. But that isn't nearly all they look at. A few years back somebody said to me that the typical coach doesn't really need to watch the game very much. She can learn everything she needs to know by watching warm-ups. It isn't just what is done or how it is done in warm-ups that matters. More to the point is the overall approach of the player.
Consider one girl walks up to the dugout with her mother or father in tow, carrying her equipment and cooler. The parent dispenses with some final advice, maybe a peck on the cheek, good luck Sally. The kid looks at her stuff, doesn't exactly put it away, and then a teammate comes up so the two start talking about anything other than softball. Then a coach tells the girls to start some drill so the girl just then begins to put her bag away. Five to ten minutes later she saunters onto the field for warm-ups which she does half heartedly. Another girl is the first to reach the dugout, by herself of course. She stows her gear immediately, gets out her glove, bat, etc. As soon as everything is stowed, she takes the field despite not very many teammates being present just yet. She stretches, sprints a little. One of her teammates comes out so she throws, loosening up her entire body for five minutes. As soon as a coach comes out with a bat and ball, she is the first in line to take some grounders or flies. Which kid would you have a more favorable impression of before she ever steps foot into the batter's box with a blue uniform behind her? Which kid do you think is more serious about the game?
During games, it isn't always the base hit or great play which makes the biggest impression. Softball is a game of failure. Batters do strike out. Fielders do make errors. Pitchers do walk hitters or hit them with pitches. Every hitter has slumps. Every pitcher has bad innings and outings. What makes good players good is their ability to rise up after a tough experience. Kae an error, shake it off and follow up with a good play on the next one. Strike out and then get a hit next at-bat. Pitch yourself out of a tough inning. Keep a positive attitude even when things are not going your way. Be supportive of teammates when they or you do soemthing less than stellar. That's what coaches want to see.
My friend tells a story of watching a showcase game in which a girl made an error. Sghe picked up the ball, trotted into the pitcher and said something to her like "my bad, I'll get the next one. Then later he saw another girl strike out badly. She slapped the next girl five and then yelled to her to "pick me up." Isn't that the kind of kid you'd want on your team?
There are a few minor, common sense, points. When it comes time to create one's profile for the coach's book, there are a couple considerations. For one thing, the contact e-mail adress ought to consist of just the basics. "Ihateallumps," "sexygirl123," "fungirl," or "softballstar" just do not cut it. Lude or provocative screen names are inadvisable as they demonstrate lack of maturity and seriousness. So parents should not use the same e-mail address they use for their friends!
Another consideration is the expected major. As my buddy puts it, anuybody with any sense who wants to be a medical doctor will list her major as "pre-med" not "doctor." Those aspiring to the law profession need not list their major as "lawyer" or "law." "Pre-law" or almost any other subject suitable for an aspiring attorney will do just fine. If you are undecided, it is OK to say that. If you haven't decided between three possible majors, that's OK too. You should have already decided which schools to contact at least partially based upon your chosen area of study. The last thing you want is five college coaches coming to see you who are employed by institutions which do not have a psychology major when that is the major you have listed in your profile.
As a parting comment, I recently had a discussion with a fellow who is paying loads of money to an organization where his daughter is on a "showcase team." That team competes in some tournaments at which there are eventual champions. But they mostly play showcases - the purpose of the team is to showcase kids, not to win trophies. he told me that the coach told the players not to tell her when each expects college coaches to be at their games. She didn't care about this and would not be playing a particular kid just because a cioach was there to watch her. During a few showcase tournaments, the kid played her normal amount of time but when the coaches she had told to watch her showed up, by chance, the kid did not play. &mnbsp; That's ridiculous. Kids pay a ton of money to play showcase ball. They are there to gain and retain college coach attention. Were it not for that, the team would not exist. Short of that, nobody will want to play for this team and guess what, the coach would be out of a job. If this describes your situation, you should talk to the coach. if the coach is not reasonable about this, you should talk to the head of the organization. If some sort of accomodation cannot be reached, you must leave. You are paying for something you are not receiving.
Worse still, when the team was between games, often the coach left the complex. She was there for games and gone when they were not playing. That is not the purpose of a coach at a showcase. Personally, I would hope she was there between games and wouldn't care very much if she were present during the games themselves. A showcase coach's responsibility is to schmooze with college coaches and get kids opportunities to showcase their skills.
I heard a story recently about somebody who was interested to learn which team had beaten which at a showcase. I'm interested in this too some of the time but I also recognize that it doesn't matter. if the Gold Coast Hurricanes lose to the East Gabib Eagles at a showcase, I'm sure the Hurricanes coach does not chew the girls out or make them run suicides as pennance. The point of any showcase is to showcase individual talents, not to win a game or win all of them. The coach in my previous example told the girls that she is there to coach them to win games whether at a showcase or not. Obviously, she does not have a good enough grasp on her actual responsibilities to be in this position. Somebody needs to clue her in. If you are looking at a showcase team which tells you that they are in it to win games so your daughter may not always see as much action as you would like, well, you've got top pick up and go someplace else.
So that's my little list of some fundamentals for those just now looking at the possibility of trying to obtain a college softball scholarship or merely to be recruited some. I know I've skipped a lot but I hope you get one or two things out of this which you didn't know before. As always, best of luck.Labels: college
Permanent Link: Reality
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