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Fundamental Skills
by Dave
Friday, November 14, 2008
I want to speak to you today about the most important softball fundamentals a kid who aspires to play in college can have. These skills are indispensable not only for getting noticed by coaches and achieving scholarship dollars but also to insure success in one's college softball career. These skills cannot be overemphasized. They cannot be ignored. They are bare essentials.
The coach looked pretty glum as he began to talk to his young charges. Something had upset him. He was deeply troubled by some of the results he was seeing with a few of the girls he had coached for years. He wanted to address the shortcomings of his outgoing class and make sure these newer charges would not make the same mistakes.
The coach began by asking who of the 12 or so girls surrounding him wanted to play college ball. All raised their hands. He informed them that just about all of the girls he had now, of the right age and grade, had received scholarships. He began to list them one by one, noting where they were going. There were several good schools in the list. All the girls he talked about had received athletic scholarships to attend the institutions they had signed NLIs with.
This girl was going to ..., where she always aspired to go. That girl just received notice that she'll be going to such and such University, a school she has worked very hard to get into since she entered high school. It was her first choice. That girl will be going here, which is her first choice too. This girl is headed here.
All these girls had received athletic scholarships which would pay for tuition, fees, room and board, meals, books (oh my God, what textbooks cost today!), flowers in a vase on the nightstand on the day they move into the dorms, etc., etc. and so forth. And all this was covered by athletic money. Hurray! Mission accomplished! NOT!
The coach continued by asking the girls what their grades looked like. Most laid claim to straight A's, B+'s and the like. The coach told them that's good. Keep getting those grades. But your grades alone are simply not enough! You really need to try harder and do more.
The coach went on to discuss a few of the girls he coached who had received scholarships. This one was going to a very good institution but she received no academic money. Had she earned some academic scholarship money, say a half, a quarter, even ten percent of the total, the softball team might turn out to be better since the coach would then be able to go out and find some hitter, a catcher, a shortstop who would complete the recipe she was assembling to really compete in the conference.
This kid got a full ride but she settled for a school which, while certainly in the mix for her, was academically a cut below another school which she might have attended but couldn't afford with the less than full ride she was offered there.
That kid got into the school she wanted and received 100% funding via an athletic scholarship but she could not get into the major (of very limited size) she wanted because it was already full of kids with better academic credentials than she possessed.
The bottom line is the coach was upset by the harsh realities of higher education in this country. His kids all got reasonably good grades but they might have gotten better ones had they known earlier how difficult this process was going to be. Further, and more importantly, the real devil in all this was board scores (SATs / ACTs). This coach's kids, while good school students, often lacked that extra something, that little 800 pound gorilla in the room, which often makes a huge difference and which nobody seems to talk about until it is too late, board scores.
I believe we have largely been misled regarding college board scores. If I had a dime for every instance in which someone told me those scores may be somewhat important but not nearly as much as they were when you and I applied for college, I'd be a rich man. The diminished importance of board scores is probably true but fails to acknowledge that, in certain settings, they can make all the difference. I believe that your typical kid applying for a school will not make it in, be put on the waiting list, or be turned down exclusively or largely because of his or her board scores. The board scores won't be the deciding factor for entry. But they may matter in other important ways.
Things were simpler back when I was applying to colleges. You got good enough grades. You made sure your class rank was good enough to get into the schools you targeted. Then you sat for the SATs and, if those scores put you in the middle of the pack of the school's typical freshman class, you usually got in.
I went to a pretty good academic high school. The majority of our top ten class rank got into Ivy League schools. Those who didn't typically went to schools which were about equal to the Ivy League. The entire top 25% had pretty much their pick of the remaining top schools and often attended outstanding institutions.
I wasn't at or near the top of my class in terms of class rank. My grades were OK, mostly Bs. I hadn't taken very many honors classes. I did not take a fourth year of math, science or foreign language. In today's highly competitive environment, I would probably have been in trouble. I targeted and applied to 3 schools, all of which accepted me. One of these was a very good academic institution. The second was pretty darn good too. The third was very average.
I was accepted to all three schools largely because my board scores were very high. I guess you could say I was the classic underachiever. I should have been immersed in math and sciences, particularly given how well I scored on boards. But I was a schlep, uninspired, unambitious. As it turned out, we couldn't afford two of the schools, the two better ones, which had accepted me, so I went to my third choice. But I could have gone to my first choice based solely on academics because back then, things were pretty clear cut - high enough board scores could get you into just about any place. Nowadays, that's not true.
The formula by which universities determine who they will accept and who they will exclude is a complex one. Grades certainly matter a lot. Class rank isn't what it once was because many high schools, especially the best ones, don't even calulate a class rank, let alone report it out. Board scores were once very important but in the modern political climate, these are discounted because schools seek to have well rounded populations and kids from inner cities just do not earn the sort of scores on standardized tests their suburban counterparts do. There are other considerations which, when I applied to college, weren't even in anyone's discussion, let alone a primary consideration. Nowadays things like community service, work experience, particularly in charitable causes, and other intangibles play a much bigger role than they once did. Additionaslly, when a school puts together its acceptance list, it limits the number of kids who come from a particular high school.
When kids are in their sophomore or junior years of high school, they begin contemplating the various choices for college. These are not necessarily cold, rational discussions. Often the discussion centers around a few schools. High school kids don't know the names of very many colleges. It is highly likely that in a population of 500 aspiring college students at a single high school, the list of colleges discussed will be rather short, possibly as small as 30 to 50. These kids will get it into their heads that their first choice is this school or that. And when it comes time to apply, there is a pretty good chance that 20, 30, 40 kids from a single high school will end up applying to the same school.
When today's colleges go over their applications to pull together the acceptance list, one of the things they will try to avoid is pulling in 40 kids from the same high school. This makes a lot of sense. But if you are the fifth or tenth kid, in terms of all academic and other credentials, from that high school and you really want to attend that university, you are probably going to be out of luck.
Also, even if you get into the school of your dreams, that doesn't mean you are going to be accepted into the major of your dreams at that particular institution. Even when I went to college, there were certain majors in my school which were competitive. Several friends of mine did not get into the programs they sought. They went to the school anyway but were often disappointed because they really wanted to be financial analysts, nurses, accountants, chemists or whatever. Some were able to work their way into the majors of their choice but many were not. Today is an even more competitive climate at many schools, particularly in certain majors with well developed, highly respected programs.
Let's say you want to be, I don't know, an astrophysicist. You did pretty well in your science classes but you scored an average of "only" 600 on each of your SAT test sections. You were accepted into the university of your choice. If the astrophysics major in that school only has room for 40 kids and you are ranked 41, you're out of luck. Board scores can often differentiate one kid from another when it comes time to accept a kid into a particular major. And most good programs at most good universities are indeed limited to a relatively small number of kids.
In terms of scholarship money available to athletes, board scores can make a huge difference. I recently spoke with someone whose kid received a large piece of money to play a sport at a college. That kid did not receive a full ride but he is going to sign an NLI for that school and is excited to go there. He'll have to come up with thousands to fund his education. Most likely, he and his parents will take out student loans. So, when he graduates, he'll have more than a valuable piece of paper, he'll also have debt!
This kid's father told me he may very well get some additional academic money. They're really not sure how much yet. The whole equation has not been completed by the school. But they are fairly certain that the piece of money in academic scholarships will be relatively small. Why? His board scores are just average for the athletic team. I wondered why this kid was not going to get more academic aid since he is a very good student with outstanding grades in almost all honors classes who also did some community work, etc. This kid is pretty much of a stellar college applicant. He's stellar except for his board scores which are really not bad, just sort of average when compared to the kids on his new team.
I mentioned the idea that if one were able to get more academic money, one could endear themselves to the coaching staff by freeing up athletic money for pursuing other kids. But there's another reason why academic money is really important. Athletic scholarships are one year deals. If a kid blows out some part of her body and can no longer compete, she may have to leave the institution she has grown to love because her parents cannot afford to pick up the slack after she quits her sport.
Sure, some institutions will honor a scholarship when a kid gets injured on the field of play and is physically unable to perform for the duration of her years. But not all will. And sometimes the injury caused on the field happens to pop out its head after a minor car accident, while fooling around at home during Thanksgiving or Christmas break, or as a result of something done in the weight room while doing mandatory work at 5 in the morning when nobody else is around. Athletic departments may be reticent to continue an athletic schoalrship for a kid who is physically unable to perform and the cause of the injury is at least somewhat suspect.
What if a kid decides she really doesn't want to play softball during her senior year because the team stinks, the coaching staff changed, or all the kids she liked just graduated and all the ones she hates are still on the team, not to mention she wants to take a special course so she can fly through her medical or business school boards? Maybe she is just 6 credits from graduating and this wonderful opportunity to work as a graduate assistant popped into her lap but she cannot compete in the sport and take the position? I can think of a thousand scenarios in which a kid could possibly want to relinquish an athletic scholarship at one point or another while hopefully remaining at the particular institution. Earning academic money is critical to pulling this off. And if you achieve good grades in college, keeping that academic money is usually pretty easy.
So, you may be wondering because I know I am, why I would bring this subject up on a web site which really targets softball players younger than say high school juniors and seniors. My reason for bringing this up here is because now is really the time to begin thinking about this whether you hope to play ball in college or not. Now is the time to mobilize and acknowledge that board scores are still important.
The reason one should addresss the issue of board scores now is because it is far easier to address with years in front of you than it is with just months. You can remediate now, either on your own or with help. By the time your kid is in her junior year, the only way you can do anything at all is to take very expensive classes and cram, cram, cram. This can put a serious damper on living a reasonably sane life at a time when things are already pretty stressful.
Basically, boards consist of verbal and mathematics skills. I don't hold out myself to be an exspert but I think it stand to reason that these skills are pretty easy to break down. If you want to do well on math boards, you need to develop a logical progression of skills. You must have the multiplication tables down pat. I don't mean that if I ask you how much is 12 times 12, you can think for second and eventually come up with 144. I mean that when you look onto a piece of paper and see the equation, you think the answer. I mean that when you contemplate an algebraic equation which leads to the 144, you immediately think 12 times 12, 3 times 3 times 4 times 4, two 3 and four 2s, 9 times 16, etc. The synapses in your brain are capable of doing mathematical gymnastics on the fly. That isn't really quite as impossible as it sounds.
The way to gain real abilities in mathematics is very similar to the way we train athletes, particularly softball athletes, via drilling. There is a whole school, a pretty expensive one, of mathematical training called "Kumon" which specializes in drilling. There are others but Kumon is the one I'm most familiar with. IMHO, Kumon is to math what Kobata is to infielding! Essentially, this is where many school systems fail today's youth in mathematics. Kids no longer drill. They don't live the problems and solutions, they survive the classes.
In order to perform calculus, you must be quick at algebra. In order to perform algebra quickly, you must be fast at multiplication, division, and factoring. These require in-built mastery of the multiplication tables. A good mathematics student doesn't think their way through a calculus problem, they feel their way through it. They are able to concentrate on the thinking part of the solution because they have mastery over the more mechanical sides. They look at a problem requiring factoring and the solution to an algebraic formula and feel the answer while spending more time on the important parts.
I watched a number of people in college struggle in calculus class. We had this nutty professor from Columbia who did not do a very good job of explaining things. We started with about 40 kids in the class. 15 remained at the end of the semester. 2 passed. I achieved the high grade in the class with a 3.0, a B. The other person who passed was a girl I often studied with - who I essentially tutored. She earned a C. I tried to tutor other kids who were my friends but I was struck by the number of them who could not solve the algebraic equations involved. They struggled because they didn't automatically think the answer to several types of problems involving factoring, multplication, etc. They got hung up on these rudimentary parts of the problems and failed to even get to the more difficult parts.
So, if you are planning on remediating your kid's education, I strongly suggest you do so with respect to multiplication tables. It is a simple exercises to make sure your kid has mastery over these but it can take time. Performing drills over a long period of time is the best way I know of accomplishing the task. Then pay special attention when your kid is taking algebra. Get yourself an algebra text book, preferably one with an answer key. And make your kid do some drilling for 15 to 30 minutes a day at least as often as she practices her softball skills. I know this can get pretty hectic during the school year when you try to fit in all these other things. But surely you can find a half hour on at least two days per week. And step it up to four days a week when school is not in session. The time spent drilling when school is out can be crucial to making real strides in this regard.
When your kid gets into geometry, algebra 2 and trig, look through the work. It's been a long time since you did any of that and you need to be refreshed. Build up a collection of problem types, a compilation of problems, and answers, so you can craft drilling work for her to do in the future. If you want to score high on math boards and you do these kinds of things, you can save a ton of money (or if you have the money and want an easier way for yourself, enroll in Kumon or some such). The bottom line is, given years, you can push a kid's math board scores to the roof and clear a path for her in terms of college and career.
Verbal skills are more involved. A student needs sound reading comprehension, a good vocabulary, the ability to express herself well via the written word, etc. These skills sometimes seem daunting to one trying to remediate. You have to take a slow, rational approach. Vocabulary is probably one of the easier problems to solve because there are techniques which, when used frequently over the long-haul, complement techniques used to remediate other areas of verbal skills.
For example, start now developing a large stack of cards or a Word document consisting of all the difficult words encountered. I remember a time when I was doing a lot of fairly difficult reading on my own. In a given hour, I typically came across a dozen words with which I was either not familiar or with which I had only brief, cursory experience. All I did was write the word down and plan to look it up later. I did this on note cards and later looked them up in a good collegiate dictionary, writing the definition on the back of each card. Then I would review these cards periodically. I didn't study them until my brain hurt. I merely reviewed them many times over a long period.
Understand that I readily acknowledge that I do not own one of the stronger, more well developed vocabularies of people I know. But you should have seen me before I did this! And for unknown reasons, I stopped the practice. Eventually I suppose everyone stops doing things like this because life takes its twists and turns and insufficient time remains to keep up good habits. But a junior high school or early high school student has no excuses. If she wants to do well on her boards, she needs to build a vocabulary as muscular as her legs.
Reading comprehension is really easy to remediate. But it takes loads more time. That's because in order to build comprehension, what you have to do is read. You have to read a lot. You have to become a quick reader. You have to understand what you read quickly. The best way to do this is to read material you really like.
If you are a complete sports nut, read sports related material. I recall a kid in high school who was having all sorts of problems in classes which required good reading skills. He had never read very much. He was a very good athlete who was a sports nut. At some point, a very smart teacher decided to make him read sports novels. He read them voraciously for several months and afterwards, his reading skills were dramatically better than they were to begin with.
Whatever genre of stories or other reading materials you take to, get lots of it and read, read, read. After a while, you'll have to move away and engage in more difficult reading but the first step to improving reading skills is to read a lot and you need to be so entertained that you cannot help but to become a fast reader whose comprehension is improving by the day.
At this point in the process, you have to start reading material which challenges you. You need to be forced to sometimes jot down those words which cause you difficulty. If you read something for an hour and do not ever encounter a difficult word, something is wrong. You are not picking sufficiently challenging material. Conversely, if you read material which forces you to look up words every five minutes just to comprehend what the author is saying, chances are decent that you are reading something too difficult and your efforts are wasted.
If you read frequently, read quickly, are challenged by what you read, encounter new words which you write down, look them up and then review systematically, your reading comprehension and verbals skills will improve steadily. Now it is time to consider your writing skills.
I believe our schools do a much better job of teaching writing today than they did when I went to school. Kids today write more, do more presentations, are forced to express themselves on topics they researched or had to dig out from deep inside themselves, than we did in school. But not everyone excells in these areas. And when a kid falls behind, most often they just get stuck in classes in which less of this kind of work is demanded of them. Whether you are very good at expressing yourself via the written word, merely average, or one of those people who gets stuck in "dunce" classes, you can help yourself to become a better writer. The thing to do in order to improve writing skills is ... to write.
It doesn't really matter so much if you write letters never meaning to send, sports stories for games you watched on TV or in person, a diary, the next great novel, or anything at all (except text messages and/or IMs which we'll address momentarily). Just write.
Good writers learn to speak through their written words. They get to that point by writing a lot. I forget which author wrote this but he said, "if you want to be a writer, write, write every day, write as often as you possibly can." What he meant by that is the way to learn to write is just to write. You don't have to write literature. It does not have to constitute grammatic perfection. It can be complete junk which you despise and which, upon re-reading, you have the overwhelming compulsion to throw into the waste basket (I mean recycling bin). But you simply must write.
Texting and IMs do not count as writing. These are mere conversation and poor conversation at that. When you write, you must write in sentences. You must complete some sort of thought. It can be as simple as "I'm hungry now, have to go, be back to write another chapter tomorrow." Or it can be paragraph after paragraph telling some complicated story about your life. The more you write, the more you will be able to write.
As you begin to be able to write what you are thinking, at some point, you should want to do more than a mere diary of the immediate goings on in your life. At some point, I hope that a diary entry which discusses a really hard thing you did at school might explain in some detail about that difficult thing. At some point, I hope that your diary entry might include a deep philosophical thought you havw, a cause and effect essay or some sort of more advanced writing involving more than simply jotting down what happened today. If you are reading a book, perhaps your diary might include a summary of the chapter you finished. If you watched a professional football or college softball game, maybe you can pick a player who really impressed you, do a little internet research and then include a bit of biographical information in your writing. The point is just write. Above all, just write, and then, when you find you can write, stretch yourself.
In more general terms, I want you to consider one other aspect of college boards. If you are already moving along in your high school career, you want to make sure you take the college boards as well as any available practice tests as early as possible. For example, you can sit for the PSATs your sophomore year. Do it! Keep in mind that to enter the National Merit Scholarship competititon, you will still need to take the PSATs again during your junior year. But taking the test early should point out any deficiencies you may need to remediate.
I think you can take the SATs just about any time. I'm not really sure about any restrictions but I recall folks I know having their kid take the test as early as 8th grade, if I'm not mistaken. That's really early since an 8th grader probably has not been exposed to algebra 2 or any of the other material assumed to have been learned. I'm not suggesting that you sign up your pre-high schooler to sit for college boards but I am telling you to plan to have her take the test earlier than her peers. As usual, I'm teaching what I need to learn. I missed the first opportunity to take the PSATs in high school, then registered late for SATs, and even missed one sitting of the CPA exam because I failed to register on time! Don't be me. Get moving early!
I'm really not sure what single specific event caused me to write this piece today. I always think at least a little about college. Every day, something from my college days pops into my head. Very frequently, I find myself involved in my kids' studies to some degree. When that happens, I muse about their future college days. Whenever I'm in a softball setting, something about college pops up whether it be a college scholarship, a kid I know playing on some college team, a game I watched, or whatever. College, college, college. Everywhere I turn, college looms. And within the context of a youth softball blog, I imagine the same thing holds true for you. So I guess I wrote this because I thought perhaps somebody out there might be interested in a few thoughts I have on the subject.
I know that as important as college boards were to me, they are far less important today. Grades and other things are more important. Still, boards are not unimportant. They could be critical in certain settings. It would be well worth your efforts to at least think about them and see if any remediation for your kid is necessary. It really is not hard to do, especially when you have several years. I think your efforts will pay off tremendously.Labels: college, parenting
Permanent Link: Fundamental Skills
 
Magic Number?
by Dave
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
I have read numerous pieces and heard plenty of discussions recently regarding the wisdom of developing three pitches and only three pitches. Three seems to be the magic number. A recent piece in Fastpitch Delivery discussed this notion while providing many further thoughts about how one should go about developing three and only three. Additionally, I have heard several coaches at levels from 10U up to and including Div-I college criticise any pitcher who claims to have more than three. I believe I understand what these coaches are talking about and don't necessarily disagree with their philosophy. At the same time, I do not believe it is good advice to tell a developing pitcher to get to the magic number and then stop. I believe this advice is absolutely wrong but I need to develop the topic in order to explain why I feel that way.
Some college coaches ridicule the notion that pitchers have 6, 7 or possibly more pitches in their mix. The rub is, when the coach goes to scout the pitcher, views her video or just happens to watch her pitch, she really only has 3 "good pitches." Additionally, many coaches advise against "using everything" or trying to make sure a good percentage of the pitches you have learned are used at least once during a game.
I have tried out too many pitchers to count. Indeed many times girls tell me they have 4, 5, 10 different pitches and then, when I ask them to throw these, I cannot tell the difference between pitches. I have tried out girls whose fastball is 53-54 and change-up is 51-55! I have seen girls who claim to throw a drop but it doesn't drop as much as their fastball. I have seen righties throw a screwball which moves more to the catcher's right than does their curve. I have caught girls who throw ten pitches which not only all do the same thing but on which their delivery is virtually identical - they make the same hand and lower arm motion on the drop as they do on the fastball, curve, change, etc.
I do believe that many times when a girl claims to have more than 3 pitches, either she really does not or everything beyond three is not ready for prime time. It takes a ton of work to have more than three pitches. Most are not willing to put in that amount of work. So attempting to have more than three can pollute the other pitches and cause everything to mish into a mash of mud. So from that perspective, keeping it to three is probably good advice.
Many coaches believe most pitchers should focus on what they are good at and what is working while ignoring their other alleged pitches. I would also agree with this. When Taryn Mowatt pitched her team to the NCAA title, she did so throwing a vast majority of that famous backhand change-up. That pitch was really working for her on that day. She needed very little else. So she shouldn't really have tried to throw much else.
My daughters pitch and many times the worst mistake I can make while calling their pitches is to force them to throw something else after they have been shutting down an opponent over several innings using mostly one pitch. My younger daughter has quite a good dropball. She also has a good change-up. In one game, the drop was putting the batters down pretty easily. So, what did I do? I started calling the change! And they started hitting her!!
When I think back over the several big games she has pitched over the past 3 years, she has mostly used the drop when she was successful and everything else when she wasn't. It finally struck me very recently that I have been mixing it up too much and need to just begin each game expecting the drop to be her number one pitch, period. We will spend more time perfecting the drop, perhaps throwing two to three times as many drops as other pitches and work towards getting her real command of it. We'll work on other pitches, of course, and I'll get into that soon. But it should have been plain to me that her best pitch is the drop and most of the time, that's what she should be throwing rather than trying to "use them all".
I get the idea that most pitchers do not nearly own quite as many pitches as they lay claim to. I also get the idea of using what is working and laying off everything else. Just to be clear, that doesn't mean you use one pitch 100% of the time but it does mean that you use the one that is working more than 50%. Other pitches can be worked in but their purpose is mostly to set up the one or two main pitches.
Still, when we are talking about a girl who is not a Div-I ace, I think the advice to develop three and only thee pitches is not particularly useful. The first, most obvious question is, "which three?" In fact the article in Fastpitch Delivery tried to hash out that specific issue and conclude which three the writer felt were correct.
It is pretty easy to examine college ball and determine which pitches the majority of coaches want their prospects to possess. Most likely those would include straight drop, riseball and something else with a different speed like a curve or change.
To the uninitiated, the fastball drops out of the game picture as soon as other pitches are mastered. I recognize that many pitchers early in their career throw nothing but fastballs. I suspect that many top level pitchers in years past arrived at high school or college with little else. But in today's game, even the fastest fastball gets rocked at very young ages like 12U. Some few incredibly odd girls play 12U ball at the highest national levels with little more than a 55-60 mph fastball. But the kid who tops out at 55 at 12U and 14U will be hit by even average teams which do their batting practices with the machine turned up to 60. Most good age group players can hit the fastball. Young girls in today's game can hit almost any speed.
You can look to pitchers like Japan's Ueno and conclude the fastball is not out of style everywhere. But Ueno does more with the ball than merely throw it fast. She puts movement on it via subtle hand manipulations and then of course also throws it hard while changing speeds at will. She also can put it just about exactly where she wants it!
I don't know why we don't teach this approach in the US but we don't. I've yet to find a pitching coach who teaches it. I think it could add something to a pitcher's game that isn't there now. But we do not use subtle fastball movement (the equivalent of baseball's cutter and two seamer) in today's American fastpitch softball.
As an aside, I have my daughters experimenting with two seamers but it's just an experiment. We do it to break up the monotony. My younger daughter claims that it is "fun." I disagree. When I try to catch two seamers, I have difficulty predicting where the ball is going to go. There are a few welts on my legs as a result - such fun! Perhaps in time, through numerous repetitions, this may become a little more predictable. For now it's just "fun."
Back to the subject, when a girl begins lessons, she starts with the fastball and the emphasis is and should be on mechanics. Once she has gotten into a pretty good routine on the fastball, once her mechanics have been built up pretty well in her motor memory, she usually begins learning the change. Some coaches begin this right alongside the fastball, before the fastball mechanics are set. Some coaches don't really emphasize changes until much later. I don't understand this second approach. Up until 14U, a pitcher can get by with a mediocre fastball if she also has a very good change. There are also valid arguments against teaching anything but the fastball until the motor memory has been solidified. I tend to agree with that thinking but I also know that even 10 year olds can get hit pretty hard if all they have is a fastball.
Later on, coaches begin working in other pitches. Usually this indicates what the coaches like to teach rather than any sort of logical progression. Some coaches have thought out the issue of what to teach next based upon many years experience of watching their students struggle with one pitch while quickly learning another. That's probably the better approach. Still others watch the way a kid learns something and may make adjustments, moving to other pitches if they feel this kid just isn't going to learn that pitch right now. That's probably the best and most efficient approach. Don't try to pound a square peg through a round hole.
Many coaches get bored or feel their student is getting bored when all they do is work the fastball or fastball and change. They get to the third pitch, whichever one it is, pretty quickly. Then, after the third, a fourth, fifth and whatever is initiated. Usually pitching coaches will move on to other pitches long before the student has mastered the second, third or fourth. They do this mostly because they are being paid and feel pressure to make sure their clients are satisfied they are getting their money's worth, not because they philosophically believe they should be doing it. So the typical young pitcher after about a year or two of lessons will claim she knows 4, 5, 6 or possibly more pitches. This is the phenomenon I witnessed while trying out pitchers.
By the time a pitcher gets into high school and perhaps is in hot pursuit of a college scholarship, she probably lays claim to 5 or more pitches and believes she really owns these. So when she makes her college video, it is normal for her to want to include fastball, change, drop, screw, rise, and several other pitches. That's true even if she really uses primarily one particular pitch in games. She believes she has lots of stuff and she wants to display her stuff to the prospective college coaches. Coaches, of course, get bored to tears when they view such videos and cannot distinguish the fastball and drop from each other. They automatically discount whatever else they may have seen in a positive light.
But in the early years, what sticks out to me is how a parent, coach or pitcher would know, before trying out many pitches, what is going to work for her. We all have slightly different bodies. Every kid learns different things at different paces. One girl will generally struggle with the drop and the curve while progressing speedily through the screw and then the rise. If she doesn't try them all, she is not going to know which one works for her.
Also, even when a kid seems to learn one particular pitch very quickly, that doesn't mean that a year or two from now, she is going to continue to progress with it. Many times I have seen pitchers who learn the drop very quickly in one year start losing it sometime later and instead develop a killer sweeping curve. They appeared to develop a good drop early on but some of that was luck, some of that was physical, and they were never really all that comfortable throwing the thing. Later, their bodies matured, they found "religion" with the curve, and that is the pitch they enjoyed throwing more than any other. So they worked harder on the curve, enjoyed throwing it - were willing to throw curves all day until dad refused to catch anymore, and developed relative mastery over it. Thier drop falls by the wayside and is not used often thereafter.
The same sort of dynamic can happen with any pitch. You won't know until you try them all. And it is often not the first impression which dictates what is going to be good several years into a pitcher's career. I know that when Jelly Selden arrived on the scene, she was said to be a riseball pitcher. I don't remember her throwing very many drops early in her college career. Then Lisa Fernandez began coaching her. This past year, I would say that Jelly threw predominantly dropballs in the games I saw.
Another pitcher I have watched used to throw mostly rises and now it seems as if a variety of drop-curves and screws are most dominant in her repertoire. That could be the result of many factors but I don't care to analyze what those factors might be. The point is, nobody really knows what a pitcher is going to use one, two or three years from now. So telling her to learn only three would seem to be counter-productive.
There is one issue I would like to raise in this context. The issue is what I call "pitch pollution." Pitch pollution occurs where a pitcher does not have relative mastery over one pitch and then tries to learn a very similar one before really owning the previous one. If we think of the possible hand manipulations as a clock, a straight drop would be 12-6. A sweeping curve could be described as 3 o'clock to 9 (or 9 to 3). Then the drop curve is somewhere between the two. If a pitcher tries to master all three pitches simultaneously, she can run the risk of all three coming out as if they are the same pitch. Her straight drop doesn't drop straight down. Her sweeping curve tends to drop and sometimes doesn't really curve. Her drop curve is sometimes a straight drop and sometimes a sweeping curve. That's pitch pollution and the result is three pitches that are really just one.
The way to avoid pitch pollution is to really master one before the other, similar pitch is learned and then, after both are fully being implemented, to practice them alongside each other while paying special attention to distinguish between the different rotations and action of each. What we seek is pitch purity - true desired action on each specific pitch. I talked about drops and curves but this is also true with respect to rises and screws.
Many times pitchers who lay claim to a rise are throwing screws with slightly less screw. They don't angle the pitch in the way they might a real screw. They are trying to throw the rise but the spin does not show a straight 6-12. Instead it is off kilter and the result is it doesn't rise. (No, lets' not get into the debate about whether a rise actually rises). Sometimes a pitcher might have a pretty good rise but her screwball goes all to heck because she can no longer get any lateral movement on it. It has been polluted by the rise snap. This is why, it is so important for pitchers to throw as much as they can. They need to continually purify pitches and that takes a lot of work.
In addition to experiencing pitch pollution over the course of an early career, you can also experience this after a long lay off. Some pitcher genuinely owns numerous pitches on multiple planes one year. She then takes off for a month or two during the winter. She starts throwing everything again in January aiming for the spring season. But early on, her fingers, wrist and arm get themselves confused and her cruve is a drop and her rise a screw yet again. This can be very frustrating even for a well experienced pitcher.
I suggest trying to plan a natural progression in the early pre-season to purify one's pitches. The first time out maybe just throw. The second time, throw the fastball and change. The next time out throw a few fastballs to warm-up, enough changes to feel like you are getting it back, and then one other pitch. Stay with these three until the third feels right and progress with a fourth which involves another plane. Then gradually work all your pitches into the pre-season workout while making doubly sure they are working on the right planes, with the correct spin.
Getting back into the subject of the magic number of pitches - whether that is to learn 3 total pitches or to use just one or two in games, there is yet another consideration. One of our pitching coaches like to talk about pitches "taking vacations." On any given day, a pitch can decide it is going on vacation and not coming back until you really invite it home. There is little you can do other than to simply keep working on it until it comes back. And, more importantly, you really cannot predict when one might leave or know for sure when it will be back. So what are you supposed to do when one of your pitches goes on vacation and cuts your selection from three down to two?
There have been way more times than I can possibly count in which a pitcher has lost one of her mainstays for a game or for several tournaments. One pitcher Ican think of, off the top of my head, had a pretty good dropball. But when she tried to throw it on one particular field, the landing area was so chewed up that she could not get the thing for a strike. She walked several hitters consecutively and was in big trouble. There was no way she was going to be able to land a drop that game. There was no field crew around to fix the mound area and if there had been, they didn't have equipment or dirt to fix it with. She had to use something else or we were going to be eliminated. But she had nothing else. She was stuck with just 3 pitches and one was not going to show up. Her fastball was pretty good but the opponenet could hit it regardless of where she placed it if that was all she threw. Her change was reasonably good too but it was not a good enough difference in speed to really matter ... unless she also had the drop working. So we had to pull her.
On a few occassions,pitchers I have worked with have experienced the loss of a pitch for several weeks. Even my own daughters do this from time to time. One kid has cruised along with her screw doing the majority of the heavy lifting until one day we found ourselves in a tournament and the screw stayed in bed because it was tired. Luckily she had something else to go with the other 2 pitches and they pulled her through. In the specific instance which first comes to mind, this involved an elimination game in which the fastball and changes were OK, the screw was not working but two curves, one underhand, the other overhand with very different action, came for the party. That was a very good game in which few runners got on base and all of those were early on, resulting from base hits on poorly thrown screws.
As a further comment on limiting the number of pitches, there are times when a limited pitch selection can play right into an opponent's strong suits. There have been many times when a pitcher was throwing perfectly well. She had all her stuff on her three main pitches. And the other team was teeing off on her. Many teams have one particular style they teach their batters. All styles have their own strengths and weaknesses. And it is just possible that a pitcher with particular strengths can sometimes run into a team whose strengths exactly match hers. In those cases, she needs to adjust. But if she does not have something to pull out of her hat, she is out of luck.
On one fine summer day, a fairly well experienced pitcher faced a very well experienced team. The pitcher threw good screwballs, a very good change-up, and a reasonably fast, well located fastball. Her opponent was an extremely well disciplined rotational hitting team. They sat on pitches they knew they could hit. The pitcher's first pitch was a fastball on the outside corner but called a ball because this particular ump had a narrow, low strike zone. Her next pitch was a high and tight screwball which clipped the inside corner of the "objective strike zone," the rulebook strike zone. Ball two! Her next pitch was also a screw but she brought it down a bit to see if the ump would give her that corner, if the pitch was lower. That ball was retrieved a few minutes later after the field ump had stopped twirling his hand and the batter had rounded the bases.
So, there she was, facing a good rotational hitting team. She thought maybe the ump was pinching the zone. So she threw a change-up, strike one. Then she tried a fastball on the outside corner again. The disciplined batter did not go for it and the ump did not raise her right hand. 1-1. Another fastball, closer in, ball 2. Change-up, strike two. Change-up, strike three. One out, down 1-0. The next batter stood in and she threw her fastball on the corner, ball one. Screwball high and tight but over the plate, ball 2. Change-up, double.
At this point, it was pretty clear the ump would not give either corner. She could and did throw it high to the batters and sometimes it would be a strike. The change was working pretty well but a few batters were sitting on and driving it. The screwball was pretty much out of the question. The choice was throw something else or you are going to be eliminated. So throw something else, she did. And those pitches worked. She threw some drops and learned that the ump was pretty liberal down, even away. Drop-curves also brought up the umps arm. And the batters could not hit drops away and drop curves. In fact, they started being very vulnerable to the change when they tried to adjust. Then they started swinging sat the high and tight screwballs when those were reintroduced. As batters began to sit down rapidly, their discipline fell apart and the outside fastball which would not get a strike call started to be swung at. The result of having one or two more pitches than the magical three was a very good outing when disaster would otherwise have occurred.
In conclusion, I understand what college and other coaches are getting at when they reason that a pitcher needs to have "3 good pitches." I am also hip to the idea that a pitcher need not throw "them all" in one game - go with what is working best. But I do not believe that pitchers going through early development stages ought to be told to learn just three pitches and then achieve mastery over them and afterwards stop learning new ones. If you never learn a pitch because you already have your 3 good ones, how do you know whether you might not be a better pitcher by learning the fourth and then maybe dropping one of your existing three? What do you do when one of your good three goes on vacation? What do you do when you have three good pitches and your opponent likes all three?
We do need to simplify the equation. We do need to take steps to avoid pitch pollution and achieve pitch purity. We do need to keep pitchers from laying claim to pitches they don't own and make them work towards perfecting each one individually. When pitchers begin training for the new season, they need to strive for purity rather than being in a rush to get everything back at once. We do need to tell pitchers not to throw 10 different pitches on their college videoes that when taken together as a whole leave the impression that the pitcher really only has one pitch. But young kids should not be discouraged from learning more than three pitches. They should be taught pitches they can learn in a logical progression and be led down the path by coaches and parents away from pitch pollution. There really is no magic number.Labels: pitching
Permanent Link: Magic Number?
The Softball Classroom
by Dave
Monday, November 10, 2008
I want to propose an approach to winter workouts which I think many will consider a little unorthodox. It is unorthodox mostly in the sense that few travel ball teams routinely do it. Yet, if you think about it, it makes complete sense and is really a very simple concept. Sometimes what is simple and makes sense alludes us in our day to day, month to month struggles to prepare a team for competition. Yet standing back, using our common sense, and doing something simple, yet unorthodox, often yields more results than we would have anticipated.
The problem is working the team out to get them ready for the spring in sometimes rather cramped quarters. At least for those of us living in cold climates, that is often the most difficult task. We deal with the problem by renting all sorts of expensive or inadequate indoor spaces, raising money to pay for the space, and improvising any available facilities to get a little work in. In a few cases in which the leadership of the team or organization is well hooked up, we get more than adequate facilities for modest prices. But most of the time, we struggle to fit meaningful drills into overpriced, tight spaces. We often fail in our task and then, when we are again outdoors, finally cover most of the ground we hoped to during the winter.
I have been involved with several teams which went inside after fall with high hopes of making real progress. By March, just about every team is ecstatic to get back outside so they can conduct real practices. They spent significant time crafting a list of drills, got inside and, for one reason or another, had to eliminate many or most of them because the space could not accomodate the work they wanted to do. They did some important skills work indoors but always ended up feeling that the physical constraints prevented a complete job. The team is not ready when they finally get back outside in the spring.
I don't have a magic potion to make indoor work more meaningful. I have no technological device or special list of drills which improve a team's ability to conduct practice in a 40 by 40 foot, ten foot high space, run batting practice while using baseball pitching machines in small, cramped netted cages, or otherwise prepare a team to go out onto a real field after trying to work on skills in some tiny elementary school gymnasium. But I'd like to bring up an obvious approach we sometimes forget about in this sport, especially at lower level youth tournament levels.
What I want to discuss is the usefulness of conducting classroom work. What I mean is the team, rather than running physical drills, sits around a table in a small room and is taught important things about the game in general, specific strategies planned to be employed by the team, signs and signals, or just about anything else you can imagine which requires mental preparation rather than physical.
In order to do classroom work, you obviously need a place to function as a classroom. But such space is often far easier to arrange than other kinds of space. I don't suggest getting a side room at some Fudruckers, to take over the meeting room at a Frozen Ropes or another athletic facility. There are too many distractions and you'll lose the kids while you are trying to instruct them on some important point. Small church basements can suffice and are often pretty cheap to arrange. Sometimes the local school will allow you to use or rent a classroom. And with just say 12 girls, you might even be able to conduct some classroom sessions at one of your player's homes. What you need is enough space for the girls not to be in each other's laps, a little quiet and no distractions out in the open.
The second consideration is organization and conduct. Coaches cannot wing classroom sessions as they often do indoor and outdoor physical practices. If the coaches need to discuss what they want to do next, it is easy when doing physical practices to send the girls on a busy task so you can talk it over. You cannot do that in a classroom. You have to be organized and have a lesson plan. The best time coaches will spend is in a pre-classroom meeting in which they hash out what needs to get covered inside the classroom, develop a "lesson plan" and then break out the responsibilities for who is going to discuss what. An hour spent in an initial coaches meeting will pay off in saving several wasted hours in the classroom.
Coaches most also consider the nature of their audience, their students, their team. 12U girls have much better attention spans than fidgety 10s. 14s are more mature than 12s but they also are far more social, not to mention better at not paying attention during class time. 16s can sort of resent being forced to sit in a classroom on a Saturday, and shut up and listen when the context is softball. 18s generally have a better understanding of the necessity of classroom type work but you need to hold their attention too.
Just as you try to make things move along rapidly in a physical practice, you must also keep it moving in the classroom. If a couple players get bored, you are going to lose the whole team pretty soon thereafter. If you end up spending too much time on one subject or one type of subject, somebody is going to get bored and then perhaps start disrupting the whole group. In the classroom, you can't allow someone to disrupt the group and while you certainly can remove someone who is deliberately being disruptive, you also have to take some of the blame on yourselves for not keeping everyone's interest.
I suggest establishing a policy for the conduct of classroom work right from the first sitdown. Let the team know what your goals are for these sessions, that you understand they are used to softball practice being more physical and fun than mental and boring, that you will try to not make the material boring, but that sometimes you may not keep their interest and in those cases, they are not allowed to fool around or talk among themselves. In fact, once we get started (when a coach says, "OK, let's get started"), there is no more talking among yourselves. The only talking allowed is A) the coaches, B) players asking or answering a question, or C) when somebody says something confusing or you didn't hear what was said.
Coaches could allow for five to ten minutes before starting to allow the girls to chat with each other and then, after the session, either plan some social stuff or at least allow the kids to chat for a while before running home. If you use pizza parties for team chemistry building, have one of these immediately after classroom sessions. That provides motivation for the girls to focus during the sessio,n to get to the pizza party afterwards more quickly.
Another policy position is to not allow players to be late. Perhaps the most disruptive thing that can happen during a clasroom session involves the "student" walking in five to ten minutes after you have started. She comes in and everything grinds to a halt. She takes off her coat, looks around for a seat, finds one near her best friend, sits down and chats briefly with the girl she just finished texting with for four hours straight. This process takes about 5 minutes and in the end, you may actually be able to get started again but you must now go back over the ten minutes worth of material you covered before the disruption! One player arriving late has cost you 15 minutes and you may never again get the kids' attention. So, "we start at 6:00. You must arrive by 6:00. If you are late or your parent is pulling into the parking spot at 5:59, please turn around and go home because you will not be allowed into the classroom. Of course you don't need to be perfectly strict about this policy since you aren't actually going to start until 6:10, after the girls have chatted for a few minutes. But what you do not want to habitually happen is the same girl walking in at 6:15 each and every session.
It is always the same girls who come late to these things, as well as practices. That's completely inconsiderate and shows disdain for teammates. But it happens. As an aside, coaches should always remember that more than half the time, it is not the kid's fault. Usually, it is the parent's fault for not recognizing that their kid is always disorganized at that hour or because the parent themselves sees arriving late as acceptable. And browbeating the kid usually does not achieve the desired result. You can certainly tell the kid that "you're late" but you also need to make the parent understand that their kid is repeatedly late, this dirupts the whole team, and it cannot continue. It is not fair to the team and needs to be rectified. Please come on time or your daughter will not be allowed into the class.
Of course, lateness when addressed by the coach is often met with the litany of excuses. "She has ballet before practice." "We needed to hire a special tutor for her and this is the only time she can come." "The dog got out and was raiding the neighbors chicken coop - I couldn't leave until I got her back into the house, sorry." We've all heard all the excuses at one time or another. Lateness is not allowed, excuse or no excuse. This is not an easy task but, if you want to accomplish anything, you must address it, particularly when we are dealing with classroom settings.
By addressing lateness and rectifying the situation, if you can, you are really doing the kid a favor. Many high school and college teachers will not tolerate lateness. Work bosses will often dock a worker for lateness. Many sports coaches will punish repeated latecomers, sometimes severely. The 9 or 10 year old who walks into practice or a classroom late repeatedly and is embarrassed at that age about tardiness will come to learn that she can survive being late - the world does not come crashing down on her when she is late. Thereafter, she'll not be particularly worried about being on time until, long after the habit is established, her high school coach benches her for it. So, when you consider all that time you spent trying to teach her to field a grounder or make a strong, quick throw just so she would make her high school team, consider dealing with her lateness for the same reason.
Lastly, while I understand that there is a value to taking notes, that value is lessened when too many notes are required to be written down by students. Coaches need to prepare materials for their players, perhaps even structure them into a notebook by running out to the office superstore and buying some floppy folders and then handing out materials which are already hole punched for easy insertion.
Everything you might talk about in these sessions is capable of being put down in some logical form on paper. Usually you can make copies fairly cheaply. Folders will cost the team less than a dollar apiece and can form the backbone of what is essentially a playbook. If your players do not really need to make notes but rather can simply look at papers you hand out, your classroom work will progress much more quickly which should help you to keep everyone's attention.
Regarding the classroom sessions themselves, let's remember that all human beings learn through repetition. In fastpitch softball, we use repetition more than any other device. You field 50 grounders, take 50 swings, make 100 throws, etc. We understand the concept of "motor memory" and no matter what the softball environment, we use the tool of repetition to improve players' skills. While neuro-muscular pathways do not get worked in the classroom, we still need to use repetition.
For reasons that are unclear to me, American education has moved away from repetition. Teachers don't want to utilize any sort of boring, tedious drills like multiplication tables. They seek instead to teach "reasoning" to achieve an answer.
Early on, my wife and I recognized the shortcomings of this approach and worked to supplement what our kids were doing with respect to, for example, multiplication tables. We signed up (and paid through the nose) for one of those supplemental self-study courses which involves repeated, consistent drilling. At first our approach caused some problems when, for example, the math teachers wanted my kids to explain how they arrived at the answer of 56 for the problem, what is 8 times 7. We actually had to teach our kids to say things like "well, 8 is an even number so the answer has to be even, and seven plus seven is 14 and 4 fourteens is 56." My kids got bored with this so after a while we told them to answer, "my parents made me commit the multiplication tables to memory so when I look on the paper and see 7 times 8, my brain automatically spits out 56." Obviously, our kids tests sometimes caused us to need to have a parent-teacher conference to explain the smug answers but, in the end, their answers got them the grades they were seeking.
I digress but my point is repetition is necessary in the classroom whether that classroom is mathematics or fastpitch softball. Repetition is undeniably boring when not conducted thoughtfully. Our kids' math repetition involved 15 minutes a day, 5 days per week, 50 weeks per year. It was short and frequent. The same concept should be employed in softball classroom work.
If, for example, you are going to go over signs to the batter, you should do that work in every classroom session but for a short duration each time. The same can be said for each particular important situational defense play you want to employ. We'll get to some specific "lessons" momentarily but for now, I just want you to understand that we do not want to go over first and third once in session number 3 and never come back to it again. We must repeat specific lessons several times so the kids actually learn them or the whole effort is one big waste of time.
We must consider attention spans when we develop lessons. It doesn't so much matter whether you are contemplating an outdoor, on the field, defensive drill for bunts, or a discussion of how we defense bunts in the classroom. We cannot run a single drill or engage in a single discussion for an hour straight. Particularly in the classroom, you must go over material fairly quickly for a short duration, take a deep breath and then move to another, perhaps related subject.
You may spend more time initially when you first go over something just as it takes longer to set things up the first time we do some particular outdoor drill. But definitely the next time you go over this material, you need to move quickly and go on to something else. All the while, you need to consider your players' attention spans. This pertains to each segement in the lesson plan as well as the length of the overall classroom session.
I do not think you should stick with one subject for longer than a long inning - 10 to 15 minutes. It would be best if you could get through a topic in a normal half inning - 3 to 5 minutes. And the whole indoor classroom session cannot be longer than a game. Ideally, it would be an hour or less. You can't get anything real done in under a half hour, probably more like 45 minutes. So a full class might be 45 minutes to an hour - schedule an hour and a half, and plan to finish classrom work in 45 minutes. Give the kids five to ten minutes to get in, sit down and settle. Then announce, "let's get started, wse have a lot to cover and the better you poay attention, the sonner we'll get done which will allow you girls to talk and fool arounds." Plan something afterwards like pizza or Twister, if you can. Then plan say 5 distinct subjects to go over during that session. Now do it and hopefully finish in 45 minutes.
At this point, I think it would be best if I started getting into specifics about what a classroom session might consist of.
The first, most obvious, discussion is offensive signs and strategies. For whatever reason, signs often get less attention than they deserve. We bring them up in the fall, give the kids a few key signs at one of our practices, and then use them at a couple games. Sometime during the winter, we circulate a list of signs via some Word document, ask the parents to print it out and go over them with their kids. Some parents do and some do not. Then we get into our first tournament and the batter doesn't so much as look at the coach to get the sign! The second batter looke down and gets the sign, calls timeout and runs to the coach to ask what the heck all that stuff means. Then, at our next practice, we spend five minutes going over signs again. At our next tournament, we get upset about nobody looking down for signs, this kid or that apprently getting it but not doing what you told her, etc., etc. and so forth.
In the classroom, it is important to tell the kids that they must look for signs on every pitch. Very quickly, you might explain that batters are allowed to take one foot out of the box after each pitch - but often not two unless you get chased out of the box by a pitch or play. Tell the girls you want them, after every pitch, to take out their front foot and look down to the coach fo the sign. Sure, often, there is no sign or the only one is "you're on your own" but they must look every time and then signal back to the coach that they received it.
That discussion, in case you've got a stopwatch or are otherwise trying to gauge subject duration should last about a minute. It should be repeated at every classroom session. Next go over the signs beginning with indicators and wipe-offs. If your kids learn nothing else, they should learn to always look for a sign, know when one is actually being put on, via indicator, and know that the coach can erase one via this third type of sign. Then you can hand out page one of their notebook, the signs and put that into the folder. You are two to three minutes into the session, you have gone over the basics of signs and handed out the signs. Now, very quickly go over them. Then maybe a one minute quiz to make sure everyone gets the idea. "OK, gang, that's it for that. We will definitely go over these again - don't lose your notebook, go over these at home."
Remember, you will go over these again in future sessions. At a later date, the whole thing should probably be done in under two minutes. One day, you might split the group into two or three "teams," tell them to put away their notebooks and then start giving them signs, asking what did I just signal you to do and award points to each "team" according to how many they get right.
Right after offensive signs, you might go into some more advanced offensive topics like your particular team's offensive philosophy. Some of you parents and coaches may not be aware that many teams actually have a specific philosophy. Some of you may not realize that the team you coach actually has a specific philosophy. What many coaches fail to recognize is that the girls on their team, unless they have been together for two years or more, may get confused over offensive philosophies.
One girl, new to the team, runs between bases in under 3 seconds. She burns. She's like lightning. She also didn't get on base very much last year on her rec all-star team. Her coaches were not particularly sophisticated. They had never seen a delayed steal, let alone run one. They were not aggressive and didn't like small ball. They wanted the girls to hit. So while this girl was sitting in the dugout after striking out 8 times one day, the best she could do was watch the game. And when another girl, her best friend, did something aggressive on the bases and was thrown out, the only thing this really fast girl learned was, you get yelled at if you are overly aggressive. Now she is on your team and she carries that baggage with her. You picked her because you want her to steal, steal, steal, and then steal some more. But she won't unless you tell her that nobody on this team is going to get yelled at if they are aggressive on the bases. And you'll need to be specific. You'll need rules of thumb everyone can use in games.
I remember watching a game in which a runner arrived at third with no outs in the first inning. The coach whispered something to her. He had recognized that the catcher was overly aggressive but didn't have a particularly good arm. He also saw that the third baseman had some difficulty catching balls thrown to her, even more difficulty getting the ball out of her glove after she caught it, and had a weak inaccurate arm. On the first pitch, which was a ball, the runner on third got a little far off the bag. The catcher got up ran a few steps and then whipped the ball down to third where the thirdbaseman was standing waiting for it and the shortstop had also come to cover the bag. The throw, if the runner on third had returned to the bag, would have beaten her. The third baseman and SS bumped into each other and knocked the ball to the ground in front of the third baseman who picked it up with her glove, struggled to get it out into her throwing hand, and threw a weak throw over the catcher's head ... after the girl from third had crossed the plate.
I was standing behind the offensive team's dugout. After the cheering was over, I heard the bench coach call over the girl who had just scored. He began yelling at her. He said, "DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN. YOU
ALMOST GOT PICKED OFF. YOU ALMOST COST US A RUN. DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN."
The third base coach called to his other coach, "Bob, that was a play. I told her to do that." The bench coach said, "LIKE HELL IT WAS. SHE ALMOST GOT PICKED OFF. I DON'T EVER WANT ANYONE DOING THAT AGAIN." Later, I expect the coaches had it out and came to some agreement. But most likely they never said a word to the kids either collectively or individually. The next time they face a pitcher who doesn't pay attention, a catcher who turns her back, or otherwise find themselves in a situation in which a delayed steal might work, they are not going to recognize that what they did on that day is what caused the play to fail. It wasn't the baserunner's hesitation or lack of speed. They are going to fail on a play and blame the wrong thing. If you do classroom sessions, you have a great opportunity to get everyone on the same page with respect to offensive aggression by explaining it clearly.
Rules of thumb are excellent tools which can be brought up in the classroom, discussed at length, and explained if kids are not clear about them. For example, I am involved with a team on which nobody is so slow that they should not always go when a ball gets behind the catcher. So, having already taught how to lead out on the field, I want to discuss my first rule of thumb. "Girls, after you get your lead, I want you to look and see if the catcher has missed the ball. If she has and it is not on the ground right in front of her, advance a base. You are to go every time. If you're out, you're out but you must go every time. If you hesitate because you are not sure and then are thrown out, you will get yelled at extensively the next practice and then everyone on the team will take turns throwing balls hard at you. So ... just go."
I won't try to exhaust a list of all the rules of thumb you might bring up but they should be consistent with your overall philosophy, be explained alongside the explanation of that philosophy, and provided on paper to be inserted into the notebook. By the way, this is an excellent point to raise the concept of times when rules and strategies might be altered to fit a game situation. You might tell the girls that on occassion, we may play against some really good teams. In those games, we may alter some of our strategies in order to score runs and win. These rules we gave you are always implemented but at some games, we might tell you not to do this or that.
Our next subject area could involve defensive plays against aggressive baserunning teams. For example, I like our kids to play a bunt with runner on first a particular way. First and third pinch in and play the ball. The throw always goes to first with the 2B covering. SS takes second. The fielder who didn't get the bunt proceeds to cover third. Outfielders know their backup responsibilities. The 2B catches the throw, hopefully recording the out and then she immediately throws the ball to the SS covering second. "Girls, that's every time, not just when you think of it or believe you have a shot to get the runner at second. We throw to second every time on every bunt with runner at only first." Then you can explain why and what you hope to accomplish. This can be covered in about a minute and then you move on to what to do with runners on first and second, etc. And, again, give them something on paper they can refer to in the future.
First and third, as well as other, situations can be addressed in the classroom. Sure, you need to do drills. You need to run these things out on the field. But it is far easier and far more productive to run drills and plays when you fully understand what is going on and what you hope to accomplish. Go over these in the classroom and your practices will be better.
Another subject area I know I need to cover in the classroom is pitch calling. About half or more of our roster is pitchers or catchers, at least at one time or another. I might split the group up into two, with non-Ps and Cs going with one coach and all our battery mates coming with me. But that is disruptive in and of itself. Instead, I could have the other girls sit in on a pitch calling session.
It isn't as if pich calling occurs outside the game they play. Why not educate them as well? Why not clue them into the signs and thoughts regarding pitch calls? In later years, they very well may find themselves playing middle infield, looking in for signs, adjusting their play to the pitch, signaling outfielders, or being on the receiving end of those signals. We might just as well tell them what all is going on between coach, pitcher and catcher, let them know the signs too, and further their understanding of what goes on in the game they play. Besides, we are going to move rapidly and not bore anyone. And to a girl who has no idea what is going on between coach, catcher and pitcher, this should be fairly interesting. It will keep her attention.
The list of what you might go over in classroom sessions goes on and on. I repeat that repetition is as important in the classroom as it is on the field. You should plan multiple classroom sessions because they are cheap, pretty short, cover important ground, teach the game to the girls, provide critical information for winning and generally improving your game, and are something which is practiced at high levels in a variety of sports, not to mention most career and business situations when these girls are adults. When you plan out multiple classroom sessions, make it interesting when you are going over ground you went over in lessons 1, 3, 4, etc. Be creative. Have some "quizzes" and games to make sure the learning has sunk in deep.
Do some things which are not strictly speaking conventional classroom activites like watching a tape of an Olympic or college game. Conduct team building exercises. Play twister afterwards or have a pizza party. Make it fun but make it productive time. Teach them the game. Teach them teamwork. Teach them something more than how to field a grounder.
To sports fans, particularly football fans, we all know that athletes at high levels of team sports are forced to sit in classrooms to watch game films, go over plays on the blackboard, or do any number of different things. Basketball, soccer and football players do lots of blackboard work discussing plays. Softball is just as complicated yet we seldom do much classroom work. During the springtime when the temperature outside is 70, we should want to get out and sweat. We shouldn't want or need to sit down indoors to discuss plays. That's especially true if we spent 4, 6 or 8 sessions in January and February doing this. We raise so much money to rent decent space when we can find any. But we forget that we can accomplish much just by sitting down in a room and discussing a lot of what we'll be talking about and doing on the field.
By the way, this is a practice. Parents are not welcome. They can sit in the car but, even if there is free space, they cannot come in and sit down.Labels: coaching, game strategy, pre-season preparation, youth tournament teams
Permanent Link: The Softball Classroom
They're Watching You
by Dave
Monday, November 10, 2008
In my experience, many girls have trouble dealing with people they don't know watching them. As a young man, my friends and I used to play a game in which we picked a random girl out of the crowd and stared at her. This was a mere passtime, not some "pickup" technique (and that's a good thing since it would never have worked). If we found ourselves sitting around someplace bored, we picked a girl and stared at her.
Just so you fully understand what I'm talking about, we would decide to all stare at her shoes or maybe the top of her head - you could not get the desired results by looking at the things boys often look at, when involuntarily staring at girls. Sometimes, when we were at close quarters, we would all stare at one particular point on a particular girl's forehead. The results of this passtime were, almost without exception, always the same. The target would become extremely self-conscious and uncomfortable, and seek to move out of sight or otherwise move so the specific spot was no longer visible. If she did this second technique, almost without exception, she would thereafter have to move again to see if we were still staring at the same place. If we were, she might actually burst into tears and leave immediately.
Shoes were probably the best. If four or more boys constantly stare at a girl's shoes, she may get up, walk out and go buy another pair while throwing out the old ones! Girls do not like boys randomly staring at one particular article of clothing or one particular spot on her face. They begin to feel that these boys are looking at some fatal flaw. They begin to believe everyone, not just the couple of boys, is staring at the fatal flaw. It must be removed. Whatever it is everyone is staring at is somehow wrong and must be fixed NOW!
I'm not being sexist. There are certainly boys on which this works too. I've known girls who use this technique when bored or just messing around with boys who are hitting on them. I've had this done to me but as soon as they realize one is not a willing participant in the game - as soon as they realize you are on to them, it ends. And in discussing this game with girls, it has come to my attention that girls are more susceptible to it than boys are.
Girls are overall more concerned about looks than boys are. I know this because I grew up in a household with three older sisters and, as an adult, I have fathered girls rather than boys. My entire life, I have been surrounded by girls. And it doesn't really much matter if we're talking about "girly-girls" or "sporty" ones. I know this because I was close friends with a lot of girls who were "sporty." In fact, I think sporty girls may be more sensitive to this than the "girly-girls."
I remember in college working academically at length with the ace pitcher of our softball team. We had numerous projects together in a class we took. Sometimes that work got very tedious and boring. In those moments, I naturally lapsed back into my personal favorite variety of self-entertainment, staring at a random place to get some sort of reaction. On more than one occassion, this girl asked me if there was something on her forehead or hair, or something weird about her shoes. She honestly wanted to know!
That's an observation on my part and you may be wondering what has this to do with softball. Actually, there are a couple of ways in which I think this has relevance. I'm only going to share one with you now because I want to keep the other one private for my team's use in the future. What I want to tell you is, when you are up to bat, the other team is "watching you."
I don't wish for you to become self-conscious by having the knowledge that you are, in fact, being watched. What I want you to do is recognize that where you stand and how you stand in the batter's box really does matter. The pitcher is watching you to find a weakness. So is the catcher. The players on the field should be watching you to try to determine where you might hit the ball, should you make contact. The coaching staff on the other team is trying to do all these things and perhaps more. They really want to get to know you. They can't have much in the way of conversation over an hour and a half but they want to really get to know what kind of person you are from your body language, facial expressions, etc. The place where they obtain most of their inputs is the batter's box.
As I said, I don't wish to make you self-conscious with this knowledge. Instead, what I want is to make you aware so you can manipulate those watching you. This becomes more difficult if you are tense or generally insecure, get into a hole in the count, or otherwise do not believe you are in charge when you step to the plate. Before you can manipulate other's perceptions of you, you must be confident and believe with all your being that you are in charge.
If you are supremely confident and/or feel in charge, you can pull off some grand manipulations. If you know you are going to be taking a pitch, I suggest that at least some of the time, you do so from a different location in the box than you would normally seek to hit from. For example, let's say it is in the third inning of a 0-0 game and the pitcher walks the first batter of the inning. Your coach may signal you to take a pitch until she throws a strike. If you normally stand right oppposite the plate, right in the middle of the batter's box, try moving up to the front of the box, perhaps hugging the plate, or maybe both of these things. Chances are pretty good the pitcher and other players will assume you are bunting. The pitch may come in very low or a little high, depending on the pitcher's strategy. Moving around may accomplish more than merely manipulating those watching you. It may even get you a first pitch ball which puts you even more in charge.
Probably more important than getting a first pitch ball, your actions make the pitcher's mind start going. Whether she is conscious of it or not, she most likely begins crafting a strategy to combat you based on where you stood in the box for that first pitch. Likely the coach on the other team did likewise. And he or she is most likely going to call the next pitch before you again set up in the box to hit the next one, this time in a different location. If, now, you move to your real hitting location, the result is most likely going to be that coach saying to themselves, after the next pitch, "oops,I thought she set up in front of the box." That next pitch is likely going to be something you wouldn't have been able to hit from the front of the box but you certainly can hit from your normal spot.
While we are on the subject, often coaches do call the pitches. Sometimes catchers do this (and I advocate that but this is a subject for another day). The pitch-calling coach cannot see subtle adjustments you make in the box so if it is a coach calling the pitches, your technique may be even more useful than if a catcher is making the calls.
Also, some catchers set up in accordance with where the batter is standing. Not all do, particularly less experienced ones just set up wherever they are most comfortable and ignore where the batter is. By moving around in the box with a catcher who sets up in relation to you, you are moving the pitchers normal targets and, thereby, making her comfort level drop off a bit. Most pitchers and catchers do the majority of work without a batter present so when the catcher starts setting up her target in new unfamiliar ways because you, the batter, are moving around, the pitcher is more likely to make a mistake.
If the catcher does not adjust to where you are standing, this changes the zone in the pitcher's perception. If you move up and close in on the plate, not to hit but rather to take, the pitcher's perception of the strike zone is altered, not merely on that particular pitch but also on the next one. The zone is uncomfortably narrow in that first pitch and then way too comfortably wide when you set up in your real spot.
Pitchers often make their adjustments via the placement of their front, landing foot. If a pitcher wants to throw inside, she is going to look at the ground and then try to hit a spot with her front foot in order to make her pitch go where she wants it to. She isn't, most likely going to alter her arm slot since that can spell disaster and she has been schooled to never do that. She isn't going to otherwise alter her delivery. The only way she can change the sideways location of the pitch is to land in slightly different spots. If she wants to go outside, her foot has to land in a particular spot. Often when we see a pitcher in a groove, she has found a nice comfortable landing spot and is hitting it on almost every pitch. When you move around and make her adjust to you, she just may lose that spot. She may involuntarily dig it out or she may find that it is no good any longer and dig out a new place. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, nothing much is lost.
Further, umpires generally set up with reference to the location of the catcher. They want to be as close as they can be so as to get a good look at the pitch but they need to give the catcher room and they seek to use her as something of a shield. So, from a pyschological point of view, when the umpire is viewing the pitch from all sorts of different angles because the catcher is continually moving because the batter is moving, he or she tends to begin to be less comfortable too. An uncomfortable umpire tends to believe the pitcher's control is suspect or that she is trying to get strikes without throwing any. An uncomfortable umpire is less likely to give the pitcher the corners because the corners are moving with reference to the ump's set-up position.
Also, because the umpires perceptions change when he or she sets up in a different location, the actual strike zone begins to move around a bit. If the umpire is forced to move backwards, the pitcher is not going to get the low pitch she got on the pitch before. If the umpire moves laterally in one direction or another, a corner pitch that was just a strike, may be a ball. Nothing frustrates a pitcher more than a moving strike zone. That was a strike just a minute ago. Where is the strike zone now. Where is it going to be on the next pitch?
So moving around in the batter's box can change the equation. But to be clear, we're not looking for walks. What we are looking for is a hittable pitch. Still, the best way I know to get a hittable pitch is to take a ball that was intended to be a strike. If a pitcher intended to throw you a ball, she isn't going to get excited when the umpire calls ball 1. But if she wanted that pitch to be a strike, she is going to get at least a little uncomfortable that the pitch didn't raise the ump's right arm or cause you to swing. We have all seen very good pitcher's get pinched. The result may be more walks than normal but eight or nine times out of ten, the more likely outcome is the pitcher who is usually unhittable gets hit hard. So moving the strike zone is about getting hittable pitches, not about earning walks.
Two of the ways in which coaches, pitchers and catchers assess you are via your warm-up practice swing and via how far from the plate you set up. Rotational swingers take a particular kind of warm-up swing. Linear hitters use a different kind. If you happen to know which you are and learn what the other gals use, you can at least partically emulate this before setting your feet up and thereby get a more hittable pitch than you might otherwise get. Many times, the coach calling the pitch determines what to call based on that first warm-up swing. We'd all like to think we are really smart and can pick out a batter's tendencies from more than simply her first practice swing before setting up. But we have a lot on our minds. And human beings are subject to first impressions. So that very first warm-up swing can change the pitches you see throughout your at-bat.
Secondly, whether the pitches will tend to be inside or out often is determined by reference to where you set up relative to the plate on the very first pitch. If you don't like a pitch in a particular spot, set yourself up on the first pitch where that pitch is virtually impossible to make. If you don't like them insides, crowd the plate and take a pitch. Most likely, she will not throw one inside. Then, when you move back to your normal depth, she may try to come inside but most likely, that inside pitch will correspond to the sweet spot on your bat - it won't be far enough inside.
I think that too often batters approach the plate, take their warm-up swing and otherwise proceed through their at-bats trying to remind themselves of something they are working on in their lessons or at batting practice. They aren't involved in the cat and mouse game of trying to manipulate the pitcher, catcher or coaches. Instead, they are getting in a little batting practice before they actually hit. This gives the cat an edge. This shows the world what it is a girl is working on, what her weaknesses are. If she swings high, she is 1) looking or a high pitch, 2) working on that type of swing, 3) perhaps demonstrating the weakness which caused her to make an out in the last game, or otherwise showing something she would rather others did not see.
The time to work on hitting high pitches, leveling out your uppercut, finishing higher, or whatever it is you are working on, is in practice, not in games. If you show the pitcher something about your swing before she throws you something, she is going to develop a theory on the fly and then test that theory on the first pitch. If your practice swings are high, she's probably going to go for your knees. If you show a deficiency in your swing or what she thinks might be a deficiency, she is going to try to work against that. If you show her nothing or show her something that is not relevant, she may make a mistake.
Similarly, when batters are swinging before games, there is often one coach from the opposition watching. I know I do this from time to time. And on numerous occassions when I have been tied up with our own warm-up drills, another coach or parent has approached me to say, "they're all rotational" or "they're all linear." The hardest times I have entered games involved circumstances in which we really weren't sure if they had any particular tendency. So, I suggest that if you are a ceerebral hitter, you develop certain habits for warm-ups which do not clearly show the other team what your real tendencies are. If you are a coach looking to outsmart your opponent, do your warm-up hitting out of sight of the other team. Otherwise just have everyone doing dry swings at the same time and limit the number or reps so they can't see very much they can use against you.
So my hitting advice for the day involves a paranoid delusion. They are watching you! As the saying goes, even parnoids have real enemies. They are really watching you. This should not make you self-conscious, at least not out on the ball field. This should give you courage, courage to manipulate others. Be smart. Know they are watching. Give them a little incorrect information. Then, hit the ball. Hit it hard. And know that you earned that fat pitch.
Follow-up posting:
Larry wrote in to ask for some aditional thoughts on setting up the pitcher, particularly with respect to sitting on certain pitches, and noted that the traditional "see it, hit" strategy is a formula for disaster. My reply was, "the only thing I can add to this involves knowing a particular pitcher's tendencies ..." Basically, aside from the specific manipulation of the pitcher's view and a misrepresentation of your hitting tendencies, I don't think there are other things you should physically do during the at-bat to manipulate the pitcher.
As far as "see it, hit it," that really does not have to do with the cat and mouse game. To me, "see it, hit it" is a mental approach which essentially means the batter has already done all the preparation she can do. Now is the time for action, to implement what she has prepared for. I think "see it, hit" is an important approach at the plate. I don't want the batter going up there and trying to think her way through an at-bat. Perhaps I led everyone to believe otherwise. You develop your approach outside the box and then implement it during an at-bat during which you stop trying to think everything through and instead just "see it, hit it."
The approach I am discussing in this piece is not something I want to see a hitter develop during a single at-bat. When I say manipulate the pitcher's view, I mean develop this strategy before actually batting. You don't get in the batter's box and think, "let me see what I can do to mess up the pitcher." You walk into the box thinking, "OK, I'm going to take the first pitch and do so from way up in the box while crowding the plate. Then I'm going to movce way back in the box and have a look at another pitch. Then I'm going to begin my real at-bat." You develop the strategy back in the gym or while laying in bed at night, maybe in the on-deck circle. During an at-bat, that's the time to implement a previously developed strategy. Perhaps I failed to make that clear.
As far as additional thoughts on strategies in the box, those are developed for a specific pitcher whose tendencies you know or think you know. If you have batted against a pitcher 2, 10 or 50 times, you should have some sense about what she does and/or what she tries to do. On a rudimentary level, this might mean she only throws her change-up when up in the count, while looking for a strike-out. You should be prepared to see a change, if she does. That's a very rudimentary tendency and I hope you wouldn't see it much beyond 10U or 12U ball. A 14U pitcher throwing change-ups on every 0-2 or 1-2 count, and no other time, is looking to get hit.
Even high level pitchers have tendencies. I'll get into more detail about that another time but, for now, let's acknowledge that pitchers tend to fit into a few categories we can identify if we sit down with pencil and paper. When thinking of any pitcher, for the most part, they will use one particular pitch in perhaps as many as three ways more than 50% of the time. One girl, for example, uses a curveball 60-80% of her pitches. She tries to get you out by throwing a strike with it and then getting you to swing at successive curveballs more and more outside the zone. If you know that, you should be able to craft strategies to deal with the tendency. Another pitcher, like say a Monica Abbott type, is going to try something completely different, but something specific most of the time. When you face her, you should try to know what those tendencies are and then develop a strategy to defeat it. If it works, stay with that strategy until it doesn't work anymore.
Beyond the general discussed above, additional strategies are pitcher-specific. That doesn't in any way diminish the validity of a mental approach we call "see it, hit it." And a complete discussion of hitting strategies is well beyond the scope of this piece.Labels: batting, game strategy, mental toughness
Permanent Link: They're Watching You
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