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Game Changers
by Dave
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
There is a softball truism which says: "players win games, coaches lose them." I agree with the general philosophy of the phrase. Yet, if we don't analyze its meaning and come to an understanding, much is lost. And to take the idea one step further, I'm going to supplement it by adding, given today's youth sports climate, players win games, parents can only really participate in losses. Before I explain what I mean by my corollary, let me explain the original truism.
When we look at lop-sided losses, often the coaches have not adequately prepared their players for combat. Certainly sometimes the other team is just that much better and there is no way on Earth we could possibly ever beat them. That is the world of travel fastpitch softball. There are teams out there which have virtually limitless resources, draw the best possible athletes from several states, demand absolute commitment from roster members, practice 4 times a week through the winter, have so much talent (in terms of players as well as coaches) and work the kids so hard that the team just cannot be beaten by any team that is not similarly situated. But this circumstance is somewhat rare.
Most games are played between teams which have about the same quality of athletes, do about the same amount of practicing, and have about the same amount of resources. Even in games with relative team parity, there are lop-sided outcomes. In those, clearly the coaches have not done their work well enough, at least most of the time.
When we view closer (but not close) games in which the score ends at something like 6-2, 7-4, 4-0, there are often a few mistakes which determine the outcome. Sometimes it is easy to point to one, two, or a few plays which handed the other team a couple runs, took our girls out of it, or otherwise changed the face of a relatively close game, one which maybe we woulda coulda shoulda won.
Often teams with which we are involved are prone to that "one bad inning" syndrome or suffer something like: "we play well in the afternoon but morning games give us trouble." When the excuse sounds like that, mostly that is the coaches' fault, sometimes it is one or more parents whose actions lead to the outcome and habit, and almost never is it truly the players who are to blame. This is true regardless of whether it is the best player or worst who repeatedly makes the critical error.
To add some meat to this, I heard about a team which had some pretty good talent but which did not compete on a level commensurate with that talent. About half the team's parents liked to indulge themselves on Saturday nights during the season. They often got together after preliminary rounds and stayed up well into the night. They brought their kids to such gatherings. The result was a lot of kids crawling into bed well after midnight when they had to get up by 6:00 in order to arrive at the field on time for warm-ups. I don't begrudge anyone a good time on the weekends after a hard week of work. But, you cannot win out on Sundays when kids get 6 hours or less sleep the night before. The partying parents were very quick to blame other kids on the team when it should have been obvious that their actions had at least a contributory effect.
Most teams have a range of abilities on their squad. There is that one kid who pitches lights out, makes the plays in the field, especially at key moments, gets the majority of the big hits, earns the MVP medal most of the time, and seems as if she is destined to play D-1 despite the fact that she is just 10, 12, or 13 years old. Then there is the kid who is playing her first year of travel after just one or two rec seasons who just can't seem to make a play in any meaningful situation. She's a "charity" case. You're not really sure why the coach put her on the roster. Maybe he or she is life-long buddies with one of the kid's parents. Maybe there is something going on behind the scenes which you haven't learned yet.
When teams suffer multiple losses like this, usually the coaching staff can do a better job with both the players and parents to get out of that one bad inning habit or to come to games more focused and better prepared to give their opponent a better match. When we play games like this more than once, when we lose by multiple runs against teams which seem no better than us or possibly seem to be ones which we should beat, coaches need to step back and analyze the precise reasons the team fell into its usual trap. Then they need to take steps to mitigate the situation and improve the team. Sometimes they can make a difference, sometimes they cannot.
My wife is prone to claim you are only really as good as your weakest player. Usually it is not the all-star shortstop who boots one, strikes out with the bases loaded, or makes the baserunning blunder which takes you out of a potentially big inning. They do sometimes play the part of goat but often it is the lesser experienced, lesser gifted kid who makes the game changing mistake or error. Coaches can make a huge impact by giving these kids a little more in terms of technique, preparation, and practice reps. We don't want to get into the habit of coaching in a dumbed-down fashion, of working exclusively with the neediest team members, or of ignoring the kids who are most gifted under the mistaken assumption that they'll prepare on their own or are too good for practice. But we do need to make sure that our weakest players are competent in their craft.
Often, though certainly not always, the weakest members of a team are highly motivated. They don't enjoy the feeling that they are the least skilled. They want to get better. They'd like to attain the same skill level as the team's most talented girls. As a result, they take constructive criticism better and actually work harder than other players to improve their games. If you give them an extra five or ten percent, your overall team's results will improve. Almost anybody can become a serviceable player, particularly at lower age levels, if you correct technique and provide lots of reps.
To address the issue of parental behavior, sometimes coaches can make an impact on that enough to at least make them call it quits by midnight. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to change parental behavior and you must live with it. Given today's limited travel rosters - often just 11 kids - it is difficult to bench a player in order to provide her nap time. This can be a really scary situation for coaches. I absolutely despise when parents put me in the situation to place their daughter at third base knowing that she is not alert enough to protect herself when the number 3, 4, and 5 hitters come to the plate and pound the ball right at her at 90 mph. But I have been put in precisely that situation too many times to count.
The best approach is, as it is in most instances in life, communication. I think it is fair to pull aside parents who were out until the wee-morning hours and tell them that if their kid breaks her jaw or nose playing third base because they had a good time the night before, you will not take the blame. This sort of thing can wake up the parents. It can also backfire on you. But I'm not going to take the blame. I don't care about my words cutting me rather than them. If you can bench such a kid, do it once and then explain why you had to do that and that you are prepared to do it again regardless of apparent impact on game result.
Another trap which otherwise good teams can fall into is the clique issue. I have now been involved with enough teams of both good and poor talent levels, of dedicated and not so dedicated parents, of overall cohesiveness and general disharmony, I feel confident in saying that how the girls relate to each other is as important to competitiveness as any other characteristic. When three girls form a faction and then torment or chide the other girls, this does not produce a positive outcome. When one or more cliques form within the team structure, this is not a good or ordinary development. When several groups form socially, the team is not going to ever achieve its potential.
Joe Torre, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers professional baseball team is famous or infamous for claiming that locker room comaraderie or team chemistry does not build wins and, to the contrary, winning builds chemistry. That may very well be ... when we're talking about professionals ... who have played the game for a couple decades ... who are paid millions of dollars to enjoy their passion ... who know they can earn millions more if they try very hard to be 100% focused on wins and losses, etc. Or maybe Joe is wrong about this and merely lucky. or maybe Joe's management style subconciously creates good team harmony and he is just unaware of what it is he has done to foster this.
I have my doubts about whether Torre is right but he knows major loeague baseball inside and out. I do not. And regardless of Torre's beliefs, I absolutely know this not to be the case when we are talking about 10 - 16 year old girls or, for that matter, boys. I know team chemistry to be critical to competitiveness in youth sports because I saw it firsthand as a participant. The baseball experience which made the biggest impression on me involved a 16U travel team I played for which had great team chemistry. We played well above our heads due to that chemistry. The least talented kids, including yours truly, stepped up and made lots of difference in the outcome of our games. Cliquieness destroys team chemistry, makes the overall experience unpleasant for most team members, and causes kids to be thinking of things other than fielding the next grounder or hitting this pitcher's change-up. Cliqueness has an insidious impact on losing, particularly in contributing to the "one bad inning" syndrome as well as the "we just don't play well our first (or last) game of the day" syndrome.
As a side bar, parents need to be cognizant of the fact that cliqueness is not normal, acceptable behavior. And it leads to losses. Often the worst offenders are the kids of parents who were less popular in high school and who seek for their offspring what they missed. They actually encourage their kids to be popular and to hang with the top crowd. And when they are involved in travel ball situations, they encourage their daughters to befriend this or that kid to the exclusion of others. I know this to be true because I have watched it in action. One girl I coached had a beach house and she made a huge deal about inviting kids to it. She, for whatever reason, could really only handle one or two friends at a time. And those friends had to be her exclusive ones for at least a while. The two or three girls would arrive at the field, mix in with the other girls for a time, and then this clique maker would tell the others about how she and so and so hung out at the beach together all week. She would tell stories about what they had done. The idea behind the story telling was oneupmanship, exclusivity, to announce they were buddies. Then this kid would actually bully other kids on the team and act like she was better than they were. She was not a gifted athlete but you couldn't tell it from her behavior towards others. And her actions made others uncomfortable. She detracted from the team spirit and our focus on the field. I will never have that kid on another team as long as I coach. I would never have a kid on my team who is related to the girl.
It is important to note that parents and coaches have an important role to play in this potentially disastrous dynamic. Coaches need to pay attention to the way their players get on together. They need to nip cliqueiness in the bud when they believe they see it forming. It can rip a team apart and make a mockery out of the structure you thought you were setting in place. Some things to watch out for are one, two, or three girls who are always together and never apart. You should also listen to the what-we-did last night, yesterday, last week after the final game of the tournament discussions. You don't need to intercede immediately. After all, it is important for the girls to make close personal friends with those they spend all weekend, every weekend with. But you need to at least be aware of the possibility of cliques forming.
Parents need to understand that the little harmless comments they make during drives to and from tournaments make an impact on their children. If the team suffered a terrible loss because Sally W. made three errors and "I don't know why the coach plays her at second base when she should probably not even be playing travel," guess what your daughter is going to repeat when she is alone with her teammates? That's an obvious one but everything you say is heard and you need to really guard your language when discussing games or other players. If you comment on one player's skills, your daughter is going to take that as gospel and she is also going to think that is is normal to talk about other people's skills or shortcomings. If you want your daughter's team to win, you as parent need to be more thoughtful before you open your trap!
I'll take this to the next level. If your daughter has ever played on a team that had cliques, you need to address this. One otherwise good kid who has experienced this on one or more teams is going to believe it to be normal. She is either going to act passively and just accept it wherever she is or she is going to react to it proactively and seek out membership to an intra-team clique. In short, she is going to become at least part of the problem. I hope yuou don't want that. I hope you will act to prevent it. If you don't, I'm gonna make fun of you. Didn't you have ANY friends in high school? Are you really that insecure? Are you really that immature?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that a team has fairly well dedicated players and parents, reasonably good talent, has worked the least talented kids to the point that they are competent ball players, and team chemistry is decent, this is where the coaches' work really begins. But the parents have a say too.
The other day I was fortunate to be involved in perhaps the best 12U game I have ever seen. Both pitchers were on. 5 batters came to the plate during one half inning once - the rest were threes and fours. The vast majority of innings had the minimum number of batters regardless of anyone reaching base because both catchers threw out, I think, all basestealers. There were a combined 7 strikeouts. And this was a complete 7 inning game, played in under 75 minutes. There were a handful of errors but I really need to talk to the scorekeeper because I really only remember one and that was at least questionable. The winning run scored in the bottom of the 7th on a close play at home. After the game a parent from the host organization approached me to tell me that this had been one of the best games he had ever seen at any level. Girls made plays I have seen good high schoolers blow. Girls made plays I have seen very few softballers ever make. We lost!
When I look back at the loss, it turned on one mistake. We were trailing by a run and had a runner on base in the top of the seventh. Our number 6 hitter drilled a pitch to within about 5 feet of the outfield fence. The baserunner easily scored. The batter baserunner headed for second as the throw was coming in from the hinterlands to a mid range cutoff. nbsp; I threw up my hands and yelled, "hold, hold, hold, get on the bag" only to watch as the girl looked out at the outfielders, turned around second and headed resolutely towards third. The next cutoff throw came into the pitcher in the center of the diamond. She instantly cut it and threw to third where her throw struck the third baseman in the glove and drove it into the bag where it waited a tenth of a second for our runner to slide into it. It was bang-bang like I've never seen - at this level and infrequently at higher ones. The umpire punched her out and there we were, one out, nobody on, tie game.
One out! Never make the first or last out at third!!
Our next batter struck out but the catcher who was otherwise infallible dropped the ball. No matter - our batter froze and never made a move towards first. No matter, the catcher would have easily thrown her out.
Our next batter flew out to right. The rightfielder had a relatively weak arm. You see where I am with this? First off, we school our kids to pick up the third base coach as they approach second. They are supposed to look for me just past the midway point between first and second. We school our girls to run after a strikeout and wait for the coach to stop them. We work tagups on flyballs at just about every practice. Had things gone according to plan, our number 6 hitter would have stayed safely at second, moved to third on the throw down to first after the dropped third and scored easily on a tag up after the fly out.
The reason I'm telling you this story is because the mistakes made which cost us the game were coaches' and parents' mistakes. The players were not to blame. This was not a champ9ionship or elimination game. It was a friendly. It was also the first time my team had ever played together. But the way it was played, it very well could have been a championship game. And we need to take away from the loss everything we can in order to make the team better. It should not go unmentioned that the reason I'm writing this is more for my team and myself than anything else. I will explain that in a minute.
Let me delve into the reasons why things played out as they did. First of all, we do, as I said, drill the kids to pick up the third base coach. We do that in practice. This particular kid has not been to many of our practices because she is involved in many other activites, including school softball and other sports. So she was not there the many times we had the girls run from first to third while picking up the base coach. We get good attendance at practice. Out of a roster of really 12, we usually get 10 or 11. But this girl frequently is not there because of her activities and it hurt the team although without her hit, we wouldn't have been it anyway.
Secondly, the girl who struck out knows to run to first. I saw her do it a few innings earlier. But in that instance, she was a little awkward anbd the catcher caught the ball cleanly. We all chuckled. She got self-conscious. That caused the momentary hesitation which allowed the catcher to tag her out though it didn't matter anyway because we had no baserunner who would have moved up. But after the first strikeout, I should have approached the girl and told her not to get heady about what just happened, that she had done the right thing and that's what i want her to do the next time. That was a c oaching failure.
Also, I should have made a point of talking with the girl who had been out at third to impress her with the fact that she does not make a lot of baserunning decisions. Those are in my hands. I have told our team that when they follow instructions and they are out, they are not at fault but when they do not follow instructions, it doesn't matter that they are safe.
After the game, the father of the girl who hit the ball to the fence and then was tagged out at third approached me and apologized that his kid had not held. He said the girl is used to her school coach who is unreliable in terms of her role as a thirdbase coach. When she plays school ball, she feels like she is on her own on the basepaths. I can understand that but this is not school ball. And it is important for a parent to impress that fact on their daughter. Also, more effort needs to b e made to make practices or perhaps the kid ought to think about not playing travel softball. I do not want to see that happen in this case but I am trying to give you, the reader, some food for thought. Your daughters need to be at practice.
As a final, final comment, I want to explain why I felt it necessary to provide the details of our loss the other day. We need to learn from our mistakes. More learning is done because of mistakes, because of losses, than can ever be done as a result of victories. Coaches need to understand why they got smoked, why they lost by a few runs to an inferior team, and why they lost great games by one run. They need to be ready to accept the blame for losses while giving credit for any victory exclusively to the players. Parents need to understand where their role is in this. When driving away friom the fields, they need to speak guardedly about how things went down.
Recently, at a 14U game in which my daughter participated which ended 2-0, the team which lost did not have much opportunity to score but the one big shot they had was blown. There were two outs with runner on second and the score 1-0 at this point. The batter had two strikes on her and hit a tweener bloop to right. It fell. The runner at second, a fast kid, went halfway, held, and returned to the bag when the ball came in.
This girl has not played a lot of travel ball. She didn't know what to do in the situation. You can see that as an unforgivable mistake and it might be, had the girl been playing a long time and had this been an elimination game - it was a friendly. I'd prefer to view this as an opportunity to teach. the girl should be pulled aside right then if possible, after the inning in any event, and definitely after the game or at the next practice and it should be explained to her that she should have been standing on home when that ball hit the ground.
I have seen the same sort of mistake from a high school team which is ranked in the top 20 in my state. It almost cost the team a game. It occurs to me that once, probably long ago, this girl was in a game like the one my daughter played. She was on base with two outs and somebody hit a bloop. She went halfway and didn't proceed like she should have. Nobody corrected her or brought the subject up again. They just assumed she would learn from it.
For your information, in case you don't see it, when you are on base, you get a running lead. With the count 3-2, you don't stop on your lead. You proceed to the next base since you cannot be doubled up. If the batter has two strikes on her, you lead and if you hear the bat meet ball, you proceed the same way you do on a 3-2 count. In the case described, the girl should have taken off for third, rounded the bag and focused only on her base coach, who by the way was in full wheel mode though the girl never so much as looked at him. She might not have made it home before that ball landed. But most likely she would have scored. That would actually have been better since most likely they would have tried to make a play on her and the batter would have been on second!
Coaches need to analyze exactly what happened in all games, win or lose, and decide what their take-aways are going to be. Then at the next practice, they need to discuss the mistakes, explain that the object of practicing is to improve upon mistakes and then design drills to addresss any shortcomings. I think, in our case, it would also be useful to emphasize how well they played but that we are going to see other games like this and when those games are elimination or championship ones, we are really going to want to win them. One of my main focal points is something I got from Jessica Mendoza when she said she tried every day to just get a little bit better. I can tell this team that they played very well, especially for a first time out on the field, but if we're going to be as good as we can be, we will need to improve just a little bit each time.
So, that is my piece for the day. To wrap it up, I'm talking about elements which are truly game changers. Coaches, parents and players are all participants in this process. Each can make a difference in the outcome of a game. If we walk away victorious, that goes to the players. If we lose, that is probably on the coaches. Hopefully the parents only factor in via positive ways but you'll get no credit. Of course, you're used to that. I know I am.Labels: coaching, parenting
 
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