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Pitching Foundation
by Dave
Thursday, September 10, 2009
 In order to build a house, you've got to start with a foundation. OK, so we're not trying to build a house. We're trying to build a windmill. Take a look at the picture. Now that's a windmill with a foundation! Sure, it is obviously quite an old windmill. The modern ones are built with a much more slim look. But the modern versions are built with very sturdy materials and cost quite a bit. Besides I'm not convinced these newer windmills will stand the test of time. And that's what we're after today, a windmill that will stand the test of time.
I could have called this piece pitching fundamentals but everybody shies away from anything called "fundamentals." Similarly, I could have titled it something "beginner." But some would jump over this and seek out something better or more relevant to their situation. We, as a society or culture, have an aversion to anything called fundamental. We want to jump ahead to the intermediate level of everything. We're looking for nuance, tips and tricks, shortcuts. That is not a formula for success with anything complex. Windmill pitching is complex.
Another reason why readers of this blog might look beyond anything fundamental or for beginners is they already pay a coach for lessons and the fundamentals are the coach's responsibility. I've got absolutely nothing against pitching coaches. To me, they are critical. I'm not prepared to make myself into the expert the way Mr. Tincher did. I doubt most of you are either.
Pitching coaches are great but let's not forget that they are selling a product. The pitch9ing coach is putting out the product he believes you are willing to buy. If the coach has you as a client and you are less interested in fundamentals than say the curve ball or making your daughter into a functional pitcher today, that is what he or she is going to sell you. If the pitching coach does not offer what his or her clients want, there will not be sufficient customers to continue the practice. So, while most pitching coaches do teach fundamentals, they need to move things forward to a level at which you are willing to pay for their expertise pretty quickly. I'm going to get into the fundamentals in a moment but before I do, I want to explain a little more deeply why pitching coaches often do not address them and why parents of pitchers are often not only none the wiser for it but often the actual cause.
The typical kid who first steps into pitching lessons is a rec pitcher, say about 8 to 11 years old. The parent of the pitcher wants their kid to be a functional pitcher, one who does not get pulled in the first inning for walking in 3 runs before getting an out. They want their daughter to "just throw strikes." They are less interested in the kid building a foundation that will last into high school than they are avoiding personal embarrassment this Saturday. They are less interested in a proper wrist snap or good body posture than they are having their kid throw those strikes. They are less interested in her starting with two feet on the rubber than they are with her getting outs. They are less interested in avoiding a crow hop or leap than they are in her speed. They are less interested in her having an effective change-up than they are with her learning to throw that curve or drop.
If you want to pitch past 10U, you've got to learn some basics and learn them well. I have seen too many pitchers who have a defective wrist snap, who bend over to deliver that strike, who walk into their pitches or don't even push off the rubber, elt alone drag away from it, who do not develop pitches in the right order or who rely too much on a particular pitch because they can throw it for a strike and are getting batters out. The result is often a pitcher who will get hit hard at the next level, up an age group or over to a higher level of travel. The result is often a pitcher will be frustrated in the future and perhaps give it up before her time is due.
To begin into the foundations that every pitcher ought to work on, I see a couple items which should be given more attention than perhaps most people are willing to give. When coaches build pitchers from the ground up, they usually begin with the release point and work backwards. The release point follows the wrist snap so that's where we'll start. Before the wrist snap is a good "perfect" circle. Before that is a leg drive and drag from the rubber, followed by good body posture. And before that is two, yes two, feet on the rubber or pitcher's plate.
Having a good wrist snap is absolutely critical. Some pitchers develop lazy wrists which results in a rollover or a straight-wrist release. They put a cut on the ball one way or the other. This often gets missed because they still throw the ball hard and because they get baby hooks or cuts on their pitches, batters miss the ball.
I remember seeing a couple 12 year old pitchers at different times who had cuts on their fastballs. They got batters out. But they didn't nearly get the speed they might have on their pitches and, in fact, they had less movement than they should have on their fastballs as they got older. Eventually they became mediocre pitchers or gave it up altogether. A "true" wrist snap is 12 to 6 on the clock. There is no such thing as perfection in any human endeavor. If there were, our eyes couldn't tell us anyway because they are not that keen. But a ball which rotates nearly perfectly is what we're after. If the catcher sees any sort of dot or wobble in the pitch, the wrist snap has not been as near to perfect as it should be.
When a pitcher throws a very good wrist snap, the ball rotates rapidly. This causes a couple things to happen. First off, a rapidly rotation ball is harder for a batter to vector. batters' eyes put together the meeting point of bat and ball in subliminal ways and apparent rotation factors into the hitter's subconscious mental equation. A rapidly rotating ball tells the eyes something about its expected speed. Batters have trouble with good, fast rotation.
Secondly, whereas the errant pitcher's cut will cause the ball to move early on, as she ages and gets faster, the movement will diminish. A good 12 to 6 wrist snap will put harder and harder break on the ball as a pitcher gets faster and faster. The baby hook will not get the job done. As pitchers get older and faster, their hooks need to be more pronounced, more clean, faster rotating than the slight cut. Pitchers who have cuts often get the batters out in rec. They also find success in 10U and 12U travel. But as batters get older and better, they learn to deal with real hooks. Baby hooks are like candy. Hard drops remain one of the hardest things to deal with.
Finally, having a clean snap aids in the development of other pitches. For example, if you want to develop a peel drop or good change-up, having a clean snapped fastball is the route. The peel drop is a great pitch because it looks like an ordinary batting practice fastball but breaks hard as it approaches the plate. It is very hard to judge whether it will be in the zone or not and it is very hard to adjust to and hit into play with anything but a simple grounder. When girls get to changes, they often either grip the ball completely different than the fastball and use the fastball motion, they do not snap at realease, or they use some different technique. Having a true, reliable, 12 to 6, hard wrist snap with which to change off of is the way to go. If a kid has a cut on her fastball, the change-up can be very hard to perfect.
To work on the wrist snap, you have to do a lot of boring repetition. But this work needs to be done. The pitcher stands about 15 feet from the catcher and merely snaps the ball to him or her. She can do this facing the catcher, sideways or both at different times. Emphasis should be on the isolated movement of the wrist, straight up. Of course, some girls struggle with merely snapping - they need to move their arm some. That does not represent any particular difficulty provided that the arm motion is slight and the emphasis is on the actual snap.
Wrist snaps should be done as often as a girl pitches. It should be the first of many warm-up drills. I like to use a pre-set count of snaps as our first step. If you are getting ready for a game, sometimes you are in a rush and you don't have time to do a lot of snaps. I have nothing to tell you about that. But in a normal prac tice session, you really should begin with 10-20 fronts and 10-20 sides. My kids have been pitching for a number of years and always do at least 10 of each. I would strongly suggest that beginner (0 to 2plus years) ought to do more. On some occassions with my kids, when they were starting out, they threw as many as 50-100 snaps to improve their mechanics. On occassions when they were too tired or sick, we did entire practice sessions of nothing but snaps. Once, when my kid had a broken non-pitching arm, we did well more than 100 snaops in order to keep her pitching arm in decent shape and to retain her mechanics. The beginning pitcher needs to do loads of wrists snaps over a long period to get this critical foundation set. Older pitchers who have bad snapping motions should be treated like beginners for purposes of fixing what is broken. As you probably know, fixing a busted foundation is tougher than fixing a leaky roof.
The next foundational piece to pitching involves the circle. I've explained why the longest poossible circle is the best before but for the purposes of anyone new, I'll do it again. If you take a string and twirl it in a circle like the axle of a wheel, one point will remain basically stationery while others will be in motion. The point on the string moving the furthest around the circle will be the end point. In one second elapsed time, the point on the string which is at the center of the circle will move zero distance, the center of the string will move some distance which we'll call "1/2 X," and the furthest point on the string will move double that distance which we'll call "X." The end of the string at the center of the circle moves at speed 0, the middle of the string moves at 1/2X per second and the end point at the outside of the circle mnoves at X per second. So, in other words, if you compare the string to a shoulder and arm, the shoulder is moving very little, the elbow is moving much faster but about half the speed of the hand which is moving the fastest. When you windmill a pitch, the ball is released while moving at the speed of the hand. The shorter one's arms are, the slower the pitch is released. The longer, the faster. So if a pitcher does not legthen her arm, if she short-arms it, she is slowing down the pitch. That is why the length of the circle is so important.
There are two main reasons why pitchers short-arm it. For one thing, if you windmill your arm in a circle, once with full extension and once with a shorter arm, the full extension feels out of control. The short arm is an attempt at control. So, if a girl needs to throw strikes to shut her parents up, to avoid sighing from the sidelines, to prevent the trip to the mound by the rec coach who says, "just throw it over the middle of the plate," she short arms it to control the darn ball. This must be avoided.
It is better to not pitch at all in games until you can control a long armed pitch than it is to pitch and develop this bad habit. I remember watching a kid who had little formal training. She was the right physical and mental specimen to be a pitcher long into her later years as a player. But she pitched with an incredibly bent arm. It almost seemed like she was pretending to windmill. She dropped out of pitching by 14. Her mechanics were terrible.
I have also seen kids who have been through formal training develop the same habit. The cause is invariably the desire to control the pitch, to just throw strikes, usually in rec ball or for the middle school team. Walks are a disaster and kids who walk lots of batters don't get to pitch. But kids who have bent arms pitch only in the very young years. After maybe two years, they are washed up.
The other reason kids develop the short-arm problem is because it feels faster to pitch with a bent arm, particularly early on. If you spin your arm around in a circle while trying to judge in which case it is moving faster, I'd be willing to bet that the shorter arm version feels faster. Perhaps it even is slightly faster. But again the geometry tells us that even if the short arm is moving slightly faster, the hand is not until it reaches nearly full extension. So kids who short-arm it because they feel faster, should be discouraged from doing so. once they master a longer extension and practice it, that will be faster.
Think of it this way, of the best pitchers you have ever seen, not at the lower levels, how many short-arm it and how many get good extension? I guarantee you that Cat Osterman, Monica Abbott, and some of the other big names get very good extension. The best kids I have ever watched at 12U through high school all get exceptional extension. I've never seen a short-armer succeed for very long.
The next subject involves body posture. The pitcher's back should be straight up, perpendicular to the ground, not hunched over. If you think of a tripod, the weight is balanced. If there is too much weight on one of the legs, the thing falls over. We want our weight to be balanced pretty well at the release point. If a girl is all hunched over, leaning over her front foot, she cannot get much on a pitch. Girls do this, again, because it feels as if they can gain control on the pitch. They do this just to get the darn ball over in the strike zone, in order to "just throw strikes."
When we are sitting in the dugout watching the opposing pitcher throw her 5 warm-ups before a game, the most frequent comment I have ever made or heard others make is "oh, she's a leaner." We know that this is a girl who is trying very hard to throw strikes, meaning she probably has not progressed all that far with her location. We are going to tell our hitters to go after anything in the zone because we expect they'll be able to hit it. Girls develop the leaning mistake because they have been coerced into throwing strikes at the cost of a proper motion.
Another possible reason some girls develop leaning tendencies is in order to get spins on some pitch they are trying to master. Some pitchers have decent posture on their fastballs but lean when they throw their change or drop. They are still often doing it to throw strikes. But sometimes they need to put that extra body language on the ball in order to get it to drop. In any event, it is a very bad habit. Not only does it prevent any sort of speed from being put on the ball, it can actually cause you to get less spin and it is a back problem looking for an opportunity to show its head.
Our next foundational piece is the leg drive. Usually, if you short-arm it or lean, you can't really get that good push off. But more importantly, some of the biggest problems I have seen with the push-off and leg drive are crow-hopping and leaping problems. Now, for years, umpires have not been calling crow-hops and leaps but they are starting to. We watched the same pitcher ply her trade for freshman through junior year pretty successfully. This year, in one game, she had double digit illegal pitches called against her in just a few innings. There have been complaints about crow-hoppers for years near me and over the past couple of years, I have seen umps call them against college and even Olympic pitchers. &n bsp; It is slowly getting around to travel ball.
The other day, we were playing a fall ball game and a new pitcher was brought in. I watched the kid for a batter or two and dsaid to one of the other coaches, "hey watch this girl, she's hopping like crazy." My comments were meant for just the other coach but the plate ump overheard me and was apparently thinking the same thing. He called out the other team's coach and discussed it with him. the coach went out and talked to his pitcher. This league is essentially an organized way of scrimmaging. We weren't looking for any illegal pitch calls and the ump was not about to make any. But he did feel obliged to point the problem out to the coach and have him work with the girl on it. Umps are getting very sensitive to hopping and leaping. If you or one of your pitchers are doing it, watch out. You're gonna get called.
I think girls develop crow hopping early on due to the way in which they are taught to pitch, with certain pause points in their motions until they get the whole thing ready to pull together. There are also some pitching drills which require one to crow hop and stop. Unfortunately, some girls never break out of the tendency to hop. If your kids are pitchers, you really need to understand what a crow hop is and break your kids of it as early as possible.
Another reason kids develop into crow hoppers is because they propel themselves closer to the batter at realease and thereby are able to put pitches past them more easily. Also, when kids practice their pitching in gymnasiums or at other facilities without being able to push off from a rubber and drag properly, they sometimes develop hops in order to maintain balance that would be easily accomplished on a real field. Whatever the reason a crow hop develops, it should be corrected before it becomes habit.
Leaping is more difficult. I'm not sure why it develops. The difference between a hop and a leap is on the hop, a new pushoff point (a new point of impetus) is found. With leaping, the pivot foot becomes airborn, it does not drag away. I have one kid who developed this and I really don't know why. But what we did to correct it was place a cloth on the ground underneath the pivot foot and make her drag that cloth all the way through to her finished pitch point. I'm not sure if that will help you fix a leap or not but again, umps are more likely to call leaops now than at anytime in the past couple of years. They are looking for them.
Finally, one foundation piece I really want to emphasize involves starting with two feet on the rubber. Little League, PONY, NFHS and perhaps others do not have a requirement that the pitcher start with both feet on the rubber. But ASA and college definitely do. Even if you are not intending to pitch in college, it is more than likely that one day you'll play some kind of ASA ball in which both feet is a requirement. Why not do it at the get-go. Most pitching
coaches will not emphasize this precisely because high schools, PONY, and LL don't. Parents of pitchers should force their kids to start with both feet on the rubber just to avoid future problems and because, if addressed early, it really is not all that hard.
To go one step further, there are two minor bad habits which should be addressed when teaching the pitcher to start with both feet on the rubber. The first of these is to take the sign while on the rubber. I have seen more pitchers take the sign before stepping on the rubber than I have seen take it while on it. But this is in the rules. Pitchers are required to take a sign or pretend to take a sign once they get on the rubber. Understand that I really don't give a rat's arse where a girl takes the actual sign. What I want is for a girl to step on the rubber, compose and balance herself before throwing the pitch. if she takes the sign in back of the rubber, grabs her grip, then steps onto the rubber to pitch, chances are pretty good that she is not going to really be balanced and centered and then she is also running the risk of an ancillary problem of walking into the pitch.
Walking into the pitch happens when a pitcher successively steps onto the rubber and then begins her wind-up without hesitating. This is definitely not fair to batters and is often called. Pitchers, by rule, are required to step onto the rubber, take the sign, bring their hands together for about a second, and then pitch.
If a pitcher steps calmly onto the rubber (with both feet in my view), pauses to take a sign or to pretend to take a sign, if she only then brings her hands together (presents the ball) and then, after about a second, delivers the pitch, she will never walk into her pitch and get her rhythm broken by an umpire requiring her to do so. If she has a hood wrist snap, she'll find more success than if she doesn't. If she has a straight arm in her windmill, she will pitch better. If she keeps her back straight up, she'll not only be better, she will also not develop back problems so easily. If she avoids hopping and leaping, she'll avoid confrontations with umps. If she pushes off well and practices sound fundamentals, life will be better for years to come.
You need a foundation to build a house. You need a foundation to build a windmill. It is easier to build the foundation before the structure. But if you've already built the house on a faulty foundation, you should still try to fix the foundation. Otherwise the thing will fall over eventually.Labels: coaching, lessons, parents, pitching
Permanent Link: Pitching Foundation
 
Scrimmage (def.)
by Dave
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Jeff wrote in to ask, "Have you written an article on the 'Reasons for Scrimmaging' or something like that. nbsp; I have several parents who think the sole purpose of a scrimmage is to win. I have tried to explain that I use them as a controlled game environment, so that I can see the girls perform certain skills under game situations. I coach both High School and Travel softball."
Jeff's question should not be of sufficient interest to justify much elaboration. The concept of a scrimmage is simple enough. I wouldn't suspect that anyone would any trouble whatsoever getting their arms around it. But, alas, apparently too few people get the idea.
First let's define the term:
Scrimmage (def.)
n. = "A practice session or informal game, as between two units of the same team."
v. = "engage in a rehearsal" / "practice playing"
So a scrimmage is essentially a practice, a rehearsal, a chance to do what you have been practicing in a game-like setting. It is not a contest which figures into standings for a league or otherwise should matter in a competitive sense. In other words, the goals of a team, its coaches, the players and their parents, generally do not include winning as they normally would. Other items are of much greater importance. And winning the thing usually does not even factor into the equation, especially when it cuts into other, more important goals. Some few times, coaches might make winning an important part of a scrimmage, especially towards the beginning of a season. But most of the time, it is an agent of preparation.
If you are familiar with major league baseball, you should know what spring training games are and understand the references to "grapefruit league" and/or "cactus league." These are somewhat comical references to pre-season games (ie. scrimmages). When athletes, like professional baseball players achieve a certain level of conditioning and skill expertise, they need less of what we think of as ordinary practice. They gain more from playing in game-like conditions than they do from repetitive drill sessions. They still spend time working on skills by performing those boring drills but they need live situations to work out the bugs. They need dress rehearsals to perfect their skills.
The same is true of athletes in most other competitive team sports like football, soccer, and, yes, softball. When the USA Olympic softball team wanted to get ready for the real games, they engaged in numerous prep games (scrimmages) against college teams. Some of those games were complete blowouts, a few were hotly contested, and one even went against Team USA. The idea was to have batters face live pitching and conduct offensive and defensive plays in real situations. Certainly Team USA wanted to win every game because they were playing against teams obviously inferior to themselves. It would have been embarrassing to lose. But I guarantee you that coaches did not always play the best possible player at each position. They also did not chose to use certain pitchers because they felt that this or that one would shut down their opponent for the day while sitting this pitcher because she might be vulnerable. These were practices, though practices meant to hone the competitive edge of the team's players.
Not only highly trained, world class athletes need scrimmages. 10U players can benefit quite a bit from them too. Just about every level of competitive softball team plays some sort of scrimmage at some time or another. You really need to scrimmage in order to properly prep kids. You can put out your infield and put the other half of the team in helmets so they can run the bases but the infield drills you'll run will still not be the same as a scrimmage game. In a scrimmage game, you never know when somebody is going to hit a ball into play, a baserunner is going to try to advance, or somebody is going to make a bad play or overthrow. These things will certainly happen in the real games and the best way to prep the kids for those is to scrimmage, at least a few times, before the real stuff starts.
So the concept of the scrimmage is pretty easy to understand. But that is just one part of Jeff's question / comment. The other part involves explaining to the parents of scrimmage participants that winning is not part of the equation. From my perspective, it really goes on to levels beyond just the parents. Many times I have seen scrimmage participants (coaches, etc.) just not understand what it is we are trying to do out here today. I have witnessed much of the same kinds of reactions to scrimmages that Jeff is bringing up. I have also witnessed things well beyond those parental disappointment reactions.
At one point several years ago, I was looking for a fall league with which to prepare a very inexperienced group. The director of one league advertised his league as a great place for teams moving up in age group. My team was majority moving up with a few second years sprinkled in plus many kids who had never played travel ball before. After corresponding with the league director, I decided to join. Many of the teams were exactly as advertised. But the director himself had a team in the league and they were moving up and out of our age division the following spring. He had basically organized the thing so his kids could beat up on some easy competition. In one game, he brought in a 13 year old to face several 10 year olds. It was ridiculous. Long afterwards, in another correspondence, I told this fellow what I thought of him. I told him that if I had my 13 year old on his team and he pitched her against a bunch of little kids, she would not be returning to his team ever again. I told him that he was foolish not to play up in the fall and that he had developed quite a reputation among the coaches he had encouraged to join his league. The team's best players began to drop off the squad fairly quickly after that fall season. Within one year, the team folded. There's more to the story than my experiences but they all flow from the very same vein.
In another setting, a year later, we found a scrimmage partner and agreed to do a double header. In our first game, I think I pitched our number 3 and 4 pitchers. The other team pitched a girl who was ostensibly their number one but she got hurt and was removed from the scrimmage. At this point, you might have expected to see the number 2 pitcher brought in but instead, the coach had found himself a guest player who was a lights out pitcher. Understand that this kid was not trying out for the team. She played for another travel team, one age group up, but she was still eligible for this age group and was looking for opportunities to play games beyond her regular team's 8 tournament schedule. She would pitch for our scrimmage partner during two or three regular tournaments later that season. But he brought this kid to the scrimmage just in case he saw an opportunity to win a game! And that he did. They beat us pretty easily, especially after the lights out pitcher was brought in. Then she had to leave in a rush so she could go play with her real team.
During the next game of our scrimmage, I pitched our number 2 and 1 pitchers. I still went 3 deep at positions while our opponent played his first choice at every position for the whole game. But he had to use his number two pitcher who we smashed around pretty good. The other team could not hit our 2 and 1 pitchers. I think we were up 10-0 aftert two or three innings. While our opponent had been very animated during the first game, they began to fade pretty quickly when it was apparent we were going to win the second one. After something like four innings, the other coach approached me and said, "let's call it a day. Our parents weren't told this was going to be a double header and the kids are done."
I have to admit that I was really pissed. I had wanted my kids to see what playing two long games in one day would be like. I was looking to season them. I did not care even a little whether we won both or one of these games. I wanted a four hour scrimmage. This guy was looking to book wins not losses. As soon as it was clear he couldn't book a win, he wanted to go home.
In yet another setting, several years later, a travel team one of my kids was on booked a scrimmage with a team from not too far away. We had four pitchers who needed work and we asked them to play 8 innings so each could get two. They agreed. The team had found its 12 roster members but no position in the field was yet set. We wanted to look at several kids behind the plate, three at SS, a couple in CF, etc. We intended to use this scrimmage as a sort of second tryout in which one or two girls would thereafter be considered primary at one or two positions. Winning was not on our priority list.
Early on, the game was tightly contested in terms of score. But that did not impact where we played which kid. We continued through a pre-set rotation. They pulled one pitcher after we scored and threw the kid who shut us down best longer than their other pitchers. The score was tied in the last inning. It was apparent they were out to win this thing. They threw their best pitcher and played all their best players at their primary positions. We had our fourth pitcher in for her second inning. She was throwing to our fourth catcher.
A girl walked. They bunted her over as the number 3 third baseman fumbled the play. The girl on second stole third and our catcher threw the ball into the outfield allowing the runner to score. Their players ran onto the field screaming and cheering, then ran off the field and packed their bags. We had expected to continue playing. We wanted our number four pitcher to finish her two innings. But they had won and were celebrating! We never scrimmaged them again but we did beat them in a real tournament.
Interestingly, at least to me, all of these teams I reference as bad scrimmage partners possess the same understanding of what a scrimmage is about and they also share something else in common. After we met those teams, we followed what they did in their regular seasons. They all tended to play dumbed down tournaments. They chose to compete in B play when A tournaments were available. They did not aspire to play against the best competition they could find. Instead, they were trophy hunters. They played any tournament they could find in which they had a realistic shot at winning. And they did not get better because they almost always played inferior teams.
When it came time to figure some bigger tournament to attend, these teams often eschewed the tougher ones and went someplace where they would never be beaten badly. We went to the tournaments where we knew we would find better teams including the final one at the end of the year. And our girls benefitted hugely from the experience. We got better.
I have previously spent some time discussing the different sorts of play a travel team gets involved with. I don't recall whether I covered the concept of scrimmage in those discussions but if I were to draw up a hierarchy of games one might play, at the bottom would be scrimmages, next up would be "friendlies, then regular run-of-the-mill tournaments in which no berth to some larger tournament is involved, then qualifiers, followed by a "nationals" or other large regional tournament as the final competition of the year. In my softball world view, all of these sorts of competition must revolve around a central axis of team goals. If you plan on attending some sort of larger, more important tournament, that must be the axis. For example, if you are travelling to ASA, NSA, PONY, FAST, or some such nationals, everything you do for that entire year must be geared towards that goal. All other play is about preparing for the goal.
Generally, most travel teams I have been involved with will play some scrimmages, enter a couple friendlies, play a few run-of-the-mill tournaments, and then play lots of qualifiers. For most of the years I have been involved, we plan to attend something big at the end of the year. I am often disappointed when parents or assistant coaches approach after a friendly and offer up "constructive criticism" regarding decisions during the game. They are disappointed that we didn't win this or that game. And when I explain the difference between a friendly and a qualifier, they mostly don't seem to get it. Why did I have our number three catcher in there in the last two innings when we could have won that game? Because she needed time to work on her skills. It is really that simple. Friendlies are essentially scrimmages but at a higher level. The team needs all these experiences to improve and sometimes winning is not part of it.
Similarly, high school teams know full well what the important parts of a season are. Depending on the level of the team, perhaps the conference tournament is the most important aspect of the season. Perhaps it is county or state competition. Regardless, everything a team does is about the one or several goals they have established for the year. This is critical because it instructs the coaches and players how to approach all the various parts of the season.
Early on, a high school coach may have a very good idea about who his ace pitcher and starting players at each spot are. Perhaps there are a couple slots involving two or more girls and the coach is trying to make up his or her mind about who will stay with varsity and who will be better served by moving down to JV and playing all the time. Scrimmages play a central part of making these decisions. Often the second pitching slot at varisty is hotly contested. So if a team plays a scrimmage, you never know who might find herself in the circle at key times. It may be the likely JV kid. It may even be the freshman who is fourth in the pecking order. That's what scrimmages are for!
Even in regular season games, coaches often do things that seem counter intuitive in order to accomplish some important goal in the larger scheme of things. Say a team has a record of 12-2 and they are already qualified to compete in the county or state tournament. If the season starts to get too compressed, if there are two games scheduled one Saturday, if the coach merely wants the opponent not to bat against their ace, he or she may pull the girl from JV to pitch a game against a rival which would ordinarily seem to be an important one to win. This sort of thing happens all the time.
I remember one year in which rival A played games against rival B two times during the regular season. Rival A pitched their ace in both regular season games. Rival B pitched their number 2. Rival A won both. Then, in the championship tournament games, the teams faced each other two more times, once in the county and once in state competition. In those games, Rival B pulled out their ace and beat Rival A both times. Rival B also hit rival A's ace because they had seen her just enough to catch up with a couple pitches. Rival A felt its season was a failure. Rival B felt her team had conquered the world by basically giving up two games during the regular season so as to hide the ace pitcher. She was very pleased with her decision!
I feel I am rambling too long again. I hope you are getting what I am trying to say. Scrimmages are a controlled, competitive P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E. They are not one of several equally important games. They are added to the schedule for a purpose, to assist a team in its preparation for the important games. Winning is most commonly not one of the objectives when one engages in a scrimmage. The same is true for other types of competition but, most importantly, if you don't get the concept of scrimmage, maybe you need to think a bit harder. If after serious contemplation, you see all games, scrimmages, tournaments, etc. as about equal, perhaps the world of competitive team sports is not for you. I'm not trying to talk down to anyone. But it is apparent that you just don't get it. Trophies are for for people who like to dust worthless articles. Scrimmages are for teams who want to get better. Goals drive our actions. Winning is not always everything. In the end it is but how do you get to that end?Labels: pre-season preparation
Permanent Link: Scrimmage (def.)
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