Monthly Archives: July 2024
5 Positives to Not Being Invited Back
Right now the tryout season for next year is winding down in many part of the country – and beyond. That’s hard for an “old school” coach like me to conceive since I know of many teams that are still playing in various “National” tournaments with this year’s players,
But such is the reality of today’s fastpitch softball world.
For many next year will look pretty much like this year, i.e., same players (more or less) and same coaches. But for some, this is a time of heartache and tears because they’ve been informed that, despite having a tournament or two left to play right now, they are not being invited back to the team next year.
It’s difficult in any situation in life to hear you’re not wanted anymore by the people you’ve given your heart and soul to. If you’re a young, competitive athlete it can be particularly difficult.
So for those in that situation right now let me share a little secret: this may not be as bad of a thing as it seems right now.
Yes, it hurts not to be wanted. But this involuntary change of scenery might actually offer you one huge advantage – a clean slate with which to start over with no history or expectations.
Allow me to share a few of the positives this opportunity presents.
Positive #1: You’re not stuck in someone’s impression of you
It’s an unfortunate fact of life that once a coach decides who you are and what you can do that view never changes. Never mind that you worked hard over the offseason to improve your skills or increase your speed or build your strength.
For too many, the impression they got when you first joined the team is the impression you’re stuck with going forward.
On a new team you get a do-over. Even if that coach has the exact same issue – his/her first impression is the one you’re stuck with – you have that rare opportunity in life to create an all-new first impression.
In other words, wherever you are now is how that coach will see you rather than where you were a year ago. If you really put in the work you may find you’re rewarded better on the new team than you would have been on the old one.
Positive #2: Extra motivation
There is something to be said for revenge or an “I’ll show you” attitude to keep a player motivated on improvement throughout the long, boring offseason. There’s a pretty good chance you’re going to see your old team on the field, this time as an opponent.
What better way to get the better of the situation than to perform well, contribute to your new team’s victory, and show the old coaching staff what they missed in letting you go?
Now, I’m not saying you need to be mean or nasty about it. You don’t want to go into negative territory.
But there’s a pretty good chance that more has been accomplished in all fields in life by people who were once told they weren’t good enough to stay where they were than those who were safe and comfortable. If you’re a competitor at all, not being asked back should be all the fuel you need to kick your dedication and training level up or a notch or two.
And even if you never get a chance for that revenge game, the improvements you make in preparing for it will carry over to every other game in which you compete. Which is pretty cool by itself.
Positive #3: New opportunities
Sometimes moving to a new team can create opportunities you might never have gotten with the old team.
Perhaps the coach of the old team has a batting order he/she likes and never changes. Moving to a new team and proving yourself could give you the opportunity to hit higher in the lineup and get more at-bats. Especially if the coach bases his/her decisions on the stats instead of gut feel.
Or maybe you’ve always fancied yourself a shortstop but that position was already taken by one of the best to ever play the game. You’re not going to displace her no matter how good you are or how hard you work, whereas a new team will welcome your skill level at that position.
Having opportunities is particularly important for pitchers. So if you weren’t pitching much on the old team because you didn’t hit your spots or couldn’t match the others for speed, a new team with greater need at that position just might give you the opportunity you need to develop under game conditions – simply because they don’t have much choice.
All you can ask for is the opportunity to do whatever it is you want to do. The rest is up to you. But at least with the new team there could be more of a chance of getting that opportunity.
Positive #4: An overall better fit
Maybe you joined your old team because they had a great reputation for being the best in the area. But then you found out one of the reasons they’re the best is they are better at convincing already-developed players at coming to them than they are at developing players themselves.
Or maybe you enjoy being a multi-sport athlete while the rest of the team (and the coaches) are more about all softball all the time. As a result, you missed some games for your other sport(s) which caused you to have to sit the bench as punishment for choosing that sport over softball, even if the other sport was in-season and softball was not.
Or maybe the culture of the team was win at all costs, even if it means cheating or hurting your opponents on purpose while you’re more oriented toward playing a clean game.
Whatever the issue might be, you know in your heart of hearts that the old team wasn’t a good fit for you as a person, even if it was a good fit as an athlete. In that case, they probably did you a favor.
You can now find a team whose culture and attitude is a better fit for who you are and who you want to be. With a little distance you may even find that they did you a huge favor by not asking you back; sometimes it’s tough to see the negative behaviors when you’re in the middle of them.
Positive #5: Meeting new people and making new connections
It’s easy to get caught in a sort of closed-loop system, especially in today’s fastpitch softball world where you play so many games and have so many practices that your experience of the world outside your current team is limited.
By moving to a new team you may discover things or people you never knew existed. For example, you may find a skills coach (pitching coach, hitting coach, etc.) or a trainer who can elevate your game tremendously because one or more of your teammates goes to him/her.
You would have never known about that person had you stayed where you were. But this type of serendipity could end up leading you to skills and abilities you never knew existed within yourself.
The same goes for the other players. You may discover a friend for life you would have never known about had you stayed where you were.
Or you may find the way the players on this team approach the game is more in keeping with how you think of it, leading you to have a better overall experience. With a net result that you keep playing long after the attitudes on the old team would have driven you out.
Darkest before the dawn
Not being asked back to the team who already knows you can be tough on the ego and the psyche. It can make you feel like something is wrong with you, or cause you to think that you are somehow “less than” those who were asked back.
Don’t let that kind of thinking creep into your head. Just accept that there are many paths forward, and that what seems like a trauma right now could end up being the best thing that ever happened to you.
Keep a positive attitude, find that new team, and remind yourself that a year from now whatever sadness or hurt you’re feeling today will be little more than a bump in a much longer, better road for you as a player.
Now get out there and kick butt!
Heading photo by Karolina Kaboompics on Pexels.com
Thank You and Farewell to Retiring Coaches
As the travel ball season winds down (that went fast!) some of you out there are coaching your final games. Whether your daughter is done with her fastpitch softball career, is going to a team with so-called “professional” coaches, your organization is making a change in how it selects coaches, you’ve just decided coaching is something you no longer want to do, or there is some other reason, the next couple of weeks (or so) will no doubt be bittersweet.
Well, I for one, want to thank you for taking on what is often a thankless job and doing your best to help the players you served as either a head or assistant coach.
As your last team plays its last few games, be sure you take a little time to reflect on the journey that brought you here. Because coaching youth sports is both one of the most difficult and most rewarding ways an adult can spend his/her time (if you are truly in it for the right reasons).
You’ve weathered countless storms of parents angry about their daughter’s playing time, the position she’s played, where she is in the batting order, decisions you made on the field, the caliber of teams you’ve played (either too hard or too soft), when and where you set up practice, some random comment you made that someone took personally, your selection of white pants, and how you enforced the team rules that were CLEARLY spelled out at the parent meeting you held right after tryouts were held and offers were accepted.
You’ve endured countless sleepless nights the night before the start of a tournament, going over batting orders, field lineups, contingency plans, and other things no one else had to worry about. You got to the hotel before everyone else so you could drive from the hotel to the tournament site to make sure the time Google maps says it will take your team to get to the field is the time it will actually take.
You’ve made sure someone is arranging meals and snacks. You’ve checked and re-checked the med kit to make sure you have everything you may need in case of injury.
You’ve carried around a 20 lb. bag of miscellaneous objects such as glove lace (and glove lacing tools), duct tape, spare sunglasses, a measuring tape, drying towels, cooling towels, and more to ensure you’re ready for every contingency. You’ve say through countless pre-tournament meetings while everyone else was off having a meal and/or an adult beverage or swimming in the pool.
And now that part is all over, and you may feel a little sense of relief. But you’re feeling something else too.
You know you’re going to miss working with your team, running drills and walking through situations to help your team learn this very complex and often heartbreaking game. You’re going to miss the challenge of facing an opponent that on paper looks to be better than you but that somehow your team manages to overcome.
You’re really going to miss the thrill of seeing a player who came to you barely able to put her glove on the correct hand suddenly blossom into regular contributor to your team’s success. And you’re going to miss the camaraderie that comes with spending so many hours with a group of people you really like as you work toward a common goal.
Come this fall if you don’t have a daughter playing anymore it’s going to feel strange to wake up at 8:00 am on a Saturday morning with nowhere to be and nothing to do.
If you do have one playing for someone else, it will still be odd to be sitting on the sidelines in your camp chair drinking coffee instead of tossing batting practice, fungoing ground and fly balls, or sitting in the dugout agonizing over a lineup.
So thanks for the hundreds of hours you’ve spent working with your players, attending live clinics and online classes to learn how to coach your players better, and missing out on events with family and friends because your team had a game to play. Thanks for always looking out for your players’ best interests, even when it felt like they may have conflicted with your own.
And most of all, thanks for caring about your players as people rather than just chess pieces to be pushed around a board. You may not realize it now, but the impact you made on at least some of their lives is probably immeasurable.
So as things wind down, take a moment to savor all that was great about being a coach. Linger a little longer after practice, and especially after your last game, and think about the good times you’ve had and the lives you have touched by saying “yes” when many others would have said and did say “no.”
Thank you Coach and farewell! You have made a difference in a lot of lives.
Main photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.com
What’s the Deal with the Colored Tape on Catchers’ Chest Protectors?
If you were watching the Women’s College World Series in 2023 and/or 2024 you no doubt noticed that Oklahoma’s catchers had a piece of blue or red tape affixed to their chest protectors. I have heard some interesting explanations as to what it might be.
One is that it’s some sort of enlarged target for pitchers to throw to. If they’re having trouble seeing the glove, or if the catcher is trying to hide the pitch location, the pitcher can sight in on the tape and throw it there.
Another is that the tape is the pitcher’s favorite color, and it’s being used to help her feel more comfortable and confident. That’s more on the right track, but still not quite there.
Actually what it is has to do with something called motor preferences. You can learn more about it here, but I will provide a quick background of what it is and how it relates to the colored tape.
The concept of motor preferences began about 20 years ago with a French company called Volodalen. They were doing extensive research in how to help athletes in many different sports (but primarily in track and field and cycling, I believe) perform better.
Through this research they discovered that all of us have certain preferences baked into our DNA. For example, when some people run they tend to bounce or rebound lightly off the ground.
They classified these athletes as “aerial.” Others tend to be more earthbound, pulling and passing as they run, so they call them “terrestrials.”
There are other tendencies as well, which I’m not going to get into right now because while I have completed an online course I want to wait until I’ve attended the in-person training to go into it in more detail. So I don’t quite feel qualified yet to offer a deeper explanation.
Motor preferences have been used in Europe for about 20 years to determine an athlete’s natural preferences so he/she is being trained properly, both to enhance performance and prevent injury. It was brought to North America by Motor Preferences Experts, whose link I provided above.
Which brings us back to the tape on the chest protectors. The color and the orientation both have significance in how they affect the pitcher.
The color is determined by whether the athlete holds his/her breath in while performing an athletic movement or lets it out. In this case, an athlete who holds his/her breath in will have a preference for royal blue. (As I understand it not just any blue will do, it has to be royal blue.)
An athlete who empties his/her lungs during the act will have a preference for red. I’m told any general red will work. All of this has to do with the rods and cones in the eyes.
There is a test to determine whether an athlete is breath in/breath out You don’t want to just ask them. That test is proprietary so I can’t share how to perform it here but I will say it’s fairly subtle so you need to be trained in it anyway.
Once you know the color, you then test to see if the athlete’s brain organizes information horizontally or vertically. That will tell you whether to run the tape horizontally or vertically on the chest protector.
Getting back to our pitchers, if the pitcher tests breath in vertical, you would want to place a royal blue piece of tape on the chest protector in a vertical orientation. If she is breath out vertical you would place a red piece of tape vertically, and so on.
The purpose, at least as I understand it, is to help the pitcher feel more relaxed and confident before she goes into her pitch. Perhaps more focused as well, all of which will hopefully help her pitch better.
The colors and orientation isn’t just for pitchers, by the way. Hitters can put a piece of the correct tape on their bats before they get into position to help them prepare to hit. Teams can put stripes up in the dugout to help their fielders before they take the field, or fielders can put a piece of tape on their gloves.
The good news for those of us who are still learning how to test is that if you mess it up and get the color or orientation incorrect there is no negative consequence, at least as I understand it. You’re just not helping the athlete the way you were hoping to.
I hope that clears up some of the mystery around the tape. While the whole motor preferences concept has only been in the U.S. for a couple of years I think awareness is starting to grow and more organizations are starting to look into it.
Consider the colored tape the “gateway drug” into the deeper world of motor preferences and how they can help your athletes perform better and avoid significant injuries. More to come on this topic after I go through the training.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 