Category Archives: Coaching
Why players with new skills are like new drivers
Earlier today I was emailing with my friend and fellow coach Mike Borelli about how players who look great in practice will come out into games all nervous and tentative. It’s actually pretty common.
They work hard to learn their skills. They take lessons, they practice, they really put a lot of effort into it. Then they get into a game and they look like the proverbial deer in headlights.
Perhaps the best analogy I can come up with, and one that most of us can relate to, is when we start to drive after getting our driver’s licenses. Even though we’ve received hours of instruction, and spent countless more hours driving with our parents (or other qualified adults), none of that matters the first time we’re handed the keys to the family car.
We are nervous, we are tentative, we are afraid that we will make a horrible mistake and wrap the car around a tree, or will have trouble parking it and scratch the paint, or do something else that will get us in trouble. So we drive cautiously at first.
Eventually, though, we gain experience and confidence as continue to drive, and after a while it becomes second nature. If you’ve had your license for any length of time you probably don’t even think much about where your hands go or where to look on the road. You just get in drive.
That’s the same experience players often have after they’ve worked on new skills. No matter what they’ve done off the field, nothing compares to actually being in a game. Until they’ve had a chance to “drive” those skills for a while they’ll be tentative, unsure of what they can do and wanting not to make any mistakes.
It’s just a part of the total experience. The best you can do is give them the “keys” and give them the opportunity to get comfortable with their new skills. The more experience they gain the more they’ll relax, which will really put them in the driver’s seat.
Winning isn’t always the goal
Ask any fastpitch player, coach or parent what the team’s goal is and the easy answer will be “to win.” But when you look at things a bit deeper winning may not always be the primary goal.
Take a 10U or 12U team making the jump from rec ball to travel ball. It can be quite an eye-opener for the girls and the parents. The rules change, the game gets faster, the teams get more aggressive, and the overall caliber of play is generally higher than they’re used to seeing.
In that first year wins may be tough to come by. But that’s ok. The real priority should be getting the players acclimated to the level of competition and helping them understand what it’s going to take to perform their best long-term. That may mean sacrificing a few opportunities to win in favor of player development.
That could mean letting a hitter who isn’t producing bat, even though a better hitter is available. It may mean suffering through more walks to give a pitcher with good long-term potential the opportunity to get reps in facing batters. It might mean putting a fielder into a position she hasn’t quite learned yet in order to give her the experience to play it later.
Winning is nice, no question about it. Me personally, I subscribe to the statement from Moneyball that I hate losing more than I like winning. But if your goal is to develop a team, and its individual players, to be the best they can be, you need to have a plan and stick to it – even if it means you lose more games than you would have otherwise today.
It’s all about your goals, which is why it’s important to set them before the season, when you can be unemotional about it, rather than during the season when you may be willing to do anything required just to get the W.
Know where you’re headed long-term and you’ll be in great shape. And when those wins do start coming, they will be all the sweeter.
The fun of working with younger players
Sometimes when you’re used to working with older players (high school age or close to it), going back to working with younger girls can take some adjustment. They don’t have as much body awareness, and attention spans can be a bit short. It can also take them a bit longer to truly retain everything you’re working on. But there are also some upsides.
I experienced one of those tonight. I was doing a hitting lesson with a 10U player named Isabella. We’ve been working on the basics, and she’s coming along. Her father mentioned that in her tournament over the weekend she’d been backing out of the box some, and seemed reluctant to try out her new swing.
So, I figured that after we did some tee hitting I would try pitching some Whiffle balls to her instead of regular balls.
Good idea on my part. Isabella started getting the hang of it and taking more aggressive swings. She started hitting those Whiffles hard too.
But the best part was what happened when the bucket emptied. I said “let’s pick ’em up” and she immediately asked “Can we do it again?” We still had time so of course I said “sure.” When we finished that bucket she asked if we could do another. Clearly she was having fun – and building confidence in her swing.
Honestly, I think if I hadn’t finally called it we’d still be out there.
You have to love that enthusiasm. And that’s the fun of it. Certain aspects may take more work, but when the light bulb comes on and the excitement is there it makes it all worthwhile.
Beware of an over-reliance on gimmicks
You see them everywhere – in magazines, on websites, in YouTube videos and everywhere else fastpitch softball folks look for information. “They” are all the devices that promise to make your players better.
I call them “gimmicks” because often times that’s how they’re presented. The impression you’re given is that for $29.95 (plus shipping & handling), or $79.95 or $249.95 you can buy better performance. Gang, I can tell you that it just ain’t so.
I’m not saying these devices can’t help. Many of them can be useful in the right hands. But in order for yours to be the right hands, you first need to understand how a particular skill needs to be performed, and to a reasonably deep level.
A favorite example of mine comes from tryouts a few years ago. Three other coaches and I were observing pitching tryouts for a 16U team. One of the other coaches had a device that measures the spin rate of the ball and was using it to measure the revolutions per second of a pitcher’s curve ball.
“Ooooh” one of them exclaimed as a pitcher threw a pitch. “21.” “22.” And so on. They were all so focused on the device and what it supposedly told them that not a single one of them was watching the actual pitch. If they had, they would’ve noticed that the “curve ball” was spinning pretty close to 12 to 6 (fastball or drop ball spin) and wasn’t moving at all. Even down.
By the standards of the device, this pitcher was throwing an awesome curve. But in the real world, she wasn’t even throwing a decent one. And last time I checked, hitters hit pitches thrown in the real world.
As an instructor I see this all the time. Some coaches have an entire bag full of gimmicks, and they just move from one to the next. Especially hitting coaches for some reason. Some I’ve seen just love to bring out the devices.
But if you don’t understand what you’re trying to achieve, the effectiveness of the device is pretty much wasted at worst, or randomly effective at best. It’s like plopping down $300 for the world’s best hammer when what you really need is a $3 screwdriver.
If you really want to help your players/daughter(s) improve you don’t need a duffel bag full of stuff. At least not right away. Instead, first take the time to learn how those skills should be performed. Study college games on TV. Look for video on the Internet. Invest in DVDs and books. Attend training seminars/coaches clinics where an accomplished coach with a history of success breaks down the skill in detail. Go to http://www.discussfastpitch.com and read the discussions there. In other words, first seek out information.
Once you have a feel for what the skill should look like, and how it should be executed, you’ll be in a better position to decide which devices can really help you teach those skills and make improvements in your players and which ones will end up sitting on a shelf on in a duffel bag in your garage collecting dust.
What makes me say that? I have my own collection of devices that I bought when I started coaching, hoping to find the magic one. Some were worthwhile, many were not. The more I learned, the better I was able to see which ones might be helpful and which ones would be relegated to the Island of Misfit Softball Toys.
That goes for choosing a coach too, whether it’s a private instructor or a team coach. Someone who’s pulling out gimmick after gimmick instead of having your daughter work on actual pitching, hitting, fielding, throwing or whatever skill it is she’s trying to learn may not be your best choice. Devices are no substitute for knowledge.
Ultimately the value of a device goes up in direct proportion to your understanding what you’re trying to accomplish with it. Become competent at that first and you’ll make better decisions on how to spend the rest of your cash.
Softball instructors are like Google Maps for players
A recent series of discussions on the Discuss Fastpitch Forum has been debating the need for or value of private instructors. Perhaps the best way to explain what private instructors bring is to liken them to using Google Maps. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a private instructor myself, so naturally I am a little biased on the topic.)
Let’s say you live in Cleveland and you decide you want to drive to Omaha. How are you going to get there? One way to do it is to hop in your car, point it west, start driving and hope for the best. You’ll probably get there sooner or later, but odds are it will take you longer than if you had used one of the other choices.
Another option is to pull out a paper Atlas (like we used to in the old days) and map out your route on paper. That will be better than just randomly driving, but for best results you need to be pretty good at reading maps. Not everyone is. If you misinterpret the map, or the roads have changed since your Atlas was printed, you could end up getting lost. (Think Clark Griswold in the first Vacation movie.) If you do lose your way, you may not even realize it for a while, in which case it will probably take a bit of backtracking to get you back on the right road.
Then there is using Google Maps (or your mapping application of choice). You can plug in your starting point and destination and the entire route will be laid out for you step-by-step. If you’re using a PC you can print it out and take it with you, without all the extraneous information that is in an Atlas. If you’re using it on your smartphone, a pleasant voice will guide you turn-by-turn to your destination, with easy-to-read visuals along with it. If you happen to make a wrong turn anyway, or the roads have changed, Google Maps will recognize you’re heading in the wrong direction and immediately guide you back to where you need to be.
Those are the things a private instructor will do as well. You don’t absolutely need one to get to where you’re going, but like Google Maps an instructor will help you get there faster.
A private instructor will lay out a good foundation using techniques, drills and cues that have proven successful before – but adjust to the specific needs of the player. The instructor will offer that same sort of turn-by-turn guidance that helps players stay on the path to success rather than wandering off into dead ends. If something gets “off” due to any of a dozen reasons, the instructor will help guide the player back onto the right path.
This isn’t just for beginners, either. Even accomplished players need a little help now and then. Every professional team has position coaches and instructors who are there to help players improve their games and overcome problems. When Tiger Woods was at the top of the golf world, he still had a swing coach who worked with him to help him stay there.
In his book The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle lists the three essential elements to achieving excellence. One is motivation, and another practice. But the third is coaching. Not that the coach has any special magic to offer. But because the coach can help make sure that players spend their time practicing the right things in the right way rather than trying to feel their way through the process.
Again, it’s not for everyone. If you’re just planning to drive around your own neighborhood you don’t need Google Maps – or at least you shouldn’t. But if your goals are to get out into the larger world, you might want to have a guide by your side.
The Way It Ought To Be
The other night when I got out to my fastpitch softball lessons I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me. My first lesson was with a high school senior pitcher, and her high school coach was there to observe.
I couldn’t have been more pleased! All too often it seems the relationship between private coaches and team coaches – either in high school or travel ball – is contentious. I’m not sure why but it’s not uncommon. 
It’s much smarter for there to be a sense of cooperation. Private coaches work with players on an individual basis far more than a team coach ever will have the time for. They teach specific skills and learn what cues trigger performance and success for those players.
If the player (or her parents) have chosen wisely, that player comes onto the team with an advanced skillset built over many hours of practice. At the same time, there will be players who have put little effort into learning their skills. That is where the team coach can make a difference. Focusing their limited time on raising the skill levels of those players will pay the best dividends. Because, of course, the chain will only be as strong as its weakest links.
In this particular case, I invited the coach into the cage with us so he could hear the instruction and ask questions if he had any. He brought his iPad in with him and shot video as we went along. I periodically asked if he had any questions, and he had the opportunity to see how I interacted with my student/his player.
It was a very pleasant half hour. I left the coach with an open invitation to come back any time. Kudos to the pitcher’s parents for setting it up, incidentally.
Of course, it’s easy for me to take this position as a private coach. But I have also experienced it from the other side. While I wasn’t able to attend an actual lesson, when I was a team coach and had pitchers who were not my students, I would contact their pitching coaches to learn what to look out for, what cues they used and what they were teaching those pitchers. It may not have been what I taught, but that’s ok. I wanted to work with what they had learned and what they were supposed to be doing rather than trying to re-make according to what I teach.
Presumably, everyone – team coach, private coach, parents and the player – want the same thing. They want the pitcher to be successful. Working together is far more likely to make that happen than constant territorial battles.
Video like an MRI for coaches
After experiencing the healthcare system myself not long ago and having my wife take a visit to the ortho yesterday, I had a realization today. When doctors are trying to diagnose a joint injury they will talk to the patient, try a few manipulations and overall eyeball the problem. More often than not, though, they will send the patient for an MRI to see what they can’t observe with the naked eye.
The coaching equivalent is video. No matter how much experience a coach has, there’s nothing like being able to slow things down and take an in-depth look at a pitch, a swing, a throw, a fielding play or some other technique. And these days it’s easier than ever.
When I first started coaching, shooting and analyzing video meant hooking a handheld video camera on a tripod up to a laptop. If you were planning to shoot video throughout the day or evening, it also mean running an extension cord to a power strip. If you wanted to change angles it could take a few minutes to get everything set up again.
Nowadays all you need is a smartphone or tablet and an app, such as Coach’s Eye, RVP or Ubersense. You can shoot the video, run it back and forth in slow motion and even draw lines, measure angles and perform other actions. And with the advances in the devices, you can shoot at high frames per second rates that make everything very clear and easily visible.
Over the last few days I’ve used my new iPhone 6 and Coach’s Eye to do some valuable analysis – and show the players what we’re looking to do. They weren’t big mechanical issues, but instead the small details that make the difference between good and great. We were also able to see all the things they’re doing right, which was a feelgood. Like the MRI, it exposes things you may not see otherwise – and share them with the player.
Being able to show rather than tell can be incredibly valuable, especially for younger players who may be more visual than audible learners. Showing them what they’re doing often helps them understand what you’re trying to describe as a coach. With modern technology, you can do it instantly – which is what every study of coaching will tell you is most effective.
Doctors love their MRIs. Coaches should love their video apps. They can really help shortcut the learning experience for your players.
Set egos aside at showcases
Softball is a competitive sport, and as competitors we like to win. But if you’re a coach taking your team to a college showcase it’s best to put your ego aside and focus on showing off your players rather than on the outcome of the game. Even if it means you lose the game.
Bunting is a good example. You may be down a run, and believe the smart thing to do late in the game is to bunt a runner from second to third with no outs to put your team in a position to tie (or win). Now, at a regular tournament, where one team will be declared the champions at the end of Sunday, I say have at it.
But at a showcase, all that bunt is doing is robbing your player of a chance to show some college coach who could use her what she can do. It’s not that they don’t bunt in college. Sure they do, and they expect their players to lay it down. But they’re not at a showcase looking for a kid who can lay down a sacrifice bunt. To paraphrase that saying popular among Dominican Republic baseball players, no one ever bunted their way onto a college roster. Unless, of course, they’re a lefty short game specialist. But even they aren’t going to get anywhere with a sac bunt.
No, even if it’s the right thing to do game-wise, it’s better to let your player swing away. She’s far more likely to generate collegiate interest with a run-scoring double than a sac bunt. Not only will it show her hitting skills, but also her mental toughness.
The same goes for pitchers. Even if your pitcher is presently dominating with her curve or rise, you want to give her the opportunity to showcase her other pitches as well. Call some pitches you might not call in a tournament game. You never know. You may find a whole other dimension to that pitcher.
Truth is no one particularly cares what your record is at a showcase. Well, at least no one who knows anything about showcases. Whether you are 5-0 or 0-5 you’re not going home with a trophy. But if you give your players a chance to show their stuff they might go home with some interest from college coaches – which is the reason you signed up for the showcase in the first place. I’m not saying playing to lose, or put your team in a position to look bad. Just remember your purpose for that weekend and make decisions accordingly. Even if they hurt.
Of course, if you do plan to go that way, be sure to explain to the parents ahead of time that your purpose is to help their daughters be seen rather than to win every game. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief and aggravation from ultra-competitive parents who believe winning is the only thing.
That “Moses” kind of feeling
Ok, so what does a Bible story have to do with softball? Bear with me – I swear it has a point.
Pretty much everyone knows the story of Moses – either directly out of the Bible or the over-the-top Cecil B. DeMille movie TV runs every Easter, starring Charlton Heston. The key part here is what happens to Moses at the end. After leading the Hebrews out of Egypt they wander the desert for 40 years. When they finally reach the Promised Land, Moses is not allowed to enter.
That’s the feeling I get sometimes when I go out to watch my students play in games. I’m wondering how many of you who teach but don’t coach a team feel the same way.
What I mean is I will hear about how great one of my students is doing. If she’s a pitcher, she dominating the hitters, giving up only a couple of runs and maybe one walk. If she’s a hitter, she’s pounding out extra base hit after extra base hit – even going yard now and then.
But when I come out to the game to watch, something happens. I don’t know if they get nervous when I’m there or it’s just bad timing, but suddenly the pitchers are getting hammered, or having trouble finding the strike zone. And the hitters are popping up, grounding out or even striking out.
Hence my Moses reference. I seem to be able to get them to the Promised Land of great play ok. I just don’t get a lot of opportunities to enjoy it with them. It’s gotten to the point where I sometimes try to hide when I go to a game so as not to throw them off.
Of course, when I am coaching a team this phenomenon makes things a bit worse. Tough to win games when your players aren’t playing the way you know they can play.
So now I throw it out to you. Am I the only one who has experienced the “Moses effect?” Or have you seen it as well?
Congratulations to Jan Pauly, new VHHS varsity softball coach
Today’s post will be fairly meaningless to many of you, but I wanted to share some good news with the rest. My friend and fellow IOMT Castaways coach told us this week that she has been named the new varsity head coach at Vernon Hills High School.
I’ve known Jan for several years, starting from when I coached her daughter Erin, and I can tell you Vernon Hills has found themselves a winner in several ways. First, Jan is very knowledgeable about the game. She played through high school and college, and coached travel ball for several years. the good thing about her is that she doesn’t just rely on the way things used to be, but also keeps up with the current thinking on the game.
More importantly, though, she genuinely cares about the players in her charge. Not just as softball players but as people. She’s a huge believer in team over individual glory, although if an individual has a problem or concern, softball or otherwise, they can bring it to her.
Of course, no discussion of Coach Jan would be complete without talking about how intense she is during games. She can look like she’s pretty angry at times, especially if things aren’t going right. But she’s not angry, actually. She’s just focused. Once players understand that I’m sure they’ll enjoy playing for her – and learning from her.
I’m personally looking forward to seeing what she does with team. So congratulations, Jan! I know you’ll be great.
