With winter break fast approaching for the schools, I have started receiving the e-mails offering skills clinics at various local colleges. It’s always interesting to see what they have to say.

First of all, let me say those clinics are a great way to expose your daughter to college coaches, especially if she already knows where she wants to go to school. Attend a few and the coaches will get to know her, and if they think she can help them they’ll give her a good look. They’re also good for getting a “second opinion.” You or a private coach may thing your daughter is on the right track, but a good college coach might differ, or at least offer some suggestions on ways to improve. Of course, if the coach (assuming he/she is there) says you’re looking good, that’s great validation too.

Now on to the real topic. I received a notice recently that included a pitching/catching clinic. Maybe it was just worded poorly, but it said at the pitching clinic you will receive basic instruction on skill development and work on specific pitch development including the drop, rise, screw and curve. To me, that’s a pretty tall order.

I don’t see where much of any of that will really be accomplished in that or any three-hour clinic. I don’t know, but I doubt they’re really looking for raw beginners. They might be able to tweak someone who is already taking lessons or learning to pitch on a regular basis, but they’re not going to “teach” anyone to pitch. Likewise, I question whether they can teach anyone a new pitch in that amount of time. My guess is they don’t think they can either; the best they can do is take something and make it better.

For example, you think you have a curve because you have a “curve ball grip” but it doesn’t spin in the right direction. They can probably help you get the right spin, and maybe start actually seeing a break in the ball.

That’s probably not what people are going to read, though. They may very well assume that sending their daughter to this college clinic means she will learn to throw those pitches from scratch — maybe one of them, maybe even all. I’ve had parents of nine year olds tell me how impressed they were that their daughter was shown how to throw all these different pitches at a HS clinic. No she wasn’t. She was shown there are different pitches, but she didn’t learn a damned thing. Especially when her primary challenge was getting the ball over the plate without any fancy movement.

The truth is pitching is an iterative skill. It takes lots of repetition and tweaking to get any of it right, much less all of it. Even big-time pitchers struggle with it day to day.

So when you see one of those announcements, know what you’re getting into. Go for the right reasons. But don’t expect miracles. If it were really that easy, they’d be charging a lot more than $75 for it. I know I would.

Unfortunately, I ac.cidentally found out without seeing the game. Then again, it doesn’t look like NBC is going to show it again the way they did all the other games, so I’m probably out of luck . Guess I can watch it online. But it’s not the same as watching it in HD.

Anyway, if you’re reading this you know that Team Japan upset Team USA in the gold medal game. I don’t plan to analyze the game — there are plenty of people already doing that. Instead, I want to analyze the analysis because I’m somewhat amused by the whole thing.

Many of us who coach talk about how tough it is to have parents (or administrators in the case of school coaches) second guessing every decision. Whether it’s player selection or game strategies or something else, most coaches do the best they can with the information available at the time. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes parents and others understand. Sometimes they get angry or show other negative reactions.

You sort of expect it at the youth level. Every parent thinks their kid is the best. So I’m amused as I look around at some of the online forums discussing what happened to Team USA.

For one thing, there is suddenly a lot of negative commentary about Head Coach Mike Candrea. Up until this game most of what I saw about him bordered on reverence. Now, though, there is a whole undercurrent that says he should never have been brought back, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he did a poor job of player selection, his strategies were poor, etc.

Excuse me? Didn’t this team blow through all their opponents in the prelims, and find a way to win against Japan and Ueno the first time? If he was as bad at his job as these naysayers are implying they would’ve lost more games instead of run ruling everybody.

A big part of that is player selection. There was talk in the messages I read that seemed to think they had the wrong players on the team. I don’t get that either. You had an entire team of hitters who could hit for average and power. Their first two hitters have blazing speed, and most of the rest aren’t too shabby in that area either. The pitching staff is the best in the world — so good that it had to be a tough decision which one to start in this game. Who among us wouldn’t love to have pitching choices the caliber of Osterman, Finch and Abbott?

I can’t comment on the game strategy since I didn’t see the game. I saw something about having Mendoza bunt instead of swing away. My guess is in that situation, assuming it didn’t work out, there were going to be a lot of unhappy people no matter what he did.

All of this sounds so familiar, though. Coaches all over the world go through the same thing. Only the difference is most of us only have about 12-15 sets of parents to worry about. Coach Candrea has a couple of million of them sniping at him.

One last thing. I actually saw a person say they didn’t win because they weren’t hungry enough. You have got to be kidding. This group of women barnstormed all over the country, riding  bus to play game after game, practicing, playing, working out, and busting their butts. Why would they do it if they weren’t hungry for the win?

The truth is, on this particular day, Team Japan outplayed Team USA. They worked hard, took advantage of their opportunities and made it happen. Just like the USA hockey team did in 1980 when they beat the Soviet hockey machine. These things happen, people. On another day maybe Team USA wins. But not this day.

So I guess that’s one more thing I (and a lot of others) get to share with Coach Candrea. Just remember it’s a whole lot easier to make the decisions when you know the outcome of the one that’s made. I’m sure Team USA was only a couple of bounces or a few inches away from a win. You know what happens. Get over it.

Sorry all, I’ve been away for a few days visiting my son Adam before he deploys to lovely Afghanistan. Had a nice visit in Myrtle Beach, SC. So while I wasn’t blogging, I had plenty of time to think about posts. Especially while sitting in airports waiting for flights to board and take off.

One thing that’s been on my mind was something I saw at a tournament this past summer. Essentially, I saw a very strong team take advantage of a very weak team. I think the coach of the strong team realized that they shouldn’t have been in that tournament in the first place — someone else scheduled them in. But what she didn’t realize is there’s a time to press your advantage and a time to pull back. In this case, the strong team, who had experienced players at the 10U level, was able to do pretty much whatever they wanted against the weak team, who had mostly beginners.

My problem wasn’t running the score up to the run rule. You have to do that, and should do that to save your players for tougher games ahead. What I didn’t like, though, was the strong team continued to play as though it there was some danger the weak team could come back, even though it was obvious they couldn’t. Among the things they did that bothered me was continuing to steal bases when it was obvious the catcher couldn’t make the throw, running the bases aggressively on hits (going from second to home on a ball fielded in the outfield), bunting for hits when it was obvious the infielders couldn’t make the play, things like that.

When you’re in a mismatch, I just think it’s wrong to continue doing things to point it out, or to try to embarrass the opposing team. Yes, they’re not very good, but there’s no sense in rubbing it in. Some of the things you can do are not steal bases (especially home, even on a passed ball), run bases station to station, put in a pitcher who doesn’t get much chance to pitch regularly, or even kill an inning by stepping off the base early. (Let the umpire know you plan to ahead of time so he/she catches it.) You can have your team work on things they’ve had trouble with, or give your second string players at key positions a chance to play.

I’m a big believer in Karma — the whole what you do comes back to you idea. Karma has a funny way of evening the score. Like, you decide to have your #1 pitcher steal home on a passed ball and she winds up turning her ankle running across the plate. Or you keep playing your #1 shortstop and she winds up breaking a finger by misjudging a ball.

There’s also the phenomenon of a long memory. Your team may be way ahead of my team today, but perhaps they won’t always be. If I have the chance, I will do to you what you did to me, and I will enjoy it immensely. Fortunes change on teams, especially as they age. A lot of coaches have those kinds of long memories.

Then there’s the “you never know who knows who” syndrome. A couple of years ago we were at a tournament. The coach of another area team that I know was telling me how his team was spanked and humiliated by the host team. Apparently they thought it would be fun to run up the score against this team, which was just finding its way at 14U. Now, we have no connection to the area team — in fact we compete against each in games and for players — but there is something to be said for area pride. We played that host team the next game, and let’s just say we evened things up. Hopefully that coach learned a little something about knowing when to say when.

I know there are people who think you should always stay aggressive, never let up so your players know how to play the game. Get real. Kids aren’t stupid. There is a teachable moment, not just about softball but about life, when you’re in an obvious mismatch. The right thing to do is let up on the gas, and afford your opponents some dignity. You just never know when someone might have to do the same for you.

Yes, here we are. The travel ball tryout season has started. And along with it comes the ever-popular shuffling of players from one team to another.

There are certainly legitimate reasons to leave a team. If you’re a serious player and the others on the team are not you have reason to leave. If the coach is favoring certain players over others despite your hard work, again a good reason. If some of the girls on the team are just nasty and make it a miserable experience, you’d be stupid not to leave.

One thing I often see, though, is players thinking they’ve been treated “unfairly” because they didn’t get to play the position they wanted, even though they put no work into it whatsoever. This is especially true with pitching.

Little Suzy wants to be a pitcher. She told the coach she wants to be a pitcher. But she didn’t take lessons all winter, she didn’t practice because she had volleyball or basketball or hockey or band or whatever to do (or maybe all of them) and the one time the coach did put her in she walked and wild pitched the team single-handedly into a hole so deep it would be faster to climb out the other side than try to get back up. Is it really fair to take pitching time away from those girls who DID take lessons and work hard, just ’cause little Suzy wants to pitch?

No, it’s not. And going to another team is not going to solve the root problem. In fact, it may make it worse, because you may find that the first coach was a lot nicer than the new one. Nobody likes to lose, but some take it harder (and take harsher steps) than others.

If you really want to increase your chances of playing your desired position, don’t sit around wishing for it. Take positive steps to make it happen. Get yourself some lessons. Practice between them (which is where you’ll really get better). Show up to practices and work hard instead of continually asking the coach how much longer until it’s over. If that means you have to drop another activity or two, so be it. Or if you can’t make the commitment, drop softball. You do no one, including yourself, any good by signing up for a team and then not showing up or putting in the effort.

Nothing in life comes without effort. Even those who say they were “in the right place at the right time” first had to get to that place. If you’re not willing to put in the effort, changing teams won’t help. Remember, when you point your finger at someone, three fingers point back at you.
 

The other day I came across an excellent article by Jeff Janssen on the differences between coaching men and women. It’s kind of long, but well worth the effort to get through. 

If you’re a male coaching females, you’ll definitely want to check it out. If you’re a male who’s been coaching boys up ’til now it’s critical that you read it. There’s a huge difference, and techniques that work with boys don’t always work so well with girls.

One of the key ones is how each gender reacts (generally) to criticism. I’ve always said if you yell at girls they tend to take it very personally, and feel that they’ve let you down. If you tell at boys like that they just think you’re a jerk. This article pretty much bears that out.

By the way, if you’re a female coaching females, or a female coaching males, you’ll find this article valuable as well. Whatever combination you have, you’ll probably want to keep this one handy.