Category Archives: Coaching
And oh yeah…
I forgot to add this in my last post. Today it was snowing back home in the Chicago area. But it was sunny and near 80 here in Texas. One more good reason to attend the class!
NFCC coaching class on offensive strategies – Day One
Greetings from Denton, Texas, where I am participating in the NFCA’s coaching college class on offensive strategies. So far it’s been a lot of fun. This particular group has been very open about sharing ideas and discussing strategies. I also think the instructors — Jay Miller, Carol Bruggeman, and Scott Centala are particularly adept at getting the discussions going.
This is a class I’ve wanted to take for a couple of years, so I’m glad to be able to do it this year. I feel strong on the technical aspects of the game, but have always felt I could use some improvement in the area of strategy. I’ve gotten better over the years through some effort, but I still felt there was more work to be done to become the coach I aspire to be.
In any case, the class has been very interesting. One of my favorites was the idea of using a fake bunt/slap to help a runner on second steal third. Covering a steal of third can be challenging for the defense under ordinary circumstances. Do they leave the third baseman back to cover third, thereby leaving themselves more vulnerable to a bunt (especially if their pitcher is not a particularly good fielder)? Do they have shortstop cover third, creating a foot race to the bag with the runner?
As an offensive coach you can take advantage of that. The fake bunt part will likely get the third baseman to come in another step or two at minimum, pulling her further away from the bag making it harder for her to cover. Showing slap will likely freeze the shortstop for a step or two, giving your runner more time to win the foot race. The beauty is the hitter doesn’t have to get the slap down. In fact, you can have her miss on purpose. You give up a strike, but advance the runner 60 feet. Sounds like a good idea, especially if your runner on second doesn’t have the speed to win the race outright. And you never know — it might create enough confusion to get a mishandle on the throw and score the runner.
One other thing they encouraged was taking more chances on the bases. For example, going for two bases instead of one whenever possible. Part of that depends on the speed of the runner of course. No sense being stupid about it. Another emphasis was on keeping the trailing runner running. If your hitter slashes a single to the outfield with a runner on first and no outs, your runner should be thinking of going to third instead of cruising into second. If she does, the batter/runner should be heading to second base, not watching the play from first. Even if the first runner is out, you’ll still have a runner in scoring position. And if she’s safe, you have two runners in scoring position with no outs, giving you a lot of options while putting pressure on the defense. Miller said you have to be willing to have runners thrown out now and then; if you’re risk-averse you’ll never create those opportunities. Lord knows I’ve had enough runners thrown out going for the extra base, so with a little smarter approach we should benefit.
Obviously there’s lots more to it. But those are a few highlights. If you have the means and opportunity to take this course, by all means do it. Makes me wish we had a game coming up (instead of more snow to shovel).
Oh, and one last thing. We went to dinner with a bunch of the other coaches and had some great conversations. The type of coaches who would take a class like this are pretty cool, as a rule!
Get quicker earlier
There is pretty much always more than one reason why pitches go wild in one direction or another. Some are obvious and easy to spot, others not so much.
Here’s one for pitches going high. Check to make sure that the pitcher is accelerating her arm circle at the right time. There can be a tendency sometimes for pitchers to wait too long to start accelerating their arm. Instead of speeding up from the top of the circle to the bottom, they wait until they hit the bottom of the circle, then start accelerating.
The phrase I like is get quicker earlier. In other words, start accelerating as soon as you pass the top. If you do that, and use a long, loose arm, you’ll feel the proper release point at the bottom of the circle, and have the proper timing. It’ll help you throw harder, too.
Lighting a spark
This is one of those stories that again reminds me why I like coaching so much. It’s for those little breakthrough moments that crop up now and then.
I was getting ready to start a pitching last night with a girl named Ashlee. Her catcher didn’t show up so I told her I would catch for her. We did some warm-ups and she started pitching.
Now, Ashlee has developed a habit of stepping forward (off the pitching rubber) as she goes to launch. We’ve been working on correcting it for a while now, but nothing we tried seemed to work. She takes a very aggressive stride and as part of it would tend to shift her weight forward early. Her foot would move, then she’d plant and launch. The problem went from small to severe in various stages. And it is a problem for two reasons: 1) it’s illegal and 2) she loses drive and therefore speed (even though she feels strong doing it).
I came up to work with her on it, saying it was a good night to do it since her catcher wasn’t there, and she agreed. As I stood there, a sudden idea hit me. All this time we’d been trying to get her pivot foot to stay in place instead of moving forward. Whatever we’d tried just didn’t process with her.
So this time, I suggested that she start with her pivot foot well forward, with just the heel barely touching the pitching rubber. She would then go to her negative move like that. But as she brought her hands down below her waist, and before she made her positive move, pull the foot backwards so the pivot foot would wind up in the spot most pitchers start from (ball of the foot touching the rubber). That seemed to do it, at least last night. It helped her gather her energy more effectively, and transfer her weight with better timing. We walked through it a few times so she could get the feel of it, then started trying to go more aggressively off of it — none of this with the ball. You could see the light bulb come on for her.
As we stood there, she looked at me and asked, “Did you just come up with that right now?” I paused for a moment to think if I’d heard it anywhere, but couldn’t come up with a source offhand so I said yes. She got a little smile on her face, raised her hand and said, “Give me a high five on that one.”
Ashlee is not the sort who does that lightly, so it was pretty rewarding to have her feel that way. After the lesson she said, “We had a breakthrough tonight.” Of course, only time will tell if it sticks, but I think it will. I asked her to practice just that movement during the week and she said she would. I believed her too, because she seemed to like it. It felt “right” to her where previous ideas we’d tried just didn’t.
So yes, fixing the problem (we hope) was satisfying. But more satisfying, to me, was the reaction. I think Ashlee felt good that I’d come up with something specifically for her, and something she could buy into. Her high five gesture wasn’t a huge one. But it was very sincere. If I can help one pitcher make one breakthrough on one night, it’s a pretty darned good night.
Half-day college clinics
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.
Glove work for catchers
The standard technique used by most catchers (and taught by most coaches) for presenting a target is for the catcher to set up, stick her glove out, and sit there like a statue until the pitcher delivers the ball. This mindset is reinforced by coaches and parents yelling “Give her a bigger target” to the catcher when the pitcher struggles with control. (The problem, incidentally, is rarely with the catcher’s target. Usually it’s the fact that the pitcher couldn’t hit an archery target with the way she’s throwing, but that’s a subject for another day.)
Think about what that set-up means from the umpire’s point of view. The catcher sets up low and in. The pitch goes low and out. The catcher moves her glove across the plate to get the ball, and it looks like a miss. No matter how hard she tries to frame it, there’s a good chance that the pitch will be called a ball.
Now consider this, a technique I saw from Angel Santiago of UNLV at the National Sports Clinics a couple of years ago. Instead of holding a formal, tight target, show the target to the pitcher. Then, as she goes into her windup, relax the arm and the glove. As the pitch comes in, you can move to it easily and frame it toward center.
This technique does two things for you. Number one it smooths out the movement, getting rid of the herky-jerky lunge at the ball. Number two, it trains the umpire that glove movement is normal, not something that happens when a pitch goes wrong.
It can be hard to break old mindsets, but try it. You’ll find it’s a much better way of gaining more strikes for your pitchers.
Bringing pitches back down
Had an interesting one this week. I was working with a pitcher who was just coming back to lessons after a few months layoff. She was throwing hard and looking generally athletic in her movement. But every pitch was high. I don’t mean at the letters. I mean like seven to eight feet high.
We tried a few things but none seemed to work. She was not getting her elbow into the slot as she normally does, and didn’t look like she was going to find it anytime soon. Then I remembered a little something in my bag.
I have a long piece of elastic tape that I usually use for the drop ball. I’ll hook it over two tees and extend it out in front of the plate. The idea is to get the ball to travel over the tape, then drop behind or on the plate. It’s a drill I saw on an Ernie Parker video years ago.
I got the tape, hooked it into the cage where we were working, then stretched it out in front of the pitcher, about nine or 10 feet from the rubber. I told her to throw so the ball went under the tape. Sure enough, she started throwing knee-high strikes. When I took it away she went back to throwing high at first. But then she got the hang of it and didn’t need the tape anymore.
The key was the visual cue. She couldn’t feel the release point, but the visual of the tape helped her understand where it was. She found the path for her hand and arm and made the correction.
That’s the fun of coaching — finding a way to solve a problem. And now I have one more tool to use.
Good article on coaching the Millennial athlete
Jeff Janssen has posted another great article of general interest on coaching. It’s definitely worth reading if you are coaching the age group known as Millennials — those born roughly between 1982 and today.
If you’re a Boomer like me, you’ve no doubt noticed that today’s kids are very different than we were. In particular, they tend not to just go out and play sports for the fun of it. Either some adults need to organize their sports for them, or they don’t play. They also tend to be rather fragile as a group. They’ve grown up sheltered and protected from criticism and negativity for the most part (think helicopter parents), and thus have a tough time with the failure involved in sports — especially softball.
If you’re a Gen Xer, don’t feel too superior. According to the article, your age group has a lot of trouble relating to the Milennials as well, for many of the same reasons. You were brought up differently and approached your sports differently. In fact, you may find their inability to handle criticism or failure even more frustrating because they look more like you, and you’re not as far from being them as the Boomers are.
Here’s a link to the article itself. I highly suggest you give it a read.
Some after-thoughts on USA v. Japan
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.
Team USA’s take on the ITB
Stayed up way too late last night to watch the first medal round game for Team USA versus Japan. I didn’t get to bed until 2:00 AM, which was worth it then but a little rough this morning.
One thing I found interesting was the approach to the ITB that Coach Candrea took — mostly because it was similar in philosophy to what I’ve done in them (although not always with that level of success; have to be careful with that kind of comparison).
Of course, the conventional wisdom says the team on offense should bunt the runner on second to third, then take two shots at bringing her home. The Japanese team certainly followed it, at least in the bottom of the eighth when the score was tied.
Team USA, however, had a different plan. Rather than expend the out and play for one run, Coach Candrea elected to keep the extra out and play for more than one run. After not having it work out in the eighth, he put his faith in the top of the order and had them swing away. He wound up with four runs instead of one, which in a game that had gone eight innings with a 0-0 score was a huge mountain to climb.
No question about it — you have to have the bats to do it. Not to mention the nerve, especially if it doesn’t work since you’ll be facing a host of fans and parents who will want to know why you didn’t play it safe and bunt. But if you can pull it off, it’s quite a feat.
The point is don’t always get yourself stuck in the rut or feel you always have to follow the “book.” No guts, no glory.
NOTE: This post was edited for accuracy. I’d kind of let the eighth and ninth blend together. Told you I was tired!
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 