Category Archives: College softball
You have to take opportunities when they come
Last night I was watching Texas and Arkansas on the SEC network. It was a good game, with great plays and the lead changing a few times. I got to see an Arkansas home run record set and two teams playing all out.
Also saw a pitcher get her first-ever start for Arkansas. I didn’t catch the back story, but apparently she’s is normally an outfielder. But due to some sort of circumstances she was pressed into action. I think she’d been a high school or travel ball pitcher, but at Arkansas she’s an outfielder. Good for her for stepping up when the team needed her.
The thing that struck me, though, was what happened in the bottom of the 7th. Arkansas, the home team, was down a run. The leadoff batter went to first after being hit by pitch, and the next hitter – a power slapper – drove a ball just out of reach of the center fielder. The runner on first scored and the batter ended up on third.
So Arkansas was in a tie game with a runner on third an no outs. Oh, and all-important momentum on their side too. I thought for sure they were going to pull off a victory. All they needed was a ground ball with eyes, or a sac fly. Statistically, the run expectancy in this situation is at least one run for the inning.
Of course, that’s why they still have to play the game. The next hitter popped up. The one after that grounded out weakly to the pitcher, who held the runner at third. The next batter struck out, stranding the runner on third. Texas scored in the top of the eighth and held on to win the game.
Which brings me to my point. In this sport, especially when you’re the underdog, you have to find a way to capitalize on your opportunities. I’m sure the three hitters on Arkansas didn’t purposely try to make outs, but make outs they did. By not scoring that one more run they made it more difficult on themselves.
Maybe they were nervous, or trying too hard. Maybe they were thinking too much about outcomes (or the result of messing up) and took themselves out of it. Or maybe the Texas pitcher, faced with a tough situation, rose to the occasion. All I know is Arkansas had a great chance to pull off an upset but couldn’t quite get it done.
If you’re in that situation, it’s important to focus on the task at hand. If you’re the hitter, do your best to relax and just try to hit the ball hard – same as you always do. Because you may not get that chance again next inning, which means you have to take your opportunities when they come.
Take one extra moment
This is always a bittersweet time in the softball world. On the one hand, you have the excitement of post-school season tournaments, the culmination of a year’s worth of hard work in college and many high schools.
At the same time, you also have the ends of careers. High school seniors who play in the spring and who don’t plan to play in college (or the summer) are looking at their last high school games. College players who aren’t going pro, or playing in a women’s fastpitch league, are also getting ready to hang up their spikes – or more accurately leave them at home plate.
For both groups, it’s been a lot of years of going to practices, playing games, working on skills, rinse and repeat. Those who played travel ball also had endless summer weekends where they spent all day at the ballfield, then went back and crashed at a budget-rate hotel only to get up early and do it again. It all sort of runs together after a while.
But now, it’s coming to an end. That’s probably difficult to fathom – the end. Most probably haven’t processed yet what it really means. Sure, they know no more practices, putting up with angry coaches or the drama that often seems to accompany team sports. But it also means that they will no longer be doing something that once came as naturally as breathing.
Sure, they can join a local summer league and play slow pitch. But it’s not quite the same. The speed and competitiveness that comes with school or travel ball just won’t be there. It’s the difference between looking at a photo of the Mona Lisa and actually standing in front of it.
So to all those who are about to play their final games I have this bit of advice. When the last out is recorded and your fastpitch career is done, don’t just pack up your gear and rush to your cars. Take a moment to drink it all in.
Savor the sights, the sounds, and many of the smells of the field. Look at your well-worn glove, or the nicks and scuffs on your batting helmet. Take a good look at your teammates, and think of all those you played with in the past – especially when you were little and just trying to figure out what to do and where to go.
If there isn’t another game starting right away, walk out on the field once last time as a fastpitch player and look around. Think about all the good times you had, and all that you accomplished throughout your career. Because once you leave the field, you’ll never quite be the same.
And that’s true even if you plan to coach. A coach’s perspective is very different than a player’s. You’re a part of the team, but you’re still separate from it.
As they say in the movie Moneyball, we’re all told someday we can no longer play this game. We just don’t always realize what that means.
Be proud of what you did, and know that it was part of something special. Someday you’ll be glad you took those few extra minutes to realize how special it was.
Where to go to choose your hitting models
It’s often been said, here and elsewhere, that one of the most important things you can do during lessons is compare what you (or your daughter, player, etc.) is being told to do against what the best players in the world do. If it doesn’t match it, it’s probably not the way to go.
For hitting, one obvious place to go for comparison is Major League Baseball (ML
. The best hitters there are paid millions of dollars by willing owners who compete for their services, so there’s a good chance those hitters know what to do. (Whether they know what they’re doing is a debate for another day.)
Still, it can be difficult for some players to relate to baseball players. And there are always some coaches who think baseball and softball are two different games that only look similar, which means they think what works in baseball won’t work in softball. Not true, but it’s hard to change a mindset. So with that in mind, another good place to look for models of how to swing the bat is college softball.
How do you know which softball players (or teams) to follow? A good place to start is with the statistics.
This area on the NCAA website shows the stats for the top hitters in college. As I write this it’s late March 2014, so the link may have moved for 2015. But poke around a bit and you should be able to find it. You can who is leading in batting average, on-base percentage, home runs, slugging percentage and a whole bunch more. (It also shows some pitching stats.) Look at the leaders in various categories and the odds are you’ll find some hitters who really know what they’re doing.
There is also a team section that shows which teams are leading in various categories. Not surprisingly, Arizona is leading in batting average and slugging percentage, and #3 in home runs per game and overall scoring.
Now, we can debate all day long as to how much actual impact the coaching staff has on how their players hit. Unless you’re on the inside it’s tough to know for sure, although my guess is they work with them a lot. But if nothing else, a team with great hitting stats shows the coaching staff knows what to look for in hitters. So there’s a good chance those are again some good models to follow. Put the two together – the best hitters on the best hitting teams – and you’ve likely found some great players to use as models.
The other good thing about using college players as a model is their results are probably closer to their reality of what you can achieve. Although it’s good to look at MLB hitters, keep in mind there is a HUGE difference in game experience, practice time put in, athletic ability, strength, and learning abilities between a 28 year old MLB professional in the prime of his career and, say, a 12 or 14 year old girl who is still learning the game.
There is also a HUGE difference in the access to top-level facilities, video of every swing, access to coaching and, quite frankly, time and incentive to work on their swings between these two groups. A high-level MLB player has literally million$ of reasons to spend hours studying his swing and working to improve it. A young girl, even the most dedicated of them, is trying to work in hitting practice between school, homework, family obligations, other activities and all the challenges that go along with adolescence.
But a college player, while more accomplished and with more access to facilities, still has many other things happening in her life and competing for her time. And she’s not that far removed from being that 12 or 14 year old player. So while the college player’s swing may not be ideal just yet, it may also be more achievable.
The bottom line is don’t just believe what someone calling him or herself a hitting coach tells you. As Ronald Regan liked to say, trust but verify. (Side note: Regan said it about the Soviet Union, which was ironic because it’s an old Russian proverb.) Use those resources to see who the best college softball hitters are right now and compare what they’re doing to what you’re hearing. It could save you a lot of work heading in the wrong direction.
More on overuse injuries
A couple of posts ago I wrote about the problems of overuse injuries in youth sports, including fastpitch softball. It’s a phenomenon that’s growing, often due to a combination of specializing in one sport too early and not taking breaks.
Since that time I’ve found a couple of other articles that also talk about this issue. Both are from the Science Daily website. The first is this one, which quotes some sports medicine specialists who talk about the value of playing multiple sports.
The more interesting one to me, though, was this one, which says that nearly 30 percent of all college athlete injuries are a result of overuse. It goes on to say “a majority of overuse injuries (62 percent) occurred in females athletes, according to a new study published in the current edition of the Journal of Athletic Training, the National Athletic Trainers’ Association scientific publication.” And, it says, field hockey, softball, soccer and volleyball have the highest rates of overuse injuries.
Think about that. We’re not talking about young children anymore. These are collegiate athletes, many of whom are no doubt getting money for school in exchange for playing. Their muscles have matured, as have their bone structures – and their knowledge of their own bodies.
How does this happen? A big part of it is coaches driven to win because their jobs depend on it. They run drills over and over, and conduct extended practice sessions – as much as the NCAA rules will allow. They throw their #1 pitcher game after game, because of course the fastpitch pitching motion is “natural” and therefore requires no rest. Yeah, right.
The big problem is not just the injury itself according to the article. It’s also the toll it takes psychologically on the players. Once these overuse injuries occur, they can affect recovery time and performance.
We’re not talking about sore arms after the first practice. While that’s not a good thing, it can happen if your players aren’t in game shape. But they can recover quickly from these problems with a little rest. Overuse injuries tend to linger, though. And the more you over-use, the worse the issue gets.
If you’re a coach, it’s important to be aware of these risks. Conducting brutal four-hour practices may not be getting you where you want to go; it may be hurting you. Instead, try running two-hour practices that are more efficient in their use of time.
If you’re a parent and you’re seeing this type of injury in your daughter, don’t just sit idly by. Speak up. Show the coach some of these articles and let him/her know the risks. Because if you don’t and your daughter ends up unable to play, the coach will find someone else. The game must go on. In the meantime, your daughter will be watching from the sidelines. Perhaps in a sling.
Crazy stuff people teach about hitting
So tonight I was doing my last lesson of the evening. It was scheduled as a pitching lesson, but the dad asked if I would take a few minutes at the end to look at his 13U daughter Hannah’s hitting. When we got to that part I asked what exactly he wanted me to look at and he said the whole thing. It seems Hannah wasn’t hitting the ball very hard.
I figured the best place to start would be to ask her what she thought she should be doing — what has she been taught in the past. She told me that she had been to a few hitting clinics at a local D1 college, one I think most people would consider a top 25 program. I couldn’t believe what she then told me.
Apparently, all of the instruction had focused on the following: to start the swing raise your front elbow, and bring your back elbow down into the slot (my term, not hers). Next pull the front elbow, and then push the hands through at the ball.
That was it. No mention of the lower body, or the hips, or how to use the shoulders. Nothing. Nada. It wasn’t that she didn’t remember. It’s that’s all there was.
I then had her demonstrate what she’d been taught. After a couple of swings, where she perfectly executed exactly what she’d been told, I stopped her and said no wonder she is having trouble. We then started working off a tee.
We only had a few minutes so I couldn’t get into a full bore hitting lesson. But I figured I could at least help her use her arms correctly. I put her into the “turned” position, where the hips have mostly come through while the shoulders were still in their starting position. (Some call this the “stretch” position, I believe.) I had her keep her bat angled, then hit the ball off the tee.
In just a couple of swings she was hitting the ball harder than she had with a full swing. We finished by having her take a few full swings, focusing on maintaining what we’d worked on for the end of the chain.
I don’t know if it’s going to help her much this weekend. I mean, I’m good but that’s spelled with two “o’s.” If she works the drill I gave her during the week it may. But at least it’s a start toward becoming a better hitter.
The reason I share this story, though, is as a cautionary tale that can’t be told too often. Remember, just ’cause someone coaches at or plays at a D1 college or has some other impressive-sounding credential doesn’t mean they know the first thing about hitting. Or pitching, or fielding, or any other aspect of the game.
When you’re told something, don’t take it as gospel. Look at what great players do and compare that to what you’re being told. If the instruction doesn’t match what you see, find a better instructor. (If it’s a team coach, find a diplomatic way to ignore it and seek out better advice.) There’s a lot of bad information and theories floating around there, and listening to it will actually make you worse than if you just tried to stumble your way through it yourself.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of good advice out there as well — advice that will match what you see being done by top players. Some of the “experts” may disagree with one another on certain points, because it’s not quite an exact science. There is still room for interpretation. But what you’ll see is a lot more similarities than differences among good instructors, especially in the bigger picture. Certain aspects, such as the sequence of events in hitting (hips, then shoulders, then bat) are universal.
In tonight’s case, I’d bet good money that not a single even decent hitter on this college team does anything close to what was being preached in the clinics during their games. They may think they do, but they don’t.
If you want to be successful, don’t take anyone’s word for it. Even mine. Verify what you’re being told by comparing it to what great players actually do. If it’s wrong you’ll save yourself a lot of wasted time, and you’ll experience success a whole lot sooner. And if you find it’s right, you’ll be able to pursue it a whole lot harder. As it should be.
It’s never too late for the fundamentals
First of all, let me assure you that I haven’t abandoned the Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog. I’ve just been taking care of some other stuff.
Anyway, today I heard about a 16U team and its first few practices. Apparently the coach has been running through some scenarios, but has spent no time working on the fundamentals. The speculation is that she assumes by now they should already have them.
If that’s the case it’s a mistake. No player ever has it down so much that she doesn’t need to work on technique and the fundamentals.
Want proof? The top D1 college programs in the country work on the fundamentals constantly. So does the USA National team. Check out this video of former coach Mike Candrea running one of my favorite drills. It’s a few years old, obviously, but it shows the importance he and the other coaches place on fundamentals.
No matter how good you think your team is, remember it always starts with the fundamentals.
Congratulations Chrissy Chamberlain, UD all-time RBI leader
Wanted to give a shout-out today to Chrissy Chamberlain, who last night became the career RBI leader at the University of Dubuque. Unfortunately, no one seems to know the exact number, but somehow they know she took the lead last night with a single versus #7-ranked Coe College.
Chrissy, the only senior on the squad, has had a long and distinguished career at UD. In addition to her hitting (the article says she is one of the top two hitters in the IIAC for batting average and slugging percentage), she has also been a standout pitcher there. She came into last night’s game in relief and pitched five innings after starting the game at first base.
The nice thing about all of this is Chrissy is also a class act and a great person. It’s nice to see one of the good ones get ahead these days.
UD has games against #5-ranked Central on Saturday, so she still has an opportunity to pad that lead. Good luck, Chrissy, and congratulations. It’s nice to leave your mark on the school that way!
Enforcing the rules v. impacting the game
So there I was, watching the Purdue v Michigan fastpitch softball game last weekend on the DVR. Early in the first inning, the Purdue pitcher gets called for an illegal pitch. Her stride foot landed outside the markings for the pitching lane. N
Once that happened I started taking more interest in that particular call. It seemed like she was outside the lane a lot. I know the angles can be deceiving on TV, but it seemed pretty clear that this was not a random occurence.
Later in that inning, Michigan had a runner on third and I clearly saw the Purdue pitcher land outside the lane again. No call, though. She did it several times, in fact, and didn’t get called for it.
So it makes me wonder. Have the umpires been told not to call it if it means scoring a run? Was it this particular umpire perhaps being unwilling to make a call that would affect the game?
What do you think? Should an umpire call an illegal pitch even if it means advancing a run home? Or is that going over the line? What if the pitcher is gaining a big advantage by making the ball run in too much on the hitter? And if you don’t call it does it penalize the other pitcher for pitching within the rules?
Let me know your thoughts on this. I don’t have an answer myself so I’m interested in yours. Except you spammers. You guys can take your garbage somewhere else.
First-ever wounded warrior softball game slide show
With seasons getting under way it’s easy to let emotions get the best of us and forget what it’s all about. So I thought I’d pass along this link to an online slide show of the first-ever wounded warrior softball game, which was played at Hillenbrand Stadium in Tuscon, AZ.
This was a game pitting two teams of soldiers, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, who are recent amputees. I found out about it through the Candrea on Coaching emails I receive from Liberty Mutual’s Responsible Coaching program.
The short version is Coach Candrea was approached about setting up the game, and he enthusiastically agreed. He also lined up Mizuno and Lousiville Slugger to provide uniforms, bats, gloves and more.
The game was played Friday, March 18 after the Arizona-Baylor game. Players from those teams acted as base coaches, and were there for support. When someone hit a home run, they all joined in the celebration at the plate.
We owe much to our veterans, not the least of which is our ability to spend our weekends in the sunshine coaching, watching or playing the game we love. Take a look at the slide show to see some true American heroes playing despite their disabilities. And be sure to thank a veteran when you see him or her.
It pays to know the rulebook
So there we were, at the ASA 14U Northern Nationals, engaged in a very tight game. We were in the top of the sixth with the score tied 1-1 and one out when our opponents managed to get runners on second and third. In such a tight game one run was very meaningful, so we decided to intentionally walk the next hitter (who had driven a ball into the gap her previous at bat) in order to load ’em up and create a force at home instead of a tag play. Pretty much baseball/softball 101.
On the first pitch of the intentional walk, the umpire throws his hands up, calls an illegal pitch and advances the two runners. That, of course, scored one of them, making the score now 2-1. Not exactly what we’d been hoping for in the exchange.
I started to go out to find out what was illegal, but then remembered I was not the head coach. So I went back into the dugout and told the head coach she would need to do it.
She went out, and came back to report the umpire said our catcher did not start in the catcher’s box when the pitch was thrown. I told her I would take it from here and went out to talk to the home plate umpire. It was what I suspected, by the way.
When I went to talk with him he repeated that the catcher did not start inside the catcher’s box. I said yes she did, and explained that the catcher’s box extends from the outside of one batter’s box to the outside of the other. It’s not like baseball, where the catcher must start behind the plate due to the size of the box there. I knew it from the rulebook, and also from one of the NFCA classes I took where they covered this topic and warned that many umpires don’t know this particular rule very well.
After a brief discussion the home plate umpire said, “Let me check with my partner.” He went out to the field ump and they conferred for a few minutes. Then he came back and said the ruling stands — illegal pitch. At that point I said I wanted the umpire in chief brought in. Surprisingly he agreed to it quickly. But instead of the UIC another Blue brought over a rulebook. The three of them looked at it for a few minutes, and then it sort of turned into My Cousin Vinnie. They knew what they had to do, all they had to do was say it out loud. The runners were returned to their previous bases and play resumed.
As I walked back to the dugout our parents cheered. Loudly. When I got back I said to the head coach, “That’s the last call we’ll get today.” We finished the intentional walk with the catcher behind the left-hand batter’s box and it was game on.
I would love to report that the strategy worked and we got out of the inning. But that’s not what happened. The next hitter managed to dink a ball in front of second base, just out of reach of a diving second baseman, and the run scored — legitimately this time. That broke open the game and we went on to lose, knocking us out of the tournament.
Bummer. But at least knowing the rules kept us from losing due to an umpire’s erroneous call. At the beginning of every season I make a point of reading the rulebook cover to cover. It definitely paid off this year.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 