Category Archives: General Thoughts
Silver lining in the IOC’s decision?
I’ve noticed traffic has been down on the blog a bit this week. Hopefully just a combination of the people who’d be most interested being on vacation this week after concluding their summer seasons and the fact that I’ve been a bit lax on posting lately. This topic, though, ought to stimulate some conversation because it’s somewhat controversial.
First of all, let me add my voice to those who are sorry to see softball pretty much shut out of the 2016 Olympics. I know it’s not quite dead yet, but my guess is the final vote is just a formality. It was fun seeing our sport in the world’s most popular international athletic forum, and I’m sure it was a thrill for those selected to represent their country. That being said…
I can’t help but wonder if this decision will actually help the NPF. Think about it.
First of all, one of the biggest draws the NPF has are the “name” players — the Cats, the Jennies, the Jessicas, etc. During an Olympic year, those top players are absent from their NPF teams, which may hurt attendance. Not amongst the hard-core faithful, perhaps, but from the broader fan base they need to sustain a league. Yes, I know one of the reasons they have that popularity is the Olympics. But as long as ESPN continues to cover the WCWS and events such as the KFC World Cup brought to you by Six Flags, that popularity will still be there. They don’t have to establish now, they just have to sustain.
Secondly, eliminating softball from the Olympics means one less place you can go to see high-level competition among post-college players. That makes the NPF that much more important. If the NPF is smart, they’ll find a way to play up on that fact. Respectfully, of course. But where else can the average fan go to see that level of quality?
Finally, with Olympic squads limited to 15 players (or whatever the actual number is), it’s tough for players to get the opportunity to participate. But with a vibrant and growing NPF, many more girls would have the opportunity to compete at that level. Maybe the teams would get enough money to provide locker rooms at all the parks. Perhaps USA Softball or the major TV networks will give it more attention and invest some promotional money to help it grow and thrive.
So perhaps a door has been shut, but a window has been opened. It remains to be seen if anyone will take advantage of it. And if there isa vibrant and popular NPF, maybe it will convince the IOC to reexamine the issue down the road.
Mundelein Thunder 16U looking for players
We have a new 16U team forming with the Mundelein Thunder (Mundelein, Illinois) and we’re looking for a few good players to round out the team. I am the coach, by the way.
If you’re 16U eligible and looking for a change, or perhaps more opportunity to see the field, or otherwise want to change your stars, send me an email — coachken@softballsuccess.com.
The quiet wheel gets the shaft
Heard this one from a friend the other day. His daughter was playing on a travel team this year, and despite her good performance she didn’t seem to be getting a lot of playing time. I don’t think this is the case of a father not evaluating his daughter’s capabilities fairly, because if anything he tends to be tough on her.
Anyway, as a former coach himself he didn’t want to cause any problems. But after a season of less than optimal playing time, particularly at her preferred position, he decided to ask the coach what his daughter needed to work on to increase her playing time. The coach’s response was that he thought she was a very good player, maybe the best at that position, but the other girl who plays it (and/or her father) would cause a lot of problems if he cut her playing time. Since my friend never complained it was easier for the coach to sit his daughter instead.
I can understand it in a way. No coach wants to put up with a lot of grief from parents so it’s tempting to take the easy way out. But it’s still wrong. All you’re doing by going that route is rewarding (and encouraging) bad behavior. Yes, the squeaky wheel often tends to get the grease. But in so doing you’re encouraging the players (and parents) you really want to go elsewhere.
As difficult as it can be in the short term, it’s important to act with integrity to support the long term. There are lots of criteria you can use to determine playing time — best nine players, even playing time, development of players at a position, etc. Who would complain the most if they don’t get their way shouldn’t be on the list.
Luck: it all depends on your perspective
You’ll need to stay with me for a bit on this one to get to the softball point. But I promise there will be one.
Yesterday, coming home from a tournament where we didn’t do particularly well (to say the least) a more serious disaster struck. While driving on cruise control down I-70 in Ohio, the car’s engine started to race wildly. I crossed three lanes to pull over on the side of the road and disengaged the cruise control. Then I tried to pull back onto the highway — only nothing happened. The engine revved, but the car didn’t go anywhere. It quickly became apparent that we had gone as far as we were going to go. We called for roadside service, the car was towed, and we wound up in a Hampton Inn in Englewood, Ohio. (Nice little town if any of you are from there, by the way.)
Today we got the bad word. As I suspected, the transmission was shot. Apparently Mazda Tributes have some known issues with their transmissions. Unfortunately with this particular one, it also affected the cooling system; we have to replace both the transmission and the radiator, and flush the cooling system. Looks like it will cost us about $4,000 or more. Not only that, we had to leave it there while we rented a car to come home.
It would be very easy to say “what terrible luck,” and in some ways you’d be right. A $4,000 car repair bill, plus the cost of a rental car and a hotel room for the night is not exactly what we were hoping for out of Sunday. But there’s also another way of looking at it. I’ve been thinking about all the things that were lucky about it. Here are a few examples:
* We weren’t on our way to a game. I carry the team equipment. Had the breakdown occurred during the tournament rather than afterward the team would’ve been hosed, especially since we only had 10 players with us and one was injured during the tournament.
* We were traveling down a major highway. On the way down I followed the GPS, which took us through every little town in Indiana and Ohio. I chose to go back down I-70, which made us a lot easier to find, and made for a much shorter tow.
* Another of our players (Carla) and her family had hung back to watch a friend play in the same tournament. As a result, my daughter Kimmie was able to go home with them Sunday night since they were kind enough to stop and pick her up.
* We broke down close to a nice hotel. It was a nice room, and my wife and I were able to hit the pool, take a nice walk, and spend some quality time together after a hectic softball season.
* Thanks to a helpful shuttle van driver, we were able to find a rental car for half the price we’d seen online and were able to get home today.
So in a lot of ways we were actually very lucky. It all depends on how you look at it.
The same can occur with a softball team, or a softball season. Things may seem bad, and you may want to cry “woe is me.” But if you stop and take a look at it from another perspective, you may find things are actually better than they seem. Maybe that error at a critical time is just the inspiration you need to work a little harder and improve. Maybe a baserunning mistake that costs you a game today becomes the teaching moment that allows you to win a more important game down the road. You just never know.
So when things look their darkest, do your best to find the positive. It may take a little while, but it will pay off in the end.
Thank you all — mission accomplished (trophy update)
Today’s entry is to share some good news. Thanks in no small part to the people who read this blog and participate in the Discuss Fastpitch Forum, today I finally received the trophy I’ve been waiting for since July 2008.
Thanks to all who wrote, called or otherwise sent a message to help shake it loose. I truly do appreciate your taking the time to help me out. Power to the People!
Also thanks to Steve Verive who marshalled this through on his end. He personally dropped it off at my home today, and made sure everything was taken care of.
By the way, I have taken down the previous post since it’s no longer necessary. Again, thank you to all who helped out. You guys are the best!
Creating your own opportunities
Saw a great quote this morning from the Roman poet Ovid and felt inspired to share it. The quote read: “Chance is always powerful. Let your hook always be cast. In the pool where you least expect it, will be fish.”
I like that idea of having your hook in the water. All too often, in softball as well as in life, players and coaches want to row their boats out onto the lake, then wait for the fish to jump into the boat. I suppose it happens sometimes, but if that’s what you’re counting on to eat you’re going to spend most of your life hungry and unsatisfied.
The first step in achieving your goals is to cast your hook into the water. That means being prepared when the fish come along. Obviously practice is a big part of it. The old adage “you play how you practice” really is true. If you go through the motions in practice to put in your time, you’re approaching it the wrong way. Your hook is dangling over the water, not really in it. But it’s more than practice.
It’s being on a team where you can learn and improve your skills, not just win a bunch of trophies. It’s being in a situation where you feel challenged on a regular basis. It’s putting in the effort to learn the game — not just your little part of it but what everyone else is doing as well.
If you want to play softball in college, it”s going to the camps of colleges you think you might want to attend. It’s making your skills video and contacting college coaches on a regular basis.
I have found over time that the universe rewards activity. Maybe not right away, but sooner or later. Whatever that big fish is to you, the only way you’re going to catch it is by having your hook in the water. Make a point of dropping yours in today.
When is it too much?
I was just on the Web site of one of our local fastpitch organizations (not the one I belong to) and saw that they have announced tryout dates for 2010. Any guesses as to when tryouts are? August 8th, which is the week after ASA Nationals are finished.
To me, that just insane. Every sports psychologist, physical training expert and even high-level coaches will tell you it’s critical for players to shut down for a while, take a break from the sport, overcome those little nagging injuries that occur over the sesaon and just generally recharge the ol’ batteries. In our area, where many of the high schools start in mid-August, that time after nationals is likely the only opportunity families have to go on vacation together.
So why are they doing it? It’s the competition for players. If everyone else has tryouts at the beginning of August and you don’t, you might miss out on your shot at some good players. Not the best, necessarily, because I’d bet any program that has a shot at a top-level player isn’t going to stick to their guns on the whole “you have three days to commit or you’re out.” Nor do those players have to worry about finding a place to play. But for everyone else, especially at the younger ages where kids are less known, there’s a fear that the kids won’t be able to find a team so they go along with it.
People, it’s time to stop the insanity. I know our legislators have a lot on their minds right now what with the economy and bailouts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all. But I sure wouldn’t mind seeing one of them pass a law requiring teams to wait three weeks after the official end of the season before they can hold tryouts. I don’t think three weeks is asking a lot. But it sure could help out some kids and families. It might also help stop some of the softball burnout players are getting that is causing them to quit playing by the time they’re 15 or 16 or so.
“We have standards”
Heard about this one a few weeks ago. It’s something that happened at a tournament, but it’s the kind of thing that drives me nuts — mostly because it’s the kind of thing that drives parents, coaches and players out of the game.
During the tournament, a 10U team with a first-year coach was playing one of their pool games. This team was part of the host program, so various people were going around checking progress and making sure everything was going ok overall.
One Board member, however — a guy who is a well-known blowhard and not particularly well-liked within his organization — showed up at the 10U game in his little golf cart. He looked into his program’s dugout and didn’t like what he saw. There was a bag of catcher’s gear that — gasp! — was the wrong color. The catcher has her own gear and keeps it in her own bag. But no matter — in the middle of the game he starts screaming at the poor coach that they need to get that bag out of there, it’s the wrong color, and of course “we have standards.”
Later, this same guy saw that the first base coach wasn’t wearing the right coach’s shirt. The first base coach was wearing the shirt of a different program, because he is head coach of his older daughter’s team in that program. But he was trying to help out the first year coach by doing what he could. Since both teams were in this tournament, and the tournament ran across a couple of different complexes, he was running back and forth, doing his best to help out. Again, the blowhard starts yelling about standards in front of everyone. I’m not sure if he was yelling at the head coach or the first base coach, but he made it known that he wasn’t happy about the lack of conformity to the “standards.”
Seems to me if you have standards, the first standard is you don’t go yelling at your volunteer coaches in front of the parents, players, umpires and opponents, especially about something so trivial. By doing that, you’re hurting their credibility, and their desire. In addition, it makes them spend their time worrying about stupid, meaningless crap instead of focusing on the game and the players.
I understand the principle of if you look good you play good. I preach it myself. But if there’s a problem, you wait until after the game, you take the coach aside and you explain what you want quietly and rationally. You don’t stand there during the game and berate him. That’s just someone with his ego out of control, thinking he’s the Big Man. Here’s the thing. The teams can play without a particular Board member. But they can’t play without players and coaches. If you make life miserable for volunteers, especially first-year coaches doing the best they can, you’re just going to drive them away. Then who will you show how important you are?
I know if I was that first base coach, helping out for the sake of the team, I’d probably say it’s not worth it. No, check that. Knowing me, and knowing a confrontation would result, I’d probably wear the “wrong” shirt again on purpose. When the blowhard came by and yelled again, I’d taken him out of earshot of everyone else and quietly tell him if he EVER speaks to me like that, especially in front of the team, he will spend the rest of the tournament trying to pick my New Balance shoe out of his John Brown hindparts because that’s how far up it’s going to go.
Again, if you have standards, fine. You enforce them quietly and invisibly. If you really feel you have to let everyone know you’re in charge, you’re not in charge of anything. You’re just a blowhard and a jerk.
Ignorant v. petty
Ok, back to business on fastpitch softball.
I’ve been holding on to this one a little while, but can’t wait on it anymore. Stupid is a high school coach scheduling her team into a four-team tournament on the same day as prom. Petty is then benching a senior during the one game she is going to attend because she took the lead on behalf of all the others and asked if they could leave early to get ready for the prom.
The reality is prom is a big deal to most high school girls these days, whether they are athletes or not. They spend days or even weeks picking out just the right dress, deciding on how they’ll do their hair and nails, and generally getting prepared. The day of prom most will take several hours getting ready. It’s a very special day, especially for seniors who are at the end of their time in high school. Scheduling a completely meaningless tournament on the day of prom is just asking for discord and disappointment. It’s also asking for three extra losses on your record, because you’re fighting the tide. They’re going to go to prom, whether you like it or not.
Worse, though, is taking those kids who are willing to cut things a little closer by attending at all and punishing them for wanting to be high school girls. Why penalize your players because you were too short-sighted to realize what you were doing, and what you were asking of them? Why not give them that weekend off, so they can take advantage of another activity the school has to offer? And one that’s sure to be a lot more special and memorable than some pointless softball tournament?
Many have talked about the year-round specialization of softball players (rather than being well-round athletes playing multiple sports) as one of the leading factors in the increase in softball injuries. That same single-mindedness applies to other activities as well.
It’s time to remember that youth sports participants are youths first. You’re only young once. There’s plenty of time to be responsible adults later. When you’re making out your schedule, be smart. Don’t put your players in a position of making that decision and you’ll all be a lot happier.
On a personal note
Hi all,
Sorry to depart from our usual softball discussions, but I know some of you are aware that for the last year my son Adam has been serving with the Illinois National Guard in an infantry unit in Afghanistan. I wanted to let you know that we found out yesterday he has now arrived safely at Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin, and we will be picking him up Monday afternoon in Effingham, IL which is his home post (due to the fact he signed up while a student at Eastern Illinois University).
Obviously, we are very excited by this. It’s been a long and anxious year. He was a front-line soldier who saw his fair share of battle action, and from what we’re told helped disrupt Taliban operations in the southern part of the country.
Thanks to those of you who kept Adam in your thoughts and prayers; it meant a lot. And remember that there are still many soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and Coast Guard members who are paying for our ability to argue whether the rise ball actually rises and the “right” way to hit a softball by giving up their comfy homes here and putting their lives on the line.
We are looking forward to yelling at him to clean his room, do something with his life, and stop spending his money like he’s been out of the country for a year. 
In other words, normal stuff.
Ken
