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New Season, New Opportunity, New You.
Welp, the 2025-2026 season is completely behind us now. Hopefully you had a little opportunity to take some time off, do some non-softball things, and generally put some space between what was and what is to be.
Now, as the new season gets under way for many (at least at most levels), there is an important question to be answered: who do you play to be as a player? In other words, do you plan to make this season a continuation of the last one, or are you looking for something more?
If you’re happy with the way last season went you may not have a whole lot of incentive to change things up. It was working well, and while you are always looking to get better it’s more on a straight line from where you were.
There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, it makes a lot of sense. No sense jumping off a winning horse in the middle of a race.
But if you weren’t happy with how last season went, this time of year presents a golden opportunity to make next season a better experience. This is true of players, coaches, parents, and even umpires by the way.
Essentially, you don’t have to settle for who you were last season, particularly if you have joined a new team. Instead, you have the opportunity to be whoever you want to be – as long as you’re willing to put in the work to back it up.
For example, suppose you were a .220 hitter, batting toward the bottom of the lineup if you were in the lineup at all. Once you have established that is where you should be, it becomes difficult to climb out of that hole.
The new season, however, resets the clock, especially if you’re with a new team. They won’t know how you struggled before.
They will see you where you are now, and if where you are now is someone who is hitting .345, the new team is far more likely to find a place for you higher up in the batting order – not just in pool play or throwaway games but the games when everything is on the line.
It’s the same all over the field. Give up too many walks or hits (or both) as a pitcher last season? Here’s your opportunity to show you can get three quick outs.
Make too many errors on the field? Here’s your chance to show that you are now a sure-handed fielder with a strong, reliable arm.
The weight of the past has been lifted from you. It’s like removing all the old plastic bottles and other debris (including those old batting gloves that have been fermenting in sweat) that have been accumulating at the bottom of your bat bag since the first time you used it.
It feels lighter and cleaner, making it easier to cart around while helping you get ready for a fresh start. So how do you replace the old you with, well, You 2.0?
It starts with taking some action. If you just sit around hoping this season will go better than the last one, nothing is going to change, because while your thoughts may reveal what you want, your actions are what determine what you get.
Start by changing your mindset or your attitude. Instead of being mad or sad that you don’t have what other people have, start figuring out what you need to DO to get what they have, then start doing it.
It might be practicing more – or at all. If you’re a fielder who wants to make fewer errors, find someone who will hit or even toss you lots of ground balls, fly balls, whatever you need to work on.
If you can’t find anyone to help, bounce a rubber ball off a concrete wall. Don’t let what you can’t find limit you; instead, be creative in order to get what you want.
If there are skills you need that you can’t acquire on your own, get lessons from a qualified instructor. If you can’t afford a qualified instructor, ask a team coach for extra help.
Working with a team coach will not only help you with those specific skills. It will also help build a relationship between you and the coach that will make them a little more inclined to select you when decision time comes.
If you can’t find a coach, look up videos on YouTube or other sources, and then video yourself performing the skill to see if what you’re doing looks like what you’re supposed to be doing. A word of caution though: there are a lot of bad drills and incorrect techniques being taught online, especially on social media sites such as Tik Tok and Instagram, so be careful whose advice you follow.
Once you’re on the field in a team setting, make sure You 2.0 acts the way you want coaches and fans to perceive you. Act confident, even if you don’t feel confident, and be aggressive rather than tentative, even if you’re unsure of yourself.
People in general respond to confidence, and are much less willing to assume a bad play is how you play normally. And the funny thing is if you fake that confidence in the beginning, you’ll probably gain it as you go along, growing into the player you want to be perceived as being. You’ll have more fun that way too.
The bottom line is you don’t have to be stuck with who you were before. If you’re on a new team you have the opportunity to be whoever you want through your action, your attitudes, and your overall approach.
Even if you’re on the same team, however, a change in performance, a change in approach and a change in attitude will be noticeable. While you will have to overcome some old assumptions about you, there’s no better time to start changing those assumptions than when everything feels fresh and new again, and your team is looking 100% ahead.
Take advantage of the new season to build a new you, or at least You 2.0, and you’ll be much more likely to enjoy the outcome.
Unhappy with Your Situation? Try Subbing
At any given time, but especially during the heart of the season, there are players (and parents) who are unhappy with either the amount of playing time they’re getting or the amount of playing time they’re getting at their preferred position.
I get that. You don’t sign up for a team and spend thousands of dollars on player fees, uniforms, equipment, travel expenses, and maybe even private lessons and personal training sessions just to get a closer seat to the action. You don’t spend all that time and effort working on the skills for one position only to never get the chance to try those skills out under actual game conditions.
Now, if you’re on a middle school or high school team you have two options: accept it or move. You can also entertain the option of complaining to the administration or school board but to be honest I’ve never seen that work personally, and have rarely heard about it working.
Your better bet is to find a good real estate agent and start packing.
If you’re in college you do have the option of transferring the old-fashioned way or entering the transfer portal. But just be aware if you opt for the latter of those two you could find yourself without a place to play next year.
If, however, you are playing travel ball you do have another option – you can sub for another team without giving up your place on your current team.
Subbing is a great way to test out the waters to see if you actually have the goods to play more/play a particular position more with essentially no risk (providing your current team doesn’t outright prohibit it).
What you want to do is look for a team at or below your current team’s skill level that is in desperate need of a couple more players in order to play in a tournament, round robin, or other situation. You don’t want to just be there for insurance in case someone gets hurt; you want to know they will actually need you on the field and at the plate.
If you’re looking to sub at a particular position – especially pitcher, catcher, or shortstop – be sure to look for those opportunities specifically. If you’re a pitcher looking for an opportunity to show her stuff, the last place you need to be is on a team that will already have four pitchers available that weekend and just needs a player or two in the outfield.
Basically, you want to look for an opportunity where the team you’re subbing for is forced to put you where you want to be. At which point it’s then up to you to perform.
One of the great things about subbing is that it takes some of the pressure off of you when you’re given your opportunity. Even under the best of circumstances, where your current coaches are rooting for you, you know that if you don’t perform it will probably hurt your future chances.
That adds a lot of pressure to the opportunities you are being given. It’s tough to perform well with a gun to your head.
And, of course, if your current coaches already don’t think much of you, any failure to perform will just reinforce their already low opinions of you.
If you’re subbing under the right circumstances, though, worst case is you find out your current coaches are right that you’re not ready, you get through the round robin or tournament as best you can, and you get back to work. That happens.
Best case is you get the opportunity to prove to yourself (as well as others) that you are, in fact, ready to play regularly and contribute and you build more confidence. Then, if you’re given an opportunity on your own team you can approach it with a “watch this!” attitude.
And if you still don’t get the opportunities with your current team, you can start making plans for next year knowing that someone will want to take advantage of what you now have to offer.
Think of it like a software app. Many paid apps offer a 14-day or 30-day free trial before you’re actually required to pay for it. This trial period gives you a chance to see how the software works and if it does the job you want it to do.
Subbing is your free trial. If it works out great!
If it doesn’t work out you’ve learned something about yourself and can keep working to put yourself into the position you want to be in – literally as well as figuratively.
There are plenty of places to learn about subbing opportunities – friends, former teammates, co-workers, Facebook groups, etc. Keep your eyes and ears open and when your schedules align do your best to take advantage of them.
It just might be the situation that launches your playing career in a new direction. Not to mention being a lot of fun.
Nothing Like Starting with a Clean Slate
Fall ball is beginning to ramp up, at least in my area. A couple of teams I know played last week, and a whole bunch more are scheduled to play tournaments and/or round robins this weekend.
(That’s fascinating to an old coach like me, by the way, since for most of my coaching career fall ball meant playing a friendly or two on a couple of Sunday afternoons. Now it’s a regular part of the overall softball season.)
For players who stayed with the team they were on in the previous season it’s probably no big deal. They know the coaches and (most of) their teammates, and the coaches and teammates know them. It’s a pretty comfortable situation.
For those who are on new teams, however, it’s an incredible opportunity. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, players on new teams can create a whole new impression of who they are and what they can do. That new impression will be how the new team sees them.
Take a hitter who had a rough summer. She struck out a lot, and when she did hit it was mostly popups and weak ground balls.
Then toward the middle of the season she took some hitting lessons and started driving the ball. Unfortunately, her coaches already had a picture of her as a hitter in their minds, and didn’t trust that what she was showing was what she had become. So she stayed at the bottom of the batting order.
With the new team, however, all bets are off. They liked something about her at tryouts, which presumably is why they took her. Those are their only preconceived notions about who she is as a player.
All she has to do is what she was doing at the end of the last season – hitting consistently, with plenty of extra base hits – and she’ll be at the top of the batting order on her new team. Because these coaches’ impressions of who she is will be based on today forward instead of her far less productive past.
The same is true for every position. If she was a pitchers who struggled with control early on but got it together later, the starting point today is a pitcher with control. Error-prone fielder? Not anymore.
The only ones on this team who know she struggled in the past are the player and her parents. And hopefully they’re not saying anything!
It isn’t often in life that you get a real, live do-over. But this is one of those situations.
If you’re starting up with a new team, leave the past in the past. Forget about any struggles you may have had before, and play the way you’re capable of playing today.
Now go be awesome!
New Year, New You
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
I know the headline sounds like an ad for a diet product or a health club, but there really is something to taking advantage of the turn of the calendar to start making improvements in our lives.
As humans we tend to like to have a clean break from the old when we start something new. The most obvious example is most people like to take a little time off between the time they end their old jobs and the time they start new ones. That little space in-between, even if it’s just a couple of days, helps us decompress and let go of the past so we can focus on the present – and the future.
That’s what’s often magical about the start of a new year. While in reality it’s just another day on the calendar, it feels like the start of something different.
So how can you take advantage of this artificially imposed fresh start? By (dare I say it?) resolving to do one or more things differently this year.
If you’re a coach, spend some time studying new techniques or approaches to the game. Challenge yourself by looking into information that conflicts with your current beliefs – especially if you’ve held those beliefs for a while.
Attend a coaching clinic with an open mind. Watch a current video or read a new book. Not just on fastpitch softball specifically, but also on coaching principles in general. In short, look for ways to be better than you are now.
If you’re a player, think about what a great year would be for you, then think about whether you can get there with what you’re doing now. A good way to do that is to write a letter to your future self describing the awesome season you just had.
If the season you want to have isn’t achievable with your current approach, figure out what you need to change to make it achievable. It could be something as simple as practicing for five more minutes during a session, or finding ways to sneak in an extra 5-10 minutes of practice per week when you can’t get to a field.
It could also mean being willing to change something you’ve been doing for a long time to see if the new way will work better. After all, no one ever created an innovation by continuing to do the same old thing.
If you’re a parent, think about how you can be more supportive, both to your player and to the team. Hopefully you’re already one who cheers in a positive way. But if you’re not sure, maybe set up a video camera and record yourself during your child’s next game to see what you think. Would you want to sit next to you? Or be with you on the ride home?
You might even want to do the same for someone else you may know, assuming they would take the information in the spirit it is intended. Learning to relax and enjoy the game makes it a lot more pleasurable for everyone – including the person who usually gets so upset.
You can also try watching a game where you have no stake to see what you think of how the spectators are reacting. The compare that to how you feel during your child’s game. It can be an interesting perspective.
One other thing you can do as a parent is to educate yourself on what the latest thinking is regarding various skills and see if that matches up with what your player is being taught. Don’t just assume a coach or instructor knows what he/she is doing, or is keeping up with the sport. Learn what to look for so you know whether you’re investing your hard-earned money in the best way possible.
It’s a new year. Why settle for the same old same old?
Take advantage of the energy that comes with a fresh start and use it to create a new, even better you. Best of luck for the upcoming year!
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 