Blog Archives
Why Coaching Different Levels Is Like Teaching in School
The other week I was waiting for my first lesson to come in when my friend and fellow coach Dave Doerhoffer sat down next to me sighing and shaking his head. Dave is an assistant coach at Vernon Hills High School (as well as a private hitting instructor).
As part of that role Dave, along with head coach Jan Pauly, helps oversee instruction for the Stingers travel teams that feed VHHS. On that day his head shaking had to do with the complicated instruction one of the coaches for a 10U team was giving to his players.
I won’t go into details to spare anyone embarrassment, but the gist of it was that while what was being instructed was technically correct for an older player, it was too much for a younger player who just needs the basics to absorb.
This is something that’s probably more common than most coaches and parents realize. Coaches go to a coaching clinic featuring D1 college coaches explaining how they teach this technical aspect (such as footwork at first base) or handle that situation (such as runners on first and third).
Then the travel coaches, all fired up as they ought to be, come back and try to apply those principles to their younglings. Usually with disastrous results. Players get confused, or don’t yet have the skills or experience to apply what’s being taught, and what should be good outcomes become bad ones instead.
Here’s where coaches can learn something from the way school subjects are taught. In language arts, math, science, etc., the early grades start with the very basics, allow their students to learn those, then build on that knowledge when they are ready and able to take the next step.
Take math, for example, Teaches don’t try to teach differential calculus or advanced algebra in first grade. (Thank goodness because I would have never made it out of first grade.)
They start with simple addition and subtraction, then move to multiplication and division. They continue to build on those skills little by little through multiple grades until they can handle more complex and more abstract mathematical principles.
It’s a slow build over time, not just jumping right to the difficult stuff because it’s cool or will make the teacher look good.
The same goes for vocabulary. Young students start with simple words they use and hear every day (except for those words), then learn more complex ones as their basic understanding grows.
Otherwise all that will happen is the teachers will obfuscate the intention in a torrent of enigmatic gibberish until any learning is diffused and the results are ineffectual. So there.
Coaches first need to put themselves into the shoes of their players, evaluate what those players know (if anything) about fastpitch softball, and work from there. Teaching them how to execute a trick play for first and third when those players can barely throw and catch just doesn’t seem like a good use of time or resources.
By the way, this doesn’t just apply to the very young, i.e., 8U, 10U, or 12U players. Ask some college coaches and they will probably tell you stories about good players who lacked basic knowledge on some aspects of the game, such as how to tag up on a fly ball and when you can run. (It’s when the ball is first touched, not when it’s caught.)
When I was coaching teams I learned the hard way not to assume your players know ANYTHING you THINK they ought to know. If you take the stance that if you didn’t teach it directly to them they don’t know it, no matter what they age, you will avoid some ugly surprises just when you need those least.
The bottom line is as a coach you need to look at what your players know and can do, then introduce new concepts that fit within those capabilities. Your players will learn the game better, in a more logical fashion, and you’ll avoid the preventable mistakes that keep us all up at night.
School photo by Ksenia Chernaya on Pexels.com
Hitters, Math, and Being Prepared
Since a lot of the U.S. has either gone back to school or is about to, I thought it would be a good time to talk about math. Specifically, the math of hitting in a game and why letting a good pitch go by early may not be such a good idea.
At its most basic, hitters are given a maximum of 5 pitches that count in each at bat. (Yes, you can get more if you’re fouling off pitches, but for the most part the goal is to hit the ball fair rather than foul it off so let’s stick with that.)
If you just stand there and get to a 3-2 count, that means 3 of the pitches were judged not good pitches to hit by the umpire and 2 were determined to be good. Again, you can debate umpire strike zones all day but for this argument we’ll assume the blue has a good zone.
So that means you had 2 out of 5 opportunities to get a good hit by swinging at a good pitch. Put another way, less than half the pitches were good ones.
Now let’s bring in those foul balls. Maybe they were good pitches you missed, or maybe they actually weren’t good pitches but they were close enough that you (rightfully) felt compelled to swig.
If you had 5 foul balls and 3 of them were borderline. you now had a total of 10 pitches, of which 4 were good and 6 were not. You’re still at the same 40% mark as before.
On the other hand, if one more of those pitches was borderline, you now had 3 good and 7 not-so-good pitches and your percentage of good pitches to hit dropped from 40% to 30%.
Ah, but we’re not done yet.
It’s pretty rare for hitters to hit pitches in all zones equally well. Most have zones where they hit better – say up and in and up and out – and zones where they don’t hit the ball well at all, even though they are legitimate strikes.
So now, of those 3 or 4 good pitches we outlined earlier, maybe only one was in a zone you liked. Which means out of the 10 pitches in that at bat, you only got 1 truly good pitch to hit.
No wonder hitting is so difficult.
Now stretch that across an entire game. If you get 3 at bats, you may only have gotten 3-6 pitches out of 30 that were where you can be confident you could hit the ball hard somewhere.
Pretty low odds, wouldn’t you say? Add in that a hard-hit ball could still be fielded for an out by a fielder and it is amazing anyone has a decent batting average.
The point of all of this is, as a hitter, there is a pretty good chance you’re only going to see 1 truly good pitch per at bat, so you’d better be ready when it comes.
Keep in mind the pitcher’s goal is to not throw you ANY good pitches to hit. At the college level and even high school or higher travel ball levels the opposing team may have a book on your that shows where you like the ball and where you don’t. Guess where they’re going to try to throw it?
At the younger levels, many of the pitchers don’t have full command of their pitches yet so their locations may be a little to a lot erratic. The forgiving term for that is “effectively wild,” i.e., they can’t hit a location reliably, but even if they’re off they’re close enough to the strike zone that it works for them anyway.
We’ve all known pitches like that.
Whatever the case with the pitcher, again, when she does throw a pitch you can hit well you have to be ready to hit it. For me, that means you have to assume EVERY pitch is going to be that pitch, load up and start your swing as if that’s true, and then hold up if you see it’s not.
After all, you don’t want to waste the very few really good pitches you’re going to see by realizing too late that you should be swinging. If you’re only going to see 2 or 3 hittable pitches in a game, you need to make the most of them when they come.
That includes the first pitch you see, by the way. I know some hitters don’t like swinging at the first pitch, and some coaches preach letting the first pitch go by so you can get a look at how the pitcher is throwing. I’m not a fan of either approach.
Keep in mind pitchers are coached to get ahead in the count. Many teams place a lot of emphasis on first pitch strikes and track that stat religiously.
It would be a shame to let the best pitch you’re going to see in that at bat go by automatically just because, don’t you think? At the very least, on that first pitch you should be looking for a particular pitch and your best location to hit, and if you see it go ahead and swing with enthusiasm.
It will take a lot of pressure off of you and keep you from having to go into survival mode later in that at bat. If your coach insists on no swinging at the first pitch you have to abide by that, of course, but hopefully he/she can be convinced to at least green light a pitch that’s in your happy place.
The math is the math. Hitters usually don’t get a lot of opportunities to hit good pitches, so you need to be ready when they do come along.
Take advantage of good pitches when they come and you can make the math work for you.
Teacher photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 