Thread: As a coach would you have done this?

I have a daughter who is in her 3rd year of pitching she's 14 and just finished her freshman year of HS. Her HS coach admitts he knows very little if nothing at all about the fundementals of pitching; so we (parents) have been paying for and taking her to pitching lessons. Which I have zero problem with I'm glad to do it; it is for her and the teams benefit. She's developed very fast and is capable of pitching Varsity at our teams level of play and the teams we play in our region. He even told her at the beginning of the season he'd planned on utilizing her more on the mound. However she only saw 12 innings in a 30 game varsity schedule and probably 20 innings in JV. She's had in those 32 innings 15 strike outs 4 walks and 10 inning shutouts. Problem is our Varsity pitcher's dad is the Assistant Coach. Our daughter is also a southpaw. She averages about 52 mph fastpitch with a 40 mph change up; has a natural curve ball and dropball. She's has proven to be quite effective. At least I feel that she's done very well for only pitching for 3 seasons.

Our problem arose during a tournament right before our district play was to start. The tournament was played at a team we could potentially face in regional play. Our HS is relatively small and we normally play the same size schools. However our region contains 1A-4A teams. To make a long story short; he pitched our Varsity pitcher to a team at our level of skill and play however he pitched my daughter against a team that won the state tournament. We've never played past districts, I understand that we should play different skill levels of ball but to pitch an inexperienced pitcher against a state championship team; we felt like was just bad coaching. Our varsity pitcher we felt like had the experience to pitch that game and that he used our daughter to "save" the varsity pitchers record.

I guess my question is if you were a coach would you agree to what our HS coach did?

I would do this and have done this numerous times for many reasons.

It may be that the coach felt your daughter throws slower and that would throw the state champs off.

There are countless reasons for any given lineup decision.

IF they did it to save her record, shame on them. There is no way to really know.

>> To make a long story short; he pitched our Varsity pitcher to a team at our level of skill and play however he pitched my daughter against a team that won the state tournament. <<

An important way that someone gets better at a skill position is to face better competition. Some of what you wrote could easily be mistaken for whats happened for my pitching dd, except for the jv part. Our high school team in pre-season played to the championship in two very large tournaments - both times, we faced the same team in the championship, the #1 ranked team in 4A in texas. Both championships, he put in my freshman dd, I was very pleased. We lost both games by one run, 1-0 and 3-2, and probably would have won the second game except for some reason, he sat out the top hitting kid on the team. High school, wth knows, but the point is, she hung with the #1 ranked team in two 7 inning games. Those were the only losses my dd had in 10 games, but she is a freshman, pitching behind an experienced junior. Do I agree - doesnt matter - its his team. Its our choice as to whether we play next year or not, but if she plays, I want her to face these top teams. Facing the weak Little League nurtured high school teams teaches nothing at all. When your dd pitches against regular teams - she will have in her head, "Hey, I pitched against #1 #&^*@@^ high school, these guys dont hold a candle to them."

And the other thought is these coaches are protecting their favorite kid's record. If thats true, fine but the big game experience is much more important in the long run that the high school record.

Maybe he was trying to see what she had in the circle...that way she could be ready to take the #1 spot on Varsity next year?

You never mentioned, did she get rocked by this team? If so, then she should know what she needs to work on to become a good pitcher.

Originally Posted by CoachKevin

Maybe he was trying to see what she had in the circle...that way she could be ready to take the #1 spot on Varsity next year?

You never mentioned, did she get rocked by this team? If so, then she should know what she needs to work on to become a good pitcher.

My question is why hasn't he given her the circle more during the season then waiting til this game to see, I understand the whole concept of seeing what she's made of; she's shown him all season in practice and by her record during the innings she did get to pitch. I'm just frustrated I guess.

She got thumped LARGE 17-0 in 2 innings so yea it went on her record and not the Varsity Pitchers record after the game the assistant coach kept saying to me "DD didn't want to pitch that game either" that's when it hit me that he saved his dd's record and handed off this to my dd

We are going to be switching to some higher level of play in two weeks. Going to face some teams from out of our region because the coach wants to see what we do against better teams. Challenge our girls by playing better competition. My dd has only pitched 21 innings in tournament ball. That's probably more than she's pitched the last four years in league. Kind of worries me if she faces a team, like your dd did, that rocks her. How did your DD handle the mental aspect of her game after that?

Originally Posted by Manie

My question is why hasn't he given her the circle more during the season then waiting til this game to see, I understand the whole concept of seeing what she's made of; she's shown him all season in practice and by her record during the innings she did get to pitch. I'm just frustrated I guess.

She got thumped LARGE 17-0 in 2 innings so yea it went on her record and not the Varsity Pitchers record after the game the assistant coach kept saying to me "DD didn't want to pitch that game either" that's when it hit me that he saved his dd's record and handed off this to my dd

Well with that info... yea it sounded like the Varsity pitcher didn't want anything do with it, so it fell onto your DD. Too sad, personally I wouldn't have done that, I would have made both of them pitch.

If she got rocked that hard, why didn't the coach pull her?

But, here is a good lesson for your DD. Tell her not to take the loss to heart, but to learn from it. Was she hitting her spots? Was she getting good movement on the ball? Were her rotations tight? These are all the things that can be used in a positive way despite what happened in the game.

Originally Posted by sluggers

Yep...your DD now knows how good she needs to become.

If you and her don't like to lose, put her in band. Everyone gets a medal at competition with band.

At our HS the marching band, of which my son is a proud member, puts in 300+ hours of practice and EARN the medals and trophies they've won. They've been the top marching TOB band in the mid-atlantic region the past three years.

Regarding pitchinig a freshman againt a top HS team - I would regard it as an honor.

Someone here or on another forum - Donnie S maybe - posted this for me last year when I asked a similar question about DD and pitching (she was a 1st year pitcher last year).

When pitchers start out - the focus shouldn't be on the win or loss of a game, but the 21 outs it takes to get there.

1. Did she hit her spots consistantly
2. Did she have control over her pitches
3. She she mix up her pitches properly
4. Was her velocity where it was supposed to be

If the answer to those 4 questions is yes - the pitching outing was a success, regardless of score, as there may have been an error in the field to allow a run to score, or the other pitcher may have done an even better job in controlling DD team at bat and DD's team did not score enough runs to come out on top.

Softball puts a tremendous spotlight on the pitcher and girls need to learn how to take the successes they have and make them work for them.