What to do...

...with a team who can win when they get three runs up, but will never come back when they get three runs down? They play with energy as long as they are winning. The look drained when they are behind. Defense is solid when they up; they make the most errors when they get down. Early in the game, they can go either way.

I feel your pain. Our last team was like that. Nothing anyone tried worked to break them out of it.

Can you really do anything besides switch the Team up? Bring in the bench, switch players positions on the field?

SoGASoftball said:

...with a team who can win when they get three runs up, but will never come back when they get three runs down? They play with energy as long as they are winning. The look drained when they are behind. Defense is solid when they up; they make the most errors when they get down. Early in the game, they can go either way.

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When you figure it out, please share the info with Don Mattingly. Thanks!

Teams that get ahead of you by 3 runs are much better teams on average than those that trail you by 3 runs. So some of what you're seeing might be the fact that better teams make you appear less energetic than weaker teams. Everybody looks energetic legging out a triple, but a 1-2-3 inning is lethargic by nature.

Also, what age division is it? I found that in 10U and first-year 12U, that my teams didn't rally from deficits very often. It began to change at second-year 12U. I think there were a few reasons. One is that by the time they are second-year 12U, they've played so many games that they aren't as emotionally up and down based on the score. They just play. Two is that by this age, most everybody can hit a little bit. So once you've got 9 competitive hitters, anything can happen. More upsets occur. You come back from 5-run deficits, and you blow them. Players see that and therefore don't pay as much attention to the score. In younger ages, it seemed the better teams would just beat you, and you'd beat the lesser teams. Didn't have so many back-and-forth games.

None of that answered your question. Just painted a picture of how I see it.

Can you identify 1-2 players who start the gloom parade when things aren't going their way? I try my best to address that behavior early to keep it from snowballing, but it doesn't always work. It would be a terrible coincidence if you somehow wound up with 12 of those kids.

It's high school. It's a very young team, not one senior. But probably 7 or 8 of the 11 "regular" starters have played TB for more than a three years. Cowdogz, I believe this is right. There is one junior that the rest of the team feeds off. Not necessarily a real bad attitude, just obvious body language.

Anyone use a gimmick early to get back up. I believe it is FSU that flicks the mosquito off their shoulder as a symbol of leaving the error behind. Just need to break the cycle.

As far as competition, they lost to a team by four runs last night, and they run-ruled the same team a couple of weeks ago in a friendly. When they get on top, it's all good, but they can't fight back when they get down. Lot's of season left for them to gel.

SoGASoftball said:

There is one junior that the rest of the team feeds off. Not necessarily a real bad attitude, just obvious body language.
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Bench her a** if she does it again. Tell her why. If the body language cleans up (or is less noticeable from her spot on the bench), perhaps the rest of your young squad will learn to stage a comeback.

Help girls to narrow focus onto the moment. Forget about score. Trust what they know and do what they know. Total focus on results tends to get bad results. Was AC for school team where the HC put out negative energy when we we're losing. All he kept saying was "we need more hits, more hits." So the girl who is out even after grinding out a great at-bat feels like a failure instead of being congratulated for her great effort. I believe that process will bring results.

Sounds like you're dealing with a culture change here. It will take time and creativity.

The way we did it was to try and give the kids hope when we got down 8-0.

One game the other team made a routine play and celebrated like they just stole a home run. As our kids went out in the field I told them that if they
celebrate a routine play they must not always make them. (It turned out I was right). We came back and won 10-9 as the other team imploded. We came back
from 6 or more down at least 7 times after that. In every case the other team gave us a few extra outs with the wrong hitters coming up and we would explode.

As someone pointed out often when you get down it's a really good team and you are going to have a tough time coming back. However, against a lot of teams if you
keep pushing and getting runners on it can turn in a hurry.