Advice for turning a HS program around.

OlatheDad said:

One thing I see that is missing is recruiting. You probably have a lot of girls at school that play, but are not trying out.

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The poster claims that the talent is already there to win games.

OlatheDad said:

Advertise the tryouts and actually run a true tryout. During the tryout do not ask who they play for just see if they can play.

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Seems pretty obvious … run a tryout and select your best players.

OlatheDad said:

Use your JV team to bring on girls that can help the varsity team in the future. If your school has a freshman team use that also. Between the three teams you will be able to bring in a wide range of players and abilities. In our area it would be around 45 girls. Varsity selections are not made until the week before the first game.

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Not making Varsity selections until the week before the first game means that your Varsity team will not have practiced sufficiently leading up to the first game. The Varsity selection should take at most 3-days, and can often be accomplished much quicker.

OlatheDad said:

The more girls you can take this year the more interest you will have next year.

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This is simply not true. The more players the team has, the larger number of people that will not be playing … and the more inefficient practices will be. Players that experience a lot of sitting, and inefficient practices, aren't necessarily excited about being on the team the following year. More does not mean better.

but four of them are pretty decent

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This tells me you don't have a good/great pitcher.

As a coach defense is probably where you can have the greatest impact putting the right girls in the right spots and making 100% sure they understand the game, they are always making the right play (even if they fail at execution sometimes).

While you can work on hitting and probably improve as the year goes you can't create a great hitter overnight either.

Otto said:

I suppose I am really looking for advice on getting the monkey off of their backs and burying it. I honestly think that one winning season would turn into five, but how do you shake your history?

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If you figure that out please let the Cubs know. Take a page from the Red Sox and do whatever it takes to build a "this is our time, this is our team" mentality. By having the common goals mentioned by BuckeyeGuy a team can come together quickly and get over any losing history. If they truly have the talent to win, and decide to focus on the present, they will do fine. Show them the documentary about the 2004 Red Sox and what they did the break the curse of the Bambino by expecting to win.

I would suggest making sure you really know why they are winning and losing, and not just what has been passed by word of mouth. Obliviously ghosts from the past don't lose today's game. If you have access to score books, notes and videos go back 5 years (since the coach has been there) and analyse each game as to why you lost or won. Odds are you will see 2-3 reoccurring things that cost games in the loses. Sure some will be simply that the other team was better, but you may find common denominators that has haunted the team that have never been big enough to notice on the whole, but significant enough to cost games and have not been sufficiently addressed in practice/training. Maybe there's a tendency this coach has in certain key situations (and doesn't realize it) that other coaches know about and exploit. Maybe some basic defensive strategies are not being used or are not being used effectively, maybe lineups are not being set to maximize hitters efficiencies vs. pitchers tendencies, etc. It can obviously be countless reasons, but by identifing the most common causes of loses you can start addressing them. Don't let a team settle for justifing loses by thinking it's their destiny.

HS team pride can be a powerful thing. If the team is made up of mostly underclassmen get them to realize the losing teams from the past have absolutely no bearing on their performance or success. If possible, you may want think about a school pep rally for the team to get them focused on the now and representing their school and not just the team. When they have school pride to go along with team and personal pride you may find an additional degree of desire that didn't previously exist.

The best schools in every sport build a program. You need good JV coaches and good varsity coaches. They need to develop an atmosphere where they play the best players regardless of politics. It needs to be the sport that kids want to play. There may not be a stud pitcher that doesn't go there, but there might be or there might be a couple of great outfielders. Our local school is trying to build through weekly clinics all winter long. If you can get a place to hit the extra reps will pay dividends.

It may take a few years, but if you can get the reputation of a place to play the younger kids coming in will want to play for this team.

In the short term, as others have said you need to play good defense, but also be able to hit. If you strike out 14 times a game you won't beat anyone very often. If you make 4 errors a game you will give good teams too many outs.

Finally try and instill a team concept. Encourage the older players to mentor the younger ones. It's possible that you'll have Freshman starting on Varsity. Physically theyll be fine, but they are often 14 playing with 18 year old girls. They have to feel like these older kids care for them versus hating them as in some programs.

Introduce competition.

So many high school programs are built on a "seniority" system that rewards upperclassmen for staying with the program. This is great if the best players are all upperclassmen every year, but that is highly unlikely.

I've seen this be so bad that I once had one of my second-year 14U girls who was not only a D1 talent, but a legitimate upper-tier Pac-12 prospect get put on the JV team! This girl wasn't just the best middle infielder at her school, she was perhaps one of the two or three best middle infielders in the entire country of any high school age girls up through 18U. Her coach told her she had to "pay her dues" to be on the varsity squad and then proceeded to have a (senior) rec player start at 2B!

Let the girls know that the best player wins the starting job regardless of what year in school she is or what travel team she plays on. Then, stick to your word.

Otto said:

So, pitching, pitching, and pitching seems to be the recurring theme. The school has several pitchers for this year. Most have been with PC's for years. None have dominant velocity so strikeouts will be fairly rare with the competition on our schedule, but four of them are pretty decent and defense should be solid +.

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If you have four decent pitchers, maybe pitch calling is the problem.....who is calling pitches and do they know what they are doing?

Interesting post, canyonjoe. Do I know you?

canyonjoe said:

The best schools in every sport build a program. You need good JV coaches and good varsity coaches. They need to develop an atmosphere where they play the best players regardless of politics.

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Of course, there is a real need to "build a program." Of course, you need good coaches. However, playing "the best" players is always the claim, but sometimes not the case. That is, sometimes "the politics" originates from the coaching staff. There can be incurable biases in coaches, particularly when several of the high school coaches are daddy coaches. Rose-colored glasses, anyone? This is especially a concern when these daddy coaches are also the coaches in the high school coach's summer competitive teams (Often results in head coach seeing assistant daddy coaches' daughters in a different light. It's some sort of loyalty payback.).

canyonjoe said:

It needs to be the sport that kids want to play.

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And what criteria do you use to determine who really wants to play? If a high school player opts to play for a summer team other than the high school coach's summer team, should she be branded as someone who doesn't "want to play?"

canyonjoe said:

Encourage the older players to mentor the younger ones.

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I would include that it is vital to see to it that the mentality or biases of the coaches doesn't drive most/all of the older kids away by the time they are seniors. You need more than just a couple seniors on the team. Having only a couple seniors and a lot of starry-eyed freshmen isn't generally going to get you to where you want to be. Retention of good older players is vital!

My main point here is this.... Sometimes the best available coaches for high school ball happen to be daddy coaches, most of which have summer teams. When these coaches are hired to coach high school softball, there should be increased oversight by the AD to ensure the associated biases and such are kept under control. If the AD is passive in this regard, there will most surely be an abuse of power by the coaching staff.

Otto said:

So, pitching, pitching, and pitching seems to be the recurring theme. The school has several pitchers for this year. Most have been with PC's for years. None have dominant velocity so strikeouts will be fairly rare with the competition on our schedule, but four of them are pretty decent and defense should be solid +.

The roster at the school should win. They should have won last year from what I saw. They have overcome the talent defecit in recent years and are a .666+ win % on paper. It seems that 25 straight losing seasons for this school has an impact on the recent talented rosters. They continue to struggle. I have seen the opposite, where teams with winning traditions have success even when the talent drops dramatically, the "that's what we've always done" factor.

I suppose I am really looking for advice on getting the monkey off of their backs and burying it. I honestly think that one winning season would turn into five, but how do you shake your history?

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Velocity, especially in HS is not nearly as important as command or movement. If you have a pitcher with a bit of movement, can mix speeds, and most of all work the bottom corners of the zone she will be dominant. I have seen the importance of this first hand with my DD and many other pitchers.

Its hard but make the team something the girls can be proud of. Get good leaders who help impress upon everyone that playing for your school is a privilege. Honestly, culture is hard to come by but id over time you develop it upper classmen will want to keep the tradition alive and pass on their passion to the underclassmen.

Oh, and a good pitcher.

Otto, I've been there and done that. I'm in the middle of another coaching season (girl's golf) and don't have time right now to post an adequate response. If I don't respond again here in public, please send me a private message.