Advice for turning a HS program around.

Hello. I have been asked to AC a HS team for this year. HC of 5 years is very open to ideas/suggestions. She has made real improvements over time. Current AC's are young and energetic, and they need another.

The challenge as I see it is to take a program with a long history of losing and turning it into a winner. I could elaborate but I want to be positive. Now, let's say that real turnarounds don't happen overnight. I understand that. Seeds were planted years ago in the feeders, and the talent is actually pretty strong at this school currently. The talent hasn't broken the tradition yet though, and players just don't EXPECT to win until they go play with their travel teams. We need a turn around year in the worst way at this school! Thoughts?

Reach out to the local TB teams and make sure some of the upcoming players districted for your HS are pitchers and get plenty of circle time....

Pitching is the one thing that you cannot coach up to an acceptable level in a short HS season. Without pitching you have nothing. That said, who on the coaching staff understands pitching?

^^^^^Unfortunately this!

I can tell you a few things you can work on.

- Work on making the simple plays. The easy grounders and pop ups have to be outs. Getting every out you are supposed to makes a big difference
- Baserunning not running yourself out of innings helps a lots too
- Work on plate discipline not swinging at bad pitches and putting balls in play when they are strikes

In the end these things will help you stay in games, not get blown out and maybe even pull out a couple wins maybe even finish upper half of your district...but without an ace that is all you can hope for. Our school was something like 17-5, we have a good pitcher, we did lose a couple close ones and handled just about everyone else but we will never get out of our district because we were shutout home and away by a team with a real ace D1 prospect end of story.

riseball said:

Pitching is the one thing that you cannot coach up to an acceptable level in a short HS season. Without pitching you have nothing. That said, who on the coaching staff understands pitching?

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I believe this is a FANTASTIC post!!! "Without pitching you have nothing."

"Who on the coaching staff understands pitching?" I'm sure some, maybe all, of the coaching staff THINKS they understand pitching mechanics, but that doesn't mean they do. Odds are they teach bowling mechanics for pitching (hello elbow). If there isn't a pitching coach in the area that teaches mechanics similar to what is advocated here, someone has to step up and study the IR in the classroom and drive mechanics stickys on this site and attempt to teach pitching correctly. Further, get several girls going with pitching, you may find one who is willing to work hard to get there. In fact, if you have a couple girls who really want to pitch, I don't think they should do much of anything else. That is, the best thing they can do with the time they have to practice is work on pitching.

One more thing..... Pitching is a two person thing. The pitcher will be no better than the catcher is.

In HS, there are a few dominant pitchers, everyone else is somewhat average. Obviously a dominant pitcher helps, but if you don't have that you have to do with what you have. The difference between those teams with average pitchers and winning is defense. A good defense can keep a team in the game. On offense if you dont have the big hitters then you better hope you have some speed that can make things happen and get on base to score a few runs.

I don't know what level of pitching you have but in a short HS season, you aren't going to create an SEC pitcher no matter what pitching coach you have on staff. I would focus on defense. Tons of reps on defense, good aggressive baserunning and small ball.

Goal setting. In "The Mental Game of Baseball," goal setting is broken down to a science almost, and the impact of proper goal setting cannot be overstated. I won't go too deep, but there should be individual goals and team goals that follow a few rules:

First and foremost, goals must be phrased in a positive manner. There can not be any "don't miss a strike" or "don't leave one over the plate." Every goal needs to be presented as a positive action: "see the ball" or "throw a good low strike."

• Goals must be compatible with each other.
• Goals should be limited in number
• Goals should be prioritized, most important at the top of the list
• The list should be in writing (but individual goals do not need to be shared beyond player/coach)
• Reread the list regularly, judge behavior and performance honestly
• Make the most important goals relate to the job at hand (i.e. one pitch at a time goals)

IMO there's nowhere near enough time spent on the mental side of the game for most teams.

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?

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.

Some may not want to play because of the teams past record, but some may not tryout because they do not play on an name brand team or travel team and do not think they would be selected. You might be surprised to find that some of those girls can actually play, but due to a variety of circumstances they do not play for an A or Travel team.

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.

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.

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

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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It would be interesting to have the parent of your best pitcher post a clip of her pitching. Why? To see how curious they about pitching with proper mechanics. It's pretty tough to become a great pitcher if the wrong mechanics are being taught. Going to a "pitching" coach doesn't necessarily mean correct mechanics are taught.