This weekend at a tournament in Brandon Mississippi my daughter’s coaches showed me how coaching should be done. Let me set the stage so it will all make sense.
We are a 10u Team from Monroe La, we started last year in 8u and struggled quite a bit. Lost a few kids to trophy hunters and teams that had been together a year already but for the most part we have core seven girls and hope the new ones we recruited the fall stick around.
When I watch these trophy hunting teams, I see these grown men yell at these girls when they make slight mistakes, not our head coach yeah he occasional gets mad at his own but for the most part he is extremely even tempered. He always moves the girls around so that girls get in field time and outfield time; he never leaves a girl in one spot very long without giving her a chance to play somewhere else a bit.
Yes he has primary spots during brackets for the most part but during practice he works the girls everywhere and sometimes it’s frustrating as a parent when you see a girl who normally wouldn’t be at 2nd miss a grounder but he reminds everyone this is about developing people daughters not winning every game.
This year we started 10u, we are the young girls this year and we didn’t carry an older pitchers or catchers we are developing our own from scratch, every tournament he has all the girls warm up and rotates whatever girls seem to be on two innings at a time.
My daughter happened to be one of the 3 that where warm so he let her pitch the first pool game, and for the most part she did real well walked 2 and SO 6 girls, one inning it was 3 up then 3 down. So as customary he swapped in other pitchers some struggled others did good and so on.
Well up came the 3rd bracket game and it was my daughters turn and she started as expected. She did great the first inning walked one girl SO the next 3. Next inning is where it went downhill. The first girl came up and my daughter struck her out, crowds going wild. Then it hit, the ump called time. Walked up to the Mound and signaled to the coach. My daughter was not presenting the ball when on the mound.
She was walking to the mound with the ball already in her glove, so he told her to show the ball. Well as you can expect asking a 9 year old who has been pitching for three months to change her pitching routine it didn’t go well. She wound up allowing 5 runs before she worked herself out of the inning. He never pulled her or flinched and let her work her way out of it even though it ended us in the tournament.
My daughter was devastated, she was in tears as she ran into the dugout, and other players and friends tried to consul her. After we weren’t batting anymore he had my daughter sit the bench that inning and he sat with her. I overheard him tell her something like this,
“You’re going to keep pitching for me for quite a few years, I believe in you, games like this are going to happen things are going to be going great and something pulls the rug out from under you and you have to fight and not give up. I am very proud of you for never giving up and staying in there and pitching when it was so hard”.
He said a few other words to her about fixing the issue, but for the most part didn’t harp; we wound up losing the game 10-2 as our other pitchers struggled as well. I was very mad at that ump for doing that, after all it’s not like a 10 year old girl is using pine tar on a ball but I understand why after I calmed down and thought about it. If the ump waited until after the game and said you need to get that fixed we would of most likely scoffed it up as to do and no other ump would call it until she was older and much harder to fix.
Anyway, the reason I posted this was I read so much about how this coach did this, or this coach did that, I really wanted to post where a coach could of drove a player from softball and instead I wake up to a 9 year old girl in a hotel throwing rubber balls at the wall trying to incorporate the presentation in her motion.
We are a 10u Team from Monroe La, we started last year in 8u and struggled quite a bit. Lost a few kids to trophy hunters and teams that had been together a year already but for the most part we have core seven girls and hope the new ones we recruited the fall stick around.
When I watch these trophy hunting teams, I see these grown men yell at these girls when they make slight mistakes, not our head coach yeah he occasional gets mad at his own but for the most part he is extremely even tempered. He always moves the girls around so that girls get in field time and outfield time; he never leaves a girl in one spot very long without giving her a chance to play somewhere else a bit.
Yes he has primary spots during brackets for the most part but during practice he works the girls everywhere and sometimes it’s frustrating as a parent when you see a girl who normally wouldn’t be at 2nd miss a grounder but he reminds everyone this is about developing people daughters not winning every game.
This year we started 10u, we are the young girls this year and we didn’t carry an older pitchers or catchers we are developing our own from scratch, every tournament he has all the girls warm up and rotates whatever girls seem to be on two innings at a time.
My daughter happened to be one of the 3 that where warm so he let her pitch the first pool game, and for the most part she did real well walked 2 and SO 6 girls, one inning it was 3 up then 3 down. So as customary he swapped in other pitchers some struggled others did good and so on.
Well up came the 3rd bracket game and it was my daughters turn and she started as expected. She did great the first inning walked one girl SO the next 3. Next inning is where it went downhill. The first girl came up and my daughter struck her out, crowds going wild. Then it hit, the ump called time. Walked up to the Mound and signaled to the coach. My daughter was not presenting the ball when on the mound.
She was walking to the mound with the ball already in her glove, so he told her to show the ball. Well as you can expect asking a 9 year old who has been pitching for three months to change her pitching routine it didn’t go well. She wound up allowing 5 runs before she worked herself out of the inning. He never pulled her or flinched and let her work her way out of it even though it ended us in the tournament.
My daughter was devastated, she was in tears as she ran into the dugout, and other players and friends tried to consul her. After we weren’t batting anymore he had my daughter sit the bench that inning and he sat with her. I overheard him tell her something like this,
“You’re going to keep pitching for me for quite a few years, I believe in you, games like this are going to happen things are going to be going great and something pulls the rug out from under you and you have to fight and not give up. I am very proud of you for never giving up and staying in there and pitching when it was so hard”.
He said a few other words to her about fixing the issue, but for the most part didn’t harp; we wound up losing the game 10-2 as our other pitchers struggled as well. I was very mad at that ump for doing that, after all it’s not like a 10 year old girl is using pine tar on a ball but I understand why after I calmed down and thought about it. If the ump waited until after the game and said you need to get that fixed we would of most likely scoffed it up as to do and no other ump would call it until she was older and much harder to fix.
Anyway, the reason I posted this was I read so much about how this coach did this, or this coach did that, I really wanted to post where a coach could of drove a player from softball and instead I wake up to a 9 year old girl in a hotel throwing rubber balls at the wall trying to incorporate the presentation in her motion.
Last edited:
