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    New to trying out for TB

    Absolutely! A pain in the butt parent takes a kid down several notches when I'm evaluating tryouts for my team.
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    finding tournament listings

    Here are the sites I use. I'm in the Phila. area. These will get you most of what you need. ASA: Junior Olympic Tournaments USSSA: USSSA Fast Pitch / ISTS Sports Statistics Just pick the age in the first column, and in the second pick the state, which for us in Pa has East, Central &...
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    Recent Former Players Make Good Coaches

    I've always felt that the most important quality of a great coach is great communication skills. As mentioned earlier, a travel coach has to deal with younger kids and their parents. Over the years, I've had former players as asst coaches. It's VERY difficult to get a well rounded young lady...
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    Bat Drag & Lag

    I came to this site because I have a LOT of work to do to improve the hitting on my 13U team. I videotaped everyone, just to see where we were starting. This is the worst case of bat drag I've ever seen, and along with other strange contortions on other players, I was lost as to what to do...
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    slap hitting

    When I started my new 11U team, I was loaded with 10's and 11's only. All new to travel. No pitching, no hitting, no defense. So much to teach with so little time or resources. I tried teaching the four fastest kids on the team - 3 of whom had darn good wheels - to go lefty! (Btw, took me...
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    The point of diminishing return.

    With all due respect to a veteran forum member w/ over 1,400 posts, coming from a newbie here who hangs out almost exclusively in the hitting forum, to say that people are capable of doing things that have never been done before seems accurate, but misplaced when answering a parent whose...
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    Substituting on a competitive team.

    When you're playing in single elimination tournaments, where you play 3 on Saturday in order to seed for Sunday's SE, whether you're Class A or B, we always play to win on Sunday! And that means we play our best 9. Sometimes that #1 pitcher doesn't start another position when she's not...
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    does this happen a lot?

    That is pretty intimidating, and kind of cool to watch 7 years later as an outsider. But I hope they won all their games that year, because if they didn't, they look damn foolish doing all that crap and getting their butts beat!
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    does this happen a lot?

    It IS a load! Not true at all. All behavior - by both players & parents - begins and ends with the head coach. Long ago I set a rule for my team and every other team in our organization, and that was about this chanting crap! No one in our organization will ever utter a negative chant...
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    Hitting in the off-season, how much and how often?

    14U, 13 y/o pure. Twice a week. On Sundays we have the use of a small local gym for 2 hours, where we do stations. Tee work, soft toss into net, TCB ball front toss, wiffle golf ball pitching machine - 6 stations in all. We're starting from scratch and working on the lower body first, mostly...
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    Is it time to change the field in FP?

    The speed of the game of fastpitch is unique, and something I love about the game. When solving any problem, I always try to solve THE PROBLEM at hand, and not the repercussions that are caused by that problem. Other than the fences, there's nothing wrong with the field in fastpitch -...
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    HS Softball team is terrible

    I've been coaching HS varsity and travel for 18 years, and three things come to mind: 1. While anything is possible, don't hold your breath hoping that maybe a catcher will move into the school district. Possible? Sure. Worth even thinking about as a solution? Uhh...no. 2. In our area...
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    Umpire's "word play" to interpret obstruction rule.

    Nonsense. Just another "not-so-good" ump trying to show people he knows the rule book. Problem is - in your case - he doesn't.
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    Diamond Dreams - Cooperstown

    I hope you didn't end up going! This place is a nightmare, and if they cancel the tournament due to lack of teams, they keep your money and never answer your emails or phone calls! Here's my full post on that place...

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