High School.what age group is this?
High School.what age group is this?
My daughter's first year 14u team does almost exactly this. In tournaments they usually go with fingers, as it's fairly routine for coaches from other teams to scout and chart pitches/calls in pool play.A couple ideas for wristbands.
When I make them and laminate them I make them in pairs of colors. For example one side is red, the other side is blue. If we get in a situation where we have exhausted calls, we can just flip them over and change between innings. We also will change sides of the wristbands between games of a double header. Its is just always a pre-game check in our pre-game meeting. Just verify, we are red on offense, brown on defense, and black for pitcher/catcher or whatever combinations we are going with.
We use the the wristbands that open and close, so we keep our offensive card up front and the defensive calls on the inside. If we get into a 1st/3rd or bunt situation they can just flip up.
We will carry 3-4 pairs of colors for both offensive and pitcher/catcher. We don't repeat colors between offense and pitcher/catcher so there isn't any confusion. I also use black wristbands for offense and white wristbands for pitcher/catcher.
I do use Never Miss A Sign, so it makes this process easier. We wristband everything, offense, defense, and pitching. The one issue we do have once in awhile is that my pitchers/catchers that hit will forget to change wristbands. Easy fix is to put the offensive wristband on their bat or in the batting helmet, their pitching/catching wristband in their glove.
Teams used to try and write down our numbers to scout us, they don't even bother anymore. They can visually see what color we are one and they know we have switched.
It all means "OMAHA! OMAHA! OMAHA!"This is what we use.
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From an umpire's point of view, wristbands are the worst thing that has happened to softball in the last 20 years. If both teams are using them, they add 15-30 minutes to the length of the game. In my area, it seems every coach is trying to outdo his/her opponent by coming up with a more complicated system. Why coaches are giving signals to pitchers after every in 10U when they can't even throw a strike, much less a curve or changeup, is beyond me. And please tell me the philosophy behind giving signals before every pitch to a batter with 2 outs, no one on base, and a 3-2 count.Thank you for the great replies!
Control my friend…it’s all about control.From an umpire's point of view, wristbands are the worst thing that has happened to softball in the last 20 years. If both teams are using them, they add 15-30 minutes to the length of the game. In my area, it seems every coach is trying to outdo his/her opponent by coming up with a more complicated system. Why coaches are giving signals to pitchers after every in 10U when they can't even throw a strike, much less a curve or changeup, is beyond me. And please tell me the philosophy behind giving signals before every pitch to a batter with 2 outs, no one on base, and a 3-2 count.
And please tell me the philosophy behind giving signals before every pitch to a batter with 2 outs, no one on base, and a 3-2 count.