Gotta Love Creativity -- New Stalling Tactic

CoogansBluff said:

Good post, but when you say good coaches take their conferences, do you mean for the sake of running clock out?

If so, then rather than telling parents who suggested shoe-tying that ''We don't do that,'' it would be more accurate to say, ''That's not how we do that.''

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Well, I can tell you that the conferences he took usually didn't have to get broken up by the ump and it was obvious he was telling them exactly what to do. And it didn't look or seem to be stalling. It was more like an intervention to change momentum if the other team was coming back. You know, the way it's supposed to be.

I will say it took him awhile to get out there and back. You could tell his damn hip hurt!

BB875 said:

I like that coach's attitude. Here is a lesson to teach the kids. If you want to maximize your game time, hustle in/out of the dug out every inning, become efficient between innings, hustle up to bat, be ready when you're on deck, "pick up" the stranded runners between innings, etc. It amazing how that time builds up over a game. Finally, when a good team is focused & hustling, they don't need to "manage" the clock.

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You forgot the other side of the coin, and that is if you are AHEAD in the game,you certainly should at least be aware of the time and slow the game down.

Look, I will be the first to admit that I hate timed games BUT if the tournament rules only give me 1 hour and 20 minutes no new inning, you bet i'm going to manage the clock. That's called smart coaching.

Yesterday coach on the other team actually pulled the 'change catchers in the middle of an at bat' with us up to bat as home team with less than 5 minutes left, two outs, and us down 6-8. We had started the inning down 1-8. Inning ended before time expired and we went on to win 9-8.

My dd's team was in a tournament last year that was drop dead, revert to last inning. There was a rule against stalling but that didn't stop the coach of the other team. Needless to say my dd's team was winning until they reverted back to the last inning. It sucked losing that way but whatever. This year rolls around and our team runs into the same team, all I will say is paybacks are a B!#(# but we didn't stall. Run ruling the other team is a much better way of getting even.

Rocketech1 said:

You forgot the other side of the coin, and that is if you are AHEAD in the game,you certainly should at least be aware of the time and slow the game down.

Look, I will be the first to admit that I hate timed games BUT if the tournament rules only give me 1 hour and 20 minutes no new inning, you bet i'm going to manage the clock. That's called smart coaching.

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When it's kids playing a game it's bush league for the adults to "manage" the clock to get a desired outcome. If your team is good enough to win the first 1 hour and 19 minutes, they need to be good enough to win the last 1 minute. I'll never apologize for calling out people that play games to run out the clock, and have let our coach know that I think managing the clock in softball is BS and he agrees. We play the game as it was meant to be played and keep the same tempo regardless if we are up 100, down 100, or in a close game. I'm glad my daughter plays for a coach who doesn't engage in these reindeer games.

And once these "time mangement" coaches get to PGF and realize it's seven innings..well their bag of tricks will be useless.

Dabears17 said:

Yesterday coach on the other team actually pulled the 'change catchers in the middle of an at bat' with us up to bat as home team with less than 5 minutes left, two outs, and us down 6-8. We had started the inning down 1-8. Inning ended before time expired and we went on to win 9-8.

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We played a team where the coach's daughter came out to bat with her shirt untucked and he made her step out of the batter's box to tuck in her shirt.

My team played in a tournament the beginning of the month. 50 minutes finish the inning plus one more. It took the clock out of it and allowed the tournament to stay on schedule for the most part. We actually enjoyed it.

I can count on 1 hand the number of times I (or a team DD has been on) have stalled to end a game. 1, and we stalled to lose the game. We were in a tournament were runs against were counted as part of a tie breaker, team fell apart in the bottom half of the last inning and gave up 5 runs, putting us down by 4. We stalled to stop the bleeding and had the coach on the other team cracking up. He told us after the game that he was going to have to use that one, one day. We all had a good laugh and moved on in the tournament.

But generally speaking, I personally frown upon stalling. My thoughts on it are this...We, as coaches and parents, are preparing these girls for HS and College ball. There is no clock and the coaches at that level really don't care if you won a pool game in ABC tournament when you were playing 8, 10, 12, 14u ball.