Tuesday night I umpired my very first fastpitch game. HS rec level as a last-minute replacement. The biggest takeaway I had was it's not easy. Calling ball/strike is not easy because you have to imagine the borders of the zone floating in space.
I had a bit of an epiphany that when I work with pitchers and catchers, if there are multiple catchers, I'm going to have them take turns standing in as umpire when someone is practicing pitching. Then they can see the effect of catchers blocking the umpire's view if they don't get low, move around unnecessarily, or pop up early to throw down to second. They can also see the foolishness of a catcher trying to pull a pitch into the strike zone.
The umpire is calling ball or strike, so why not have the catchers see pitches from that perspective. Maybe that can help them become a little bit better catchers instead of just throwing up their hands when their coach asks "where was that pitch?"
I had a bit of an epiphany that when I work with pitchers and catchers, if there are multiple catchers, I'm going to have them take turns standing in as umpire when someone is practicing pitching. Then they can see the effect of catchers blocking the umpire's view if they don't get low, move around unnecessarily, or pop up early to throw down to second. They can also see the foolishness of a catcher trying to pull a pitch into the strike zone.
The umpire is calling ball or strike, so why not have the catchers see pitches from that perspective. Maybe that can help them become a little bit better catchers instead of just throwing up their hands when their coach asks "where was that pitch?"