Tryout Etiquette - Pitching

[JAD]

I would tell the HC exactly what you told the AC, that you are paying a pitching coach for lessons and are not interested in joining a team that is going to try to change her mechanics. They can either agree to let your DD do her own thing or they can insist on using their mechanics, in which case your choice is easy...

 

[Snotbubbles]

I'm going to follow up on Tuesday with the coaching staff.

 

[JAD]

The AC (who was not part of the staff last year) handling the throwing session wanted her to start out doing wrist flicks and all the traditional HE mechanical drills. She told him that her PC eliminated those from her workouts and she does different drills for mechanics. The tryout coach told her, today she's doing wrist flicks. Then, once her warm-up drills were over she started the pitching portion of her throwing. The coach was telling her to shorten her stride which we've been working on lengthening at practices to get her to explode toward home and to close her hips which we totally eliminated and have her finishing with her belly button at an angle instead of home.

I am always amazed by the number of TB and HS coaches who think they are qualified pitching instructors because they watched the WCWS last year...

 

[schwabach]

Kind of bizarre. I would like to think that if I were a coach, I would have the sense to worry about the end product in pitching tryouts and not worry about how the pitcher reached that point. And if I saw some serious mechanical defect, I would hope I would have the sense to talk to the pitcher and her parent. If I had a girl who could get strikeouts with slingshot pitches, I would go with the flow.

 

[CoachKevin]

Kind of bizarre. I would like to think that if I were a coach, I would have the sense to worry about the end product in pitching tryouts and not worry about how the pitcher reached that point. And if I saw some serious mechanical defect, I would hope I would have the sense to talk to the pitcher and her parent. If I had a girl who could get strikeouts with slingshot pitches, I would go with the flow.

Yes, it's a tryout... not a pitching lesson.

 

[JJsqueeze]

As you probably know from working with her, mechanical changes don't exactly get ingrained with a few drills. Add in some instruction from you to go through the motions and smile and nod and you can float over the washboard road of 10u-12u coaching pretty easily.

That being said, one of the hallmarks of good coaches is they don't mess with their pitchers, the ones that actually know what they are doing expect that the kid is working with a coach and is only concerned with their performance.

literally I have never heard any of the good coaches in our area EVER say boo about a pitchers mechanics. They care about a pitcher's ability to throw the called pitch to the called location and that is what feedback they give.

So you should know now that the coach saying this means he/she is pretty green and you should take that into account in deciding whether or not to join the team.

 

[Strike2]

It's the AC that was exercising poor "etiquette". Instruction at tryouts should be minimal to none; it's about evaluation. Beyond that, a coach with even minimal competitive experience knows that warmup routines for pitchers vary, and there is no single way to do it. When I'm warming up a pitcher, the only thing I'm concerned about is time so she's ready when needed. Pitching mechanics are the last thing that team coaches should try to adjust, and that's only if they are highly qualified AND have observed the player for a reasonable period. Any discussion I have with a pitcher about performance or mechanics includes at least one parent, and typically involves telling them to have the PC address a particular issue. It seems you handled it just right, and exercised some pretty decent etiquette from your end.