Part Vent and part observation:

Cannonball said:

I know I post about my kids a lot and don't want to be a bore. I'm an old guy now. They help keep me young. When I work with them I see what is great about our country. We did one drill and one of the players could not get it right for so long. Instead of quitting, she slowed down and really walked herself through the drill in slow motion trying to get the feel of the drill. Watching her go through the process/sequence made me so proud. At one point, I was sweating so much that I couldn't see. I keep a "sweat towel" with me and it was soaked. The wife told me that the heat index was 114 while I was giving lessons.

Pattar, you are do a great job as a parent. BB was complimented by a HS coach a couple of weeks ago on how she worked that school's camp. BB said to me that this "stuff" is all she knows. The work ethic you are teaching your dd will become all that she knows. It is so much more important than just softball.

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mudrunner said:

Keep in mind she is always one of the smallest girls on any team she plays on.

/QUOTE]

I've found that this is often the case. Sometimes bigger girls rely on raw strength. When the smaller girls have better swings they generate far more power.

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Cannonball said:

Please consider this as part vent and part observation. Something that has amazed me in my time in coaching both on sites like this but, more importantly to me, on teams I coach is the inability of parents/dads mostly to admit that their guru's stuff simply is not working for their child and therefore just might not be the answer. How long does it take for parents to understand this? For example, I can cite one example of a player going 0-28 and yet, the parent remained loyal to their guru and promoted said guru for others. I just shake my head at that. On these various sites, I can recall poster's who's dds or sons (I moderate a couple of baseball websites.) and they remained loyal for a very long time. These same parents then try to get others to seek out the guru. Naturally, there were the cases in the "hitting wars" where it got real nasty as some parents figured stuff out and others refused to see what was going on. (That would be on both sides.)

As I've thought about this, the one common denominator is that the guru always promotes their stuff as the MLB Swing or the High Level Swing and assure all that will listen that they have unlocked the answer. This is followed by the mention of several MLB players or high level softball players, video of same and then some statement that the guru teaches this swing. The parent most often doesn't have the information early on to dispute these points. Still, when you see swings that are so far removed from what was shown in the video or you have swings that lack "adjustibility" and so lead to high strikeout rates, I would think that the parents would figure this out and move on. One that eats me in particular is a "guru" who teaches what I would call a 2 part swing where the hitter starts the load/unload, stops momentum after getting that foot down early and then finishes the swing having killed the running start.

As a hitting coach, I do my best to teach the same things I taught my dd. I do my best to keep up with the changes going on. I know the history of most of the changes and the changes that aren't really new but just different takes on old but good stuff. Sometimes it is hard for me to let some stuff go and just move on. Thanks for letting me vent.

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NVfishing said:

I spent a lot of money taking my DD to a hitting coach. She learned a lot but she wasn't producing on the field. I quit taking her to lessons. She used the lessons, stance, set up, what to watch for and then it all clicked. I think DD was over thinking the swing. Probably thinking about what coach was saying about last lesson. Now she looks the part, is hitting around .500 with a slugging percentage at .900. I watched DD learn to hit better in a cage, better off a tee, better when the hitting instructor was pitching to her but it didn't click until this year when I stopped those lessons.

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