Playing time

There are so many factors. Is she a good fielder or batter? I'd have a hard time letting my girl be upset
a whole season. It sounds like they have a good first and second string pitcher and don't want a 3rd ?
Get good at another spot and have her talk to the coach.

Dandan111 said:

There are so many factors. Is she a good fielder or batter? I'd have a hard time letting my girl be upset
a whole season. It sounds like they have a good first and second string pitcher and don't want a 3rd ?
Get good at another spot and have her talk to the coach.

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The team as a whole bats, .484....batting wise, D could benefit them at the bottom of the batting lineup.
Defense has been the problem. #1 pitcher relies on her defense. #2 pitcher is very athletic. She pitches, catches, play short stop, play outfield...on the team, she would benefit them the most at 3rd, which is the position she will be playing in college. The shortstop that plays when she is pitching is my opinion a better short stop, much faster and does a better job of stopping the ball. But they don't want to move 3rd baseman, who is a better catcher because that means the current catcher won't get to catch the entire game...who also is a decent outfielder, which we need help at since many balls get hit in the outfield when #1 pitcher is pitching.

Sounds like bad situation .

My niece was arguably best pitcher on her really good HS Team, coach is jerk. She will not be playing HS ball this year. She is a Junior and done with HS ball.

I like our HS coaches but they are forced on us, no choice. Walking away is not a bad option in my opinion.

Crystal, I am going to repeat a story I have told here before so forgive me. BB was pretty good at several sports. In fact, in volleyball, she was the "Red Black and White Award" winner her freshman year that denotes the top underclass player. Her sophomore year, they have had tryouts and BB was all excited that she made varsity. She played in a softball tournament just after making the volleyball team. The trainer sees a huge strawberry on her leg and tells here she has to be taped before practice. She doe so. The HC for the volleyball team comes over and wants to know what is wrong with BB's leg. She tells the truth. BB has not missed one second of practice on this day. The HC starts yelling that she isn't putting up with another >>>>> (Insert the name of another softball player who graduated.) BB practices with the varsity all year. She goes to every match. She never misses a practice. She never played one second. NOT ONE SECOND. Even though I know that this is my dd, I have never seen anything meaner done to a child. The wife and I went to every match knowing that after each match, in the car, she was going to break down and cry. In the long run, this made BB stronger though it was hard to take at the time. She really did stick with it that year because she loved to play volleyball. The next year, she came out for girl's golf and played for me. She received all kinds of college offers for golf. LOL If you ask BB what lessons she learned the most from this since she is a coach now, she will say that she learned how to communicate with players and how to never do this to a player.

quincy said:

Sounds like bad situation .

My niece was arguably best pitcher on her really good HS Team, coach is jerk. She will not be playing HS ball this year. She is a Junior and done with HS ball.

I like our HS coaches but they are forced on us, no choice. Walking away is not a bad option in my opinion.

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I talked to D about walking away, she says, "no, if she walks away that meant the coach won. D is convinced if she worked harder, she can earn playing time." D is getting better as a result. Probably the most growth has been from working hard to earn playing time. She don't work this hard for her current travel ball team.

After going back, I deleted a few of my post. The message I was putting out is not what I would intend. I believe a pitcher that is willing to work and perform well deserves to play. With saying that, D's school ball has the pleasure of having 4 pitchers, 2 of them being also a key player in other positions. Each pitcher has their own strength...#1 keeps the ball in play, hardly walks a batter. #2 is very athletic with good speed on her fastball. D has good ball movement and #4 has a killer changeup. Each pitcher has a different strength.
D's coach did respond to her message and they met at lunch. Her school ball coach says she plans on working D into the pitch rotation. For 2nd she would like to see her be more aggressive when going backwards toward 2nd base when fielding. Coach said D's bat is coming alone nicely. Coach also said she appreciates D reaching out and asking her what she needs to work on to play. For school ball, I still D can be a bigger asset in outfield. They have plenty of girls that can field well on 2nd but could use the help in outfield. DH thinks differently since he believes she can play the position just as good. My thoughts is that this may be true, but none of the other 2nd base girls can play outfield as well as D can.

Crystal Brown said:

After going back, I deleted a few of my post. The message I was putting out is not what I would intend. I believe a pitcher that is willing to work and perform well deserves to play. With saying that, D's school ball has the pleasure of having 4 pitchers, 2 of them being also a key player in other positions. Each pitcher has their own strength...#1 keeps the ball in play, hardly walks a batter. #2 is very athletic with good speed on her fastball. D has good ball movement and #4 has a killer changeup. Each pitcher has a different strength.
D's coach did respond to her message and they met at lunch. Her school ball coach says she plans on working D into the pitch rotation. For 2nd she would like to see her be more aggressive when going backwards toward 2nd base when fielding. Coach said D's bat is coming alone nicely. Coach also said she appreciates D reaching out and asking her what she needs to work on to play. For school ball, I still D can be a bigger asset in outfield. They have plenty of girls that can field well on 2nd but could use the help in outfield. DH thinks differently since he believes she can play the position just as good. My thoughts is that this may be true, but none of the other 2nd base girls can play outfield as well as D can.

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way to go, D! for my DD, i'll leave that up to her if she wants to talk to the coach or not. at the very least, she is playing, just not pitching. oh, well. we'll see.
good luck.

Crystal - I feel your pain and it can be hard to watch your kid sit when she is working her tail off to get better and show the coaches she deserves playing time. With that said, you need to understand that we as parents don't always know what the coach is thinking. For example, my DD is a sophomore and #2 pitcher on Varsity this year. The #1 is a senior D1, Big 10 commit so my D will likely not see a single inning all season but since they are playing in several pre-season games my D and I thought she might get some innings in the circle as these tournaments and one-off games against non-conference rivals (essentially glorified friendlies/scrimmages) are meaningless. That was not the case, they rode the #1 every inning of every game so far. I think they have played 6 games to date. We were pretty upset and confused why in these "throw away" games they wouldn't try to develop some of the bench players to help build for the future, get experience in case they are needed later in the season as back-up players, etc.

However, what we didn't realize is that her High School team is not expected to finish in the top 3 in their very tough league (guaranteeing them a spot in the CIF playoffs) but if their team has at least a .500 record or better in ALL games played this season (pre-season and regular season) they would likely get a playoff spot. This is the reason the coach was playing their starters every inning, every game in pre-season as every game is important. The bottomline is that many times we don't have all of the information to know why the HS coaches make certain decisions. When all else fails, having the player communicate more with the coaches can help both parties better understand each other. Good luck. Your D will get her time....

D got her first start this season. Overall, she did good. I would say enough to prove she should be worked into the pitching rotation. I was most impressed with her change up. This was a pitch she had struggled with, D was not getting enough speed off. We took some cues from members on this board that gave us some great advice, which she applied and worked hard in off season...and it worked. D's screwball looked great, speed wise it was more of an off pitch...her rise ball created some Ks and popups and was faster than her fast ball. A home run was hit off her fast ball outside. D just doesn't have the speed to pitch fast balls against a good hitting team. This is probably where she could use the most help on improvement.

My dd has been in the same situation as your dd with not getting much playing time. It’s hard to see them sitting the bench behind another pitcher but I kept telling her to keep working hard because you never know when you will get your chance. My dd’s chance came this past weekend at a tournament. She started a game and relieved the starter in another game after the starter Gave up 9 runs on 12 hits. Although the game was already out of hand, my dd pitched 3.1 innings in relief giving up only 1 run against a powerhouse team. The coach is finally noticing her and told the team that my dd has stepped up and created competition at pitcher. Tell your dd to hang in there and take advantage of any opportunity given to her and hopefully she will shine!


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