Getting dropped might be the best thing that could have happened for my daughter

[dbronstein]

A quick update. We wrapped up the regular season today at 7-3, fourth out of 10 teams. Double-elimination tourney starts next weekend. My daughter has continued to work hard at pitching, and the HC said she's the pitcher he has the most confidence in right now. She had a great outing two weeks ago when she struck out 7 in 3 innings, then she got sick and has struggled a bit. She's been playing with a lot more confidence in the field. She's improving at the plate but it's still a struggle getting her to get her body into it, but we're slowly getting there.

 

[dbronstein]

Update from this weekend. We were the 4th seed out of 10 teams. DD started the first game Saturday and went three solid innings. Our bats started slow but we pulled away for a 7-3 win. She made solid contact at the plate but didn't hit the ball out of the infied.

Next up was the #1 seed. We had to move to a different field and there had been a 12U game before ours, and nobody thought to move the rubber up to 35 feet for our game. The umps brought out 12-inch balls instead of 11-inch which should have tipped us off. We're doing the modified-coach pitch (four balls and the coach comes in for three pitches) and our head coach thought the rubber was too far back when he came in to pitch in the top of the first. The umps said we'd keep it there for the bottom of the inning and then measure it. DD started again and struggled because of the extra distance, and gave up 4 runs. Unbelievably, nobody could find a tape measure, so after 10 minutes of various people walking it off, they finally agreed on a spot for the rubber. At that point the damage was done and we never recovered. The opposing pithcer was good, but we've got good hitters and they could have hit her, but they had no confidence. We ended up losing 9-2. DD batted once and singled off the coach.

We went back out yesterday. DD started the first game again and pitched three nice innings again. The girls found their confidence at the plate and we rolled to a 10-2 win. DD had a couple of hits, but nothing out of the infield. We started pitcher #2 in game two because she finished strong in game 1, and she pitched three very strong innings. DD played first and was flawless, cathcing a couple of popups and every throw that came her way (remember this is 10U rec, so that doesn't usually happen). She pitched the fourth and went 1-2-3. She went back out for the fifth and went to four balls on the first two batters and was clearly out of gas so they pulled her. We were up 8-2 at that point so HC brought in our #4 pitcher. She was pretty wild but we made the plays off the coach pitch (our fielding the whole weekend was phenomenal). We added a couple more in the bottom half before time ran out.

We're into the final three and finish up Sunday. It's the top two seeds and us. They only lost one game each, and it was to each other. If we hit and field like we did yesterday, we can play with them. Unfortunately our head coach probably won't be there because he has to travel for work. The biggest loss with that is he's our coach pitcher, but these teams have girls who throw strikes so we probably won't get to coach pitch too often anyway.

No matter how it ends up, I'm so proud of how far she's come this season. She went from basically nowhere to becoming the #1 pitcher on a good rec team. She's also become a pretty good firstbaseman. The best thing is it really showed her that when she puts in the time and effort to practice, she'll improve. Now I just need to get her to want to put the same effort into her hitting