Its High School Ball

[CoachJD]

And then there's the other end of the spectrum. I will be assisting at a small local high school, total enrollment about 400 kids. My understanding is that we will have 18-20 kids for varsity, no cuts allowed. At least 5 of the girls will have zero softball experience, not even rec.

I have 12 (out of 28) this year with no experience. Many of them picked up the basics fairly quickly, at least, but I expect the JV season to be rough, especially since my JV coach is a basketball coach who is willing to help us out.

The hardest part is that my varsity team is likely the best/most experienced I've had. I'm basically trying to run two completely different practices simultaneously.

 

[Cannonball]

We started our season last night with an 8-4 win. I was not at the game since I am teaching at another HS and we had parent/teacher conferences. Still, it is a good start on a very tough schedule.

My dd is coaching at Edwardsville High School. They are an area power. Here is an article on their team this year:

https://www.theintelligencer.com/sp...ball-relying-on-pitching-in-2022-16998979.php

 

[Northball]

We started our season last night with an 8-4 win. I was not at the game since I am teaching at another HS and we had parent/teacher conferences. Still, it is a good start on a very tough schedule.

My dd is coaching at Edwardsville High School. They are an area power. Here is an article on their team this year:

https://www.theintelligencer.com/sp...ball-relying-on-pitching-in-2022-16998979.php

Nice! I also get a kick out of local news coverage. You've got a new restaurant coming to town, your local opera group celebrates 5 years, etc. Bear in mind I come from a town with no stoplights.

 

[Cannonball]

This response will include a comment or two about TB as well so forgive me.

• Parents/the public often don't understand all of the duties of a HC. For example, in many schools, when the weather gets bad/rain, people assume that the coaching staff is lazy and doesn't want to play such and such team when the diamond does not get prepared for games. Often, the truth is that the school's union for maintenance workers bars coaches from working on the diamond. We have run into that a few times this year. Recently, we have been told the same. The end result is that an unmotivated grounds crew will cause teams to be rained out when they could play.
• A growing trend that I have seen both in TB and HS involves runners on 1st and 2nd. The hitter has a 2-1 count. If the pitcher throws ball 3, the hitter tosses her bat jogs to 1st, and the runners on 1st and 2nd clap and jog to the next base. I have now seen this done 4 times in games and the defense has been fooled each time. I hope that this is not a growing trend.
• The delayed steal is not used enough in HS and especially with a runner on 2nd. I bet in the fall when I was coaching HS ball, we ran this over 10 times and were never caught stealing.
• I had a freshman come up to me and say that they were getting recruited by an ACC school. I asked who told them that. The response was her TB coach. I said that NCAA schools can not recruit freshmen like that. To top this off, this ACC school has never seen her play. Believe it or not, this TB coach seems to be talking kids into believing that he has all of these contacts. They play a B schedule.
• We played a HS game where the dugout was screaming at our pitcher. They were pounding bats on the dugout as well. They were, simply put, obnoxious. I would never allow myself to be associated with a team like that and would never allow my teams to do it. I am all about having my players cheer for our team/ players.
• We have played in some intense wind. That weather condition is tough to coach for our players.
• Every team we have played to this point has had one or two slappers. I don't think that in all of our games, slappers have 2 hits.

 

[CoachJD]

• The delayed steal is not used enough in HS and especially with a runner on 2nd. I bet in the fall when I was coaching HS ball, we ran this over 10 times and were never caught stealing.

Agreed. I'm starting to use it more. Practiced it a couple times last game. I almost felt bad because the team we were playing was just not at our level, but I needed to practice in a live game situation (and I did it while the score was still close).

You play at a higher level than us, but the fake bunt/steal third play will work quite a bit, too, and I plan to use that quite a bit this year. A lot of SS don't cover third, or at least they don't break to cover third as soon as they should.

 

[Dabears17]

• A growing trend that I have seen both in TB and HS involves runners on 1st and 2nd. The hitter has a 2-1 count. If the pitcher throws ball 3, the hitter tosses her bat jogs to 1st, and the runners on 1st and 2nd clap and jog to the next base. I have now seen this done 4 times in games and the defense has been fooled each time. I hope that this is not a growing trend.

This happened to my DD's High School team today. One of the parents said after the game he heard the batter admit to the umpire she knew it was ball 3 after she was called back to the plate. Defense should be keeping track of the count, but I don't like teams that push the rules like this. I've watched All-Star teams that feed this high school play for 15 years and they do push the rules. They scored 3 runs that inning, but we wound up winning 7-5. DD had 2 RBI's and scored once. I believe the softball gods were watching the game be disrespected. We are a C level school with just under 600 9-12 students. They were an A level school ranked somewhere between 7th and 10th in our section and we are ranked 35th according to Maxpreps, for what that is worth.

2nd game was a little disappointing. We jumped out to an early lead 2-0 top of 1st, then they scored 4 in the bottom of the 2nd. We wound up losing 10-2 in 6 innings. This team was ranked between 7th and 10th in our section as well. They beat the team we beat in the first game 2-1.

Our team is young-- we start 4 freshmen most games, our pitchers are two sophomores and a freshman. We have 3 to 4 good 2026's coming in next year.

PS- one of our freshmen is extremely fast, so we have been doing some delayed steals as well.

 

[newnin]

Does the batter get a called strike for delay of game (10 seconds to get in the box) when this fake walk happens?

 

[Cannonball]

Does the batter get a called strike for delay of game (10 seconds to get in the box) when this fake walk happens?

I have never seen a strike called. I am thinking that this is happening on 2-1 counts in case a strike is called.

 

[Rick M]

A growing trend that I have seen both in TB and HS involves runners on 1st and 2nd. The hitter has a 2-1 count. If the pitcher throws ball 3, the hitter tosses her bat jogs to 1st, and the runners on 1st and 2nd clap and jog to the next base. I have now seen this done 4 times in games and the defense has been fooled each time.

If you suspect this is happening as a coach, can you have a designed play where the catcher throws to second and on to first? There was a recent thread about a penalty for throwing to a base w/o a play, but if you believe there is a play, is there a downside?

Coach yells “three” and the play begins. Seems like an easy double play. But if coach is wrong, and it is ball four, is there a penalty?

Might not be worth practicing for something that rarely happens, but I saw the same thing at DD’s first game on Friday. It was against a bad team, so I don’t think it was on purpose.

ETA: Even if the batter goes back, those are stolen bases, I guess? Better to throw to SS to apply a tag?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[JayW]

If you suspect this is happening as a coach, can you have a designed play where the catcher throws to second and on to first? There was a recent thread about a penalty for throwing to a base w/o a play, but if you believe there is a play, is there a downside?

Coach yells “three” and the play begins. Seems like an easy double play. But if coach is wrong, and it is ball four, is there a penalty?

Might not be worth practicing for something that rarely happens, but I saw the same thing at DD’s first game on Friday. It was against a bad team, so I don’t think it was on purpose.

ETA: Even if the batter goes back, those are stolen bases, I guess? Better to throw to SS to apply a tag?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

not sure it’s an easy double play since you have to tag runners. and the offending team can almost count on a moment of indecision. the defensive team would probably have to work on a “ball 3” play until it becomes second nature. almost like dropped 3rd strike.