Indoor facilities are nice. But you can't beat 365 days of outdoor training found in the South East. With the exception of Christmas and New Years weekend we have multiple tournaments every weekend.
rank the softball hotbeds in the U.S.
- Thread starter shelbysdad
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- Nov 3, 2012
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I see, rubbing it in. I guess I have to admit softball is funner when sunny. But our girls get to practice throwing skills with snow ball fights, and get to strengthen their backs with shoveling snow, and dont get distracted by being next to beautiful beaches.
Always wondered why I never moved out of the midwest? Our indoor facilities might close the gap, but we'll never catch up.
Truth be known there is a down side to year round competition. Sometimes we tend to spend too much time in competition and not enough time working on basics. Occasionally we need to step back and grind on fundamentals for a while. We have had our clock cleaned by some Yankees fresh out of the gym that executed the basics extremely well.
BTW - I migrated from the Chicago area when I was 16 back when and dinosaurs roamed the earth. Love to visit but no way I would ever go back to live there.
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It depends on the type of competition. The well-run pre-HS-age teams out here make good use of the year-around weather by spreading out the tournaments and having a couple weekends a month with a 4-hour practice on Sat and a 3-game friendly on Sunday. We don't have MS ball here, so the teams play the entire year and pace themselves by focusing on development for most of it. The monthly tourneys serve as progress tests.
Once they hit HS, the schedule gets busier with showcases and compressed from not playing during the HS season. Our section allows players to practice with their TB teams during HS season and our TB team, like many, starts practicing again in April and ramps up in May to get ready for the summer season. Our HS championships wrap up Saturday and our TB team is playing a DH on Sunday.
Mark Campbell has won 5-6 major national championships and a similar number of 2nd place finishes. One of his parents asked him why they don't play in as many tourneys as some other teams. His reply was coaches play more tourneys when they run out of things to teach.
We're a little biased in SoCal. However, in my travels to different showcases and national tournaments around the country I would definitely say that the pitching is getting better all over. I've seen great pitchers from South Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, etc. I do still think the coaching might be a little better in SoCal as we've been able to out-coach a lot of the other teams we have played around the U.S. Bottom line...I think the sport is growing EVERYWHERE and with so many indoor facilities for winter play parity on the field is happening more and more from all four corners of the country!
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