The dangers of over pitching your 10-12 YOs

[Amy in AZ.]

Kenzie Fowler - Lucky to be Alive - Arizona Softball 2010 - Freshman Pitcher - Ace - YouTube

Listen to Mr. Fowler at about the 2:17 minute mark. As the video goes on, look at the pitcher in the background (U of AZ.) pitch and force her arm to "hello."

As many of you know, repeated injuries and illegal pitches have dogged Kenzie Fowler through most of her college career. She is a great young lady, from a great family. It is too bad that she threw so many pitches a an adolescent.

I know of a young 16 yo pitcher that died from this thoracic outlet syndrome, from Casey IL., where I played my ASA ball.

 

[chinamigarden]

How many innings would you say is enough for 1 year? Assuming 15/16 pitches per inning. After a post in another thread by a 12u parent whose dd pitched 477 innings in 12 months, I went and counted up the innings my dd, 14u, had pitched in the same time frame. Its right around 200. Even that number surprised me, I didn't realize she had thrown that many.

 

[quincy]

I enjoyed the video, especially the part that the father not listening to their child.

DD is the type of person where if she makes a comment you better be listening, some other players complain all the time. Neither is right or wrong, you just need to know your own kid. Sounds like she sent up a big red flag which he ignored because she was low keyed about it; he figured it out after the fact.

One size does not fit all, I do not know your child have enough trouble with my own.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

I am guessing that it isn't the number of innings. I think that it is the number of pitches per day. I don't know what the magical number would be. But, maybe we should start erring on the side of too less, instead of too many.

It was only in the last year or two, that I started counting my students pitches during their games. 50 seemed enough for an 8 yo, 75 for a 10 and 100 for a 12. (per day) If the fielders would do their jobs, pitchers wouldn't have to work so hard, anyway. I would enjoy hearing what people think about HS girls with good mechanics and how many pitches seem reasonable.

In baseball, we start thinking of replacing boy/men around the 90-100 mark. Many young ladies are working just as hard as the baseball guys, now.

But, then do we give our girls 2 full days of rest? Not normally. Normally, a young lady carries a whole HS program. I think that not looking at a win loss record, would be nice and save the young lady until there are important games. I wish that my alma mater would do that, so that their D1 prospect wouldn't be spent by the time the district tournament rolls around.

 

[PEPPERS]

Early in the spring I watched a 12U baseball tournament and I did not remember seeing a pitcher throw more than 3 innings in any one game. Then next week I watched a 10U softball team play who finished second in the tournament and the same 10 YO girl threw all 7 games every pitch including 4 games in one day.

I have never understood why girls are allowed to pitch so much and boys are limited to a number of pitches. There is a number of articles out there that the conclusion is that girls pitching a softball is as stressful on the arm and body as pitching a baseball.

 

[starsnuffer]

Early in the spring I watched a 12U baseball tournament and I did not remember seeing a pitcher throw more than 3 innings in any one game. Then next week I watched a 10U softball team play who finished second in the tournament and the same 10 YO girl threw all 7 games every pitch including 4 games in one day.

I have never understood why girls are allowed to pitch so much and boys are limited to a number of pitches. There is a number of articles out there that the conclusion is that girls pitching a softball is as stressful on the arm and body as pitching a baseball.

I wish there were more pitchers to go around at that age. Truth is, softball pitching is a unique skill that has barely anything to do with any other aspect of the game. Getting better at pitching in softball isn't going to help much outside the circle. Baseball players, on the other hand, benefit from throwing overhand. At young ages in baseball, nearly any kid with a decent arm can get on the mound and "throw strikes". Add to this the allure that young boys have towards the many pitching icons and heroes they can see on TV and you have a much greater desire for a young boy to pitch. Girls just don't have that opportunity.

You can take a hardline view, and just say that some horses are going to have to be put down long before the big race, and only the best/luckiest will make it, but these are human lives we're talking about, so that isn't really fair.

You can also take the granola eating helicopter parent approach, and become overly protective and push for draconian limitations that kill the competitiveness of the game, but that isn't fair either, because these are human lives we're talking about, and humans thrive on conflict, challenge, and competition.

My view is that every kid is unique. So long as the kid is the one who wants to get out there and pitch, I'm more apt to let her do it. It's her choice, and all choices have consequences. As soon as I see a parent pushing or even suggesting that she "tough it out", or "practice more", ect, I do my best to end it.

-W

 

[JNew0872]

This is a topic that really concerns me but there really are no answers out there. My daughter is 12 and I've been trying to figure out what the limits should be especially heading into her first season of travel ball.

During the Little League season she pitched just about half of the innings out of 14 games (46 innings total) between April and July. She averaged just about 16 pitches per inning throwing about 740 pitches during the season. I always require her to rest the day after a game.

Now heading into the travel season, she is #1/#2 pitcher on team (we will see where she falls after the tournaments start). Before committing to the team, we made sure there were 3 pitchers on the team and what the coach's pitching rotation philosophy was. The coach said for Saturdays, pitchers do not pitch back to back games (so I'm thinking max 2 games on Sat) and on Sunday, it just depends on how things are going. So playing in 10 tournaments (approximately - I think it will be more like 8) between Sept and Dec, she could end up pitching 240 innings/3800+ pitches. That is significantly more than the Little League season!

She has never complained of pain but it does concern me especially when taking into consideration pitching in games and practicing.

Trying to decide what to do after the travel season ends - take month off completely with no pitching at all? Then start back up in mid to end of January to prepare for Spring season?

 

[Amy in AZ.]

Having lived in IL. where the season was short, a can't think of anyone that pitched year around in a facility. I worked at the one in Springfield, teaching hitting, so I would have known. But here in Tucson, they pitch year around. There are very few breaks, maybe of a couple of weeks or so. More and more, I am hearing of the 12 and 13 YOs that are having arm trouble. Some of that could come from the horrible mechanics that is insisted on around here, but pitching 300 days a year, could certainly add to it, I would think.

You can overdo, anything.

 

[howellhandmade]

Coaching philosophy has a lot to do with it. I know a travel team that wanted to hang with the best A teams but couldn't quite do it. The coaches wanted very badly to beat the top teams so they optimistically pitched their two best pitchers against teams that beat them severely and predictably. Just as much as they wanted to beat the good teams, the coaches were afraid of losing to the bad teams, so the same two pitchers pitched the rest of the games as well, including those against teams that the three other girls on the team who took lessons and wanted to pitch likely could have handled.

Perhaps if the team had been stronger overall and the W/L record less precariously balanced on the back of beating weaker teams the coaches would have been more willing to take chances on developing other pitchers and worked the two less hard. Then again, perhaps not.

 

[quincy]

I am still learning the game. Only have been a baseball HC when you throw your best pitcher for as many innings allowed and then bring in someone else.

SB rules encourage Teams to pitch multiple pitchers but HCs do not take advantage of it. Pitch #1 the 1st inning, get thru the top of the opposing Teams order. If it works out OK pitch #2 or #3 or whatever. If they get in trouble #1 is coming back in.

If you are getting clobbered anyways give #1 a rest and live to fight another day.