The Saga of Rebuilding a School Program: A parent-coach's journal

[Intheboondocks]

Basketball here for the MS kids starts in July and runs until like mid fall. The HS girls start later but don't finish until the first week of practice IF they don't advance in the district tournament. Ours didn't this year. Last year they did, and halfway into spring practice the all-time basketball scoring leader, a senior, showed up having never played softball and goes on to be the only one who could consistently get the ball over the plate. She threw around 35mph and got beat up by the good teams, but she only walked 12 batters in probably 20 starts. It was a miracle. This year there are three kids who can throw strikes and at least 45mph. Another miracle. We're all about the miracles around here..lol

AAU basketball starts in April after the state tournament for highschool basketball. I know some of the highschool kids are trying to recruit players and my daughter has gotten some of her basketball teammates to come to the captains practices. We won't know what we have until softball season officially opens in March.

We do have a middleschooler that can throw strikes, we have been encouraging my daughter to pitch and she has been doing about an hour a week with a coach.

We are lucky that the current HC has a history of developing players.

 

[PJR202]

AAU basketball starts in April after the state tournament for highschool basketball. I know some of the highschool kids are trying to recruit players and my daughter has gotten some of her basketball teammates to come to the captains practices. We won't know what we have until softball season officially opens in March.

We do have a middleschooler that can throw strikes, we have been encouraging my daughter to pitch and she has been doing about an hour a week with a coach.

We are lucky that the current HC has a history of developing players.

Travel ball is gonna kill sports at small schools like ours. It's so frustrating. When we become a county school it won't be a big deal, but right now it's a real PITA.

 

[Intheboondocks]

Travel ball is gonna kill sports at small schools like ours. It's so frustrating. When we become a county school it won't be a big deal, but right now it's a real PITA.

I don't disagree, a few of the schools in our conference have to coop to field teams.

 

[PJR202]

Practices continue. Pitching work continues. The MS team is looking pretty sharp, and pretty darned good at times. If they can get the pitching sorted, they may come out swinging.

HS is getting going, and two weeks away from the first game. DD2 has been pitching in scrimmage and doing very well. Our marker for success is strikes, and she's thrown plenty. Although we don't get much opportunity to work on it, the change-up is landing more often than not. The flip seems to agree with her. At one point she looked at me and did the flip motion to ask if I thought she could go for the change-up. She tried and it sailed high...lol.

Yesterday I was filling in for the HS playing defense. She doesn't like me giving her instructions while she's in game scenario and I need to let her fly on her own at this point and work out her problems alone, so I mostly stay silent other than to give her a quick cue if I see something (I am her "pitching coach," after all). Her two main things right now are front side resistance (which I've talked about several times here) and the newer issue of having to pitch out of a sizeable hole and snail-trail trench the girls are creating with drag.

Getting your toe caught in an S shaped rut that may or may not align with your personal mechanics can be an issue. Lag in the back creates resistance for the right hip as it tries to come around. This causes the plant leg to awkwardly try and mitigate the effect of the lag, which eliminates critical front side resistance, which will encourage forward lean, which leads to bowling and/or finishing the pitch as the plant leg stands back up, and the end result is high and semi-wild pitches. This is what I think I see, at least.

So, if I see high and wild become a pattern, I point it out and hope she can remember. My cue for this is "stay light in the back." I want her to relax that back leg enough that it can drag across the snail trail or out of the hole lightly and avoid getting caught or slowed down. She got high and wild and ended up in two full counts. One ended in a walk. I gave her the stay light cue, she frowned with that "leave me alone out here" face, then got back to throwing strikes. I said "that's better," and she gave me the "sorry. you were right" half smile and finished out her time throwing well. If we can get away with just a couple cues and turn them into signals, I think she can do very well in whatever time she spends in the circle. The pitching situation overall is still kind of up in the air so I have no idea if she'll be throwing JV or relief, or maybe a few varsity starts.

As frustrating as it can be having her passive aggressive responses, I know I'm very lucky that we can communicate at all as parent/child in a sports setting. I see so many parent coaches or bucket parents going at it with their kid and I instantly feel better about how we interact.

 

[Northball]

As frustrating as it can be having her passive aggressive responses, I know I'm very lucky that we can communicate at all as parent/child in a sports setting. I see so many parent coaches or bucket parents going at it with their kid and I instantly feel better about how we interact.

It certainly can be walking a tightrope when giving guidance to your own kid. For that reason if I had another DD, I'd still hire a pitching coach to work with her instead of teaching her myself.

 

[PJR202]

It certainly can be walking a tightrope when giving guidance to your own kid. For that reason if I had another DD, I'd still hire a pitching coach to work with her instead of teaching her myself.

When she was taking lessons, I had more than one parent there tell me they don't even work with their kid at home because she doesn't listen and they just end up going at it. I get frustrated with mine, and I'm sure I sometimes get out of bounds by talking about softball too much, but overall I think we're probably top 1% in parent/kid coaching relationship. I think she's made a lot of progress since we stopped lessons, but it's been hard to gauge until recently as I'm seeing her throwing strikes to live batting.

She always raises her game when it gets real, and I had been counting on seeing it. I think what I also had neglected to consider before now is not just that she's gotten better, but that she had to un-do certain mechanical flaws and actually get worse at hitting the zone before building back on the mechanical changes we made and now throwing better than when she left lessons. IT just requires so much time and patience, and with a kid who loves softball on Monday and hates on it on Tuesday, it's been a delicate process managing to do it.

Right now she's about where she needs to be for the season, but with 30 games scheduled in the next eight weeks AND practices in-between, the challenge will be to get enough solo work in to maintain her current form without causing her to melt down from the grind. Last year she fell off in the last few weeks, and it was because we werent sharpening the sword between battles. I can't let that happen again, so we're gonna have to get an hour in on Sundays or something. I don't think it'll take a lot. Just a few refresher drills, and some spinner work, etc.

 

[PJR202]

It's been kinda stressful around here the past few weeks as staffing and lineup issues are discussed and sorted, but I've noticed a few encouraging things as well. I rolled up to watch the HS practice last week and parked myself on the bleachers, and who do I see out there running bases with the older girls? The new MS kid. A 7th grader with a lot of desire, zero experience, and a new bat (that is far too short but she loves it so I quit telling her that). I asked her what the heck she was doing out there and she said "I want to get some extra work in." That made me smile. She's a long way off, but she loves it and if she's spending 4 hours practicing in the same day, I'm excited to see where she goes.

Then earlier this week after the HS finished up, I see the new HS player (very athletic, fast learning curve, potential savage) walk up and ask the MS coach if she can stay and practice with them.

I've also seen one of our existing MS players working with the HS team more than once. Her aunt (yes, aunt) is on the HS team and I presume they're getting dropped off at the same time. Regardless, she could be on the bleachers playing on her phone until MS practice starts, but nope...she's working. She's not been one of the stronger MS players by far, but she's got a fire under her this year and it's shown in her performance.

One thing about this small program is, we all want to see each other succeed and we're all willing to let these kids sit-in when requested. At times it's pretty crowded, but I've seen many times with these kids at both levels that for some of them it just takes that ONE spark that sets them off.

Also of note...the cheerleader has been hitting homeruns off short toss all week. We're all giving our opinion on how many game HR's she'll hit this season. I've called 10.

 

[_MIA_]

Lol..you are very enthusiastic..I'll give you that.

 

[PJR202]

Lol..you are very enthusiastic..I'll give you that.

Lemons to lemonade, bro. It's all a guy can do!

 

[PJR202]

High School had a scrimmage last night with the next county over. They've been slightly better than us the past couple seasons, but I think we did beat them once last year. They had a very good pitcher a couple years ago but she's moved on to playing college ball. Their pitcher last night was mostly competent but nothing unhittable.

It was a scrimmage, so there were on-field teaching moments, the umpires had a trainee, and things were kinda lax, but if we're talking winner/loser based on the score at the end of 7 complete innings, I believe we "lost" 11-6.

But if I'm judging the game on our performance, it was pretty rough. All three of our pitchers (including DD2, who pitched two innings of "JV") got the ball across the plate pretty well. One of our assistant coaches was calling pitches, which is something that hasn't been done in our program for several years. I have no idea if those pitches were landing or not because I don't know what they were calling. I may get a copy of the inserts and sit directly behind the backstop and do some covert research.

Despite it being cool to see pitch calling happening, my gut instinct is that at the moment it's more often that not, a waste of time. I could be wrong though. I do think all the pitchers threw pretty well, considering that it got down to like 39 degrees after the sun went down, and the considerable hole in front of the rubber. I saw DD2 fiddling with it, and doing some dirt work of her own. She told me later that it was so deep that her foot was almost vertical. I only called out to her twice, and it was because she started throwing high and walked a couple. That's typically the back foot lagging, which I'm sure is because of the hole. I could also tell she wasn't working that one out for herself by how little time she took between pitches.

Those holes are common so we gotta be able to deal with them. I try and get her to "stay light" so that's how I call it. My wife gets so worked up watching the kid pitch. She has a comment (not loud enough to be heard) just about every throw. Stuff like "that's ok, get the next one" and "you got this." Maybe it's just that I've seen and caught thousands from her, but I hardly say anything. I can't straighten the pitches out for her so as long as I see FSR and posture, I know she can work it out on her own. I'm also a firm believe that saying things to a pitcher in the circle is mostly counterproductive. She'll flat-out tell me that she doesn't hear or at least doesn't PROCESS most of the things she hears while she's in the circle. She did throw a strike after both my "stay light" calls, and told me she did hear them. I don't go to the dugout and talk to her for the most part. She usually has a negative reaction. I know she can work it out.

But to ME, saying "encouraging advice" type things to a pitcher or batter is only going to let them know that everyone can see they're struggling/failing. So, the only thing I've ever yelled to a kid is direct praise like "good job" or "nice pitch," or direct coaching pointers that are very basic.

Anyway, the defense struggled at times. A couple long rollers to the fence, which absolutely drive me bonkers. Those are an IPT HR more often than not. Even the big girls will get a triple out of it.

We did have a couple ESPN catches from the cheerleader at SS and one of the freshmen playing at 2B. Overall though, 2B and 3B don't have clear frontrunners, and those are such critical points. Oddly enough, of the potentials at 3B, DD2 has the most reps and strongest arm. She's ground-ball rusty though, and I really just dont think she's ready for that spot. I honestly think DD2 is the best choice for RF. She's got the strongest outfield arm of anyone other than the senior CF'er, is decent at tracking and catching, but more importantly it would be a shock to me if anything got by her. She just doesn't let that happen, and that's been SOOOO damaging to this team in the past.

The hitting was hit and miss, no pun intended. I really can't say one way or the other. There were a ton of full counts and several walks, and I think it lulls the kids to sleep. They see so many balls that they aren't expecting a strike and they end up caught off guard. I expect it to improve. DD2 batted once and was walked on 5 pitches.

Ok. That's my usual long-winded synopsis. The first real game is Tuesday. I just hope we have a solid starting lineup.

Side note...I still do the MS scheduling, and one of the powerhouse team/15 year old 8th grader team coaches hit me up about a scrimmage this weekend. They love to beat people down, so I told him no thanks. We're 45 minutes away and he's got four much better teams within 10 miles of him in either direction...if that tells you anything. I didn't schedule them for real games either. I'm done letting us be a stat-padding game for out-of district teams. I've found that although players may get better by moving up to better teams, a team doesnt get better by playing better competition. And I'm not sending kids and their parents to a bloodbath. That time is better used by having a normal practice.