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

[CoachJD]

Nearly every program in the area but ours sends most or all of their 8th graders to the HS team. Some need them to play varsity, and some just take them for JV. It's so funny because when the MS tournament comes around, they're suddenly all there. And some of those 8th graders are actually 9th grade age and held back for sports.

This is the year I wish I could have 8th graders on the HS team. The second best pitcher at our school is in 8th, and there are two other 8th graders who would challenge for a varsity spot this year.

Instead... I wait and hope I can have a successful season without a true shortstop or third baseman.

 

[_MIA_]

This is the year I wish I could have 8th graders on the HS team. The second best pitcher at our school is in 8th, and there are two other 8th graders who would challenge for a varsity spot this year.

Instead... I wait and hope I can have a successful season without a true shortstop or third baseman.

This local kid has 17 MS HR in like 10 games..I bet the HS wishes they had her

 

[PJR202]

This is the year I wish I could have 8th graders on the HS team. The second best pitcher at our school is in 8th, and there are two other 8th graders who would challenge for a varsity spot this year.

Instead... I wait and hope I can have a successful season without a true shortstop or third baseman.

It sucks having to wait for players. And just knowing there's another tough season coming up because playing the long game is the only option. Realistically, I think we hit our stride in 2025. Maaaaybe 2024. We'll have a couple really solid freshmen in '24, including a pitcher (if I do a good job haha), then twice as many the next year. 25 really should be the sweet spot. It's just tough to keep the end goal in mind when there's so much suffering in the present.

 

[PJR202]

This local kid has 17 MS HR in like 10 games..I bet the HS wishes they had her

My brother lives in Tulsa. I should send him some bribery money.

 

[PJR202]

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2022 spring practices started up in mid February, and we were cautiously optimistic. The Wiz was at the helm, I was back in the assistant role, and we invited a female coach and former HS player to join us. She's tough and game-smart and loves softball, and we really wanted to have a female presence in the dugout. She was a great addition. Ed moved on to a spectator job with his daughter having moved up to HS.

So a beautiful thing happened. We went from three lefty players to zero lefty players.

"Oh look at meeee...I need a special glove. Look at meeee...I stand on the other side of the plate. Look at meeeee...I can't play middle infield or 3B because I was born defective and don't naturally face the correct direction!!"

Spawns of Satan, I tell ya....at least none of them also played soccer. Deal-breaker.

So anyway...We practiced hard. The girls hustled and kept a positive attitude. We still had some holes, and most of the kids still couldn't be mostly trusted in the OF, although that did improve as things went on. When it came time to play games, this is how we had shaken out.

- We had a great 1B, but she was also #1 pitcher (the 7th grader we were unsure about)
- C - pretty solid 8th grader
- 1B - a rotating cast of characters.
- 2B - was covered. Two girls that were about the same level. a 7th and a 6th grader.
- SS - Wiz's kid. 7th grade. Really solid but still learning like everyone else. Second year of softball.
- 3B - DD2 (8th grade) most of the time, since she was #2 pitcher and did that only for JV. This would be her second year of softball, and she was 13 months into pitching lessons.

In the OF was a mixture of kids, basically dependent on who was catching the ball the most consistently. One surprise was the 6th grade, JV catcher. We randomly stuck her in the OF during practice and she tracked the ball nearly flawlessly, and caught it most of the time...with her catcher's mitt. We went ahead and gave her a pretty regular CF slot, along with the loan of my glove. LF ended up being one of two specific girls most of the time, just depending on which of them we had placed into the IF to fill in for an absence. RF was whoever we trusted most of the kids we didn't have in another spot.

Our hitting was, by our own standards (which were certainly not high at that time), decent from 1 - 4. 5 - 7 were a complete unknown from game to game, and 8/9 we just hoped would get walked or HBP in some mostly painless spot. Oddly enough, some of the kids actually took pride in getting hit. Very late into the season I was coaching 1B, and DD2 was at the plate. The second pitch was headed right at her leg, and she didn't move a muscle. Just tracked it all the way in, cheered, and ran to 1B. I asked her why she cheered and she said "that's the first one all season!"

Ok, kiddo...whatever floats your boat.

Now let me be real clear here. We had one player who was 5'9". DD2 was 5'5" or so, then a couple kids about 5'3, then a bunch that were barely 5 feet and less. We were SMALL, and our hitting was weak. It was weak in skill, and weak in power. A third of the kids still had an Easton Amethyst caliber bat. There's no gettin' out of the infield with one of those bats for a smaller player. The other teams were so much bigger, and we knew from a hitting standpoint it would be a real factor. We didn't have money for a team bat yet, but eventually we sold some stuff and did one of those lazy calendar fund raisers. That got us enough cash for a bat, two boxes of game calls, and to pay umpires.

So, we worked a lot on playing small ball. Bunts, steals, aggressive base running, and any other little tip or trick we could come up with to get on base and get to home. Were we great at it? No. They were all just still too green to have enough game savvy. But, we did our best. We used signs, and tried our best to stay in control. Because of their inexperience and lack of aggression across the board, we felt it best to orchestrate as much of their decision making as possible. Despite it all, if I had a nickel for every time one of them started to steal 2B then panicked halfway there and stopped, I would have several dollars. That was beyond frustrating.

Up next...invited to a tournament. The first games...

 

[PJR202]

*******************

So in mid March 2022, a couple weeks before our first game, which would take place on the same field as our final shellacking of 2021, Wiz gets a call from a lady representing a tournament in the next state over, about 45 minutes from us. This is a cozy tri state area and I thought I knew of all the schools around, but I had never heard of this bunch. I asked a kid at DD2's pitching lesson (played for a school in that area) and she said "I don't know about their middle school, but the high school team is trash."

I channeled my inner Montgomery Burns, rubbing my hands together in anticipation. Maybe we could find ourselves a win that weekend, and get the ball rolling the right direction.

The tournament would be the following weekend, and a few days beforehand we finally got a list of the teams. They were all from the area other than a catholic school from a bit farther away. None of them were teams from our state, though. So off went the alarm in my head.

Now...I'm not saying I'm super smart. Handsome? Yes. Well...maybe. But, it didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on. There are several middle schools on our side of the river within 20 minutes drive. Hell, one of them is no more than 5 minutes, and another about 10 minutes if traffic is heavy.

They didn't want to play those teams. They probably called one of those coaches and said "Hey, which team in your district got the piss beaten out of them by everyone last season?"

And that's how we got invited.

I take no offense to this. And after playing those teams, the goal may have been more to find a couple teams at each level of competency so everyone had a chance of winning at least one game. Again, that was fine. Whether it was that, or if the host team just wanted to make sure they had someone to beat on, I was fine with it. We were just happy to be getting a test run before playing the games that counted.

So as I've said at least 74 times, we were short on experience. Pitcher #1 is the only kid who had ever played a tournament. Wiz had been to a million of them all over the country with his baseball travel team, but I had never been. I understand basic bracketology because I like to fill out one for NCAA basketball and predict a bunch of upsets that never happen, but I was looking at a six team, double elimination bracket with pool play. I had to get on youtube to even find out what pool play was. So after a confusing 15 minutes or so, I understood.

So we get to this school, walk up an enormous hill because we forgot our goats, and find the most beautiful field carved out of the hillside.

And it's turf.

None of our kids had played on turf. That was just awesome. Invited to a tournament to get the piss beaten out of us, and realizing that on that surface we would probably have ourselves beaten in no time. One word (or is it two?) ....... backspin.

To be continued...

 

[PJR202]

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Tournament, Part 2...

So, we walked up another enormous hill to get to a flat area to warm up. We get to passing, which looks brutally bad because competency of throw and catch still is a mystery for a few of the girls, then some side toss hitting. Our pool play game would be against the catholic school. After a few minutes, they rolled up the hill, and out of the vehicles stepped the biggest team I'd ever seen...including high school games.

It really was absurd. These "middle school" girls looked like linebackers. They had a half dozen pitchers, most of which were throwing harder than our #1, their passing lines were perfect, the gloves were popping, and everyone hitting into a net had a trampoline bat and a minimum of warning track power. Our home field doesn't even have a warning track.

A short while later, we're in a really nice dugout that's actually in the ground, and stepping out to warm up. It was brutal. Simple grounders were hopping all over the place. Our girls were trying their best, but the turf was running the show.

P1 was getting the start, but DD2 went ahead and started warming up. It was awful. The ball was going over the place. At that time she was only throwing around 38 on average, and not super duper accurate, but most of her throws should have been catchable. This stuff was flying past the catcher constantly. She can be high strung so I calmly asked what was going on. She lifted up her cleat and said "I can't turn on this turf!"

The way she was originally taught to pitch was to step out with the left, pivot on the right to force the hip opening, then pivot on the left to bring the right hip back around and release. By the time of the tournament she had gone from a step to a big lunge. It wasn't a drive and stride. No toe drag type stuff. Being able to do that second turn/pivot on that left foot was critical to the pitch.

I didn't know what to do. If she had to take the circle in relief, she would either walk everyone or end up damaging her knee. I was obviously more concerned about her knee.

So, P1 started the game. We put the JV catcher turned center fielder at 1B since she had also shown promise there and we had no better option. DD2 played 3B. We had tried to make our strongest possible IF and placed OF players that could protect the ball decently and had competent arms and common sense. We knew those linebackers were gonna get the ball into the "grass."

Just before going onto the field, Wiz gathered the girls up and said something like "this field will send the ball bouncing all over the place. If it's coming at you, lay down on it. You can block with your body so if it takes a bad hop you can keep it from getting to the outfield."

P1 came out throwing as hard as I've ever seen. She basically only had a fastball, and we told her to try nothing else. We couldn't risk it. We would let the ball be put into play and give our defense a shot. She kept the ball in the zone, and as-predicted, they beat the piss out of the ball.

Much to my surprise, though, the girls hung in there. They took their lumps, but kept the ball in front of them, made their cuts, and made every play the offense gave them. I was floored when they came off the field and had only given up five runs.

They used their ace pitcher, and I can only presume it was to give her a nice warmup. She threw absolute lasers, anywhere she wanted. I had never seen a better pitcher, even when watching DD1's HS games. Three strikeouts on nine pitches.

The rest of the game was more of the same, but we still managed to play almost flawless defense on playable balls. I think we had a bobble or something at one point, but other than that, the only error I recall is when SS got a great jump on a rocket line drive that hit her in the pocket and took her glove with it into the outfield. She stood up, threw her hands in the air and screamed "what else am I supposed to do!!!"

When it was all said and done, we gave up five runs in each of three innings on 6 hits, resulting in a run-rule. All of our hitters struck out except for JV catcher, who got some junk contact to 1B for an easy out. We didn't even get a foul ball otherwise.

STILL, though...we coaches were pumped about the result. We had finished that game without them ever having to step off the base to end an inning for us, and we knew we wouldn't see another team that good all season.

To be continued...

 

[_MIA_]

*******************



None of our kids had played on turf. That was just awesome. Invited to a tournament to get the piss beaten out of us, and realizing that on that surface we would probably have ourselves beaten in no time. One word (or is it two?) ....... backspin.

To be continued...

Actually topspin is more problematic on turf..lol.

 

[_MIA_]

******************************


P1 was getting the start, but DD2 went ahead and started warming up. It was awful. The ball was going over the place. At that time she was only throwing around 38 on average, and not super duper accurate, but most of her throws should have been catchable. This stuff was flying past the catcher constantly. She can be high strung so I calmly asked what was going on. She lifted up her cleat and said "I can't turn on this turf!"

I am surprised they even let you wear cleats on the turf.

 

[PJR202]

I am surprised they even let you wear cleats on the turf.

They were fine with it. Most of the teams had them on. We had one girl wearing spikes, which they probably wouldn't have been thrilled about, but there was some personal drama surrounding said spikes so we just stayed out of it and planned to apologize later. I didn't see any signs though.

thanks for reading!