What I would have done differently about my DD's pitching

[sluggers]

Ray - in hindsight, having two players pitching at the college level, would you have done anything differently in your DDs development as it relates to their pitching practices so they did not have arm injuries for the rest of their lives. I have a young pitcher and I'm always concerned about overuse, improper or lack of stretching, injury, and burnout.

I was asked this question, so I thought I would put it in another thread. I'm very passionate about this, mainly because I was a stupid Daddy who wanted his DD to be a great pitcher. In my quest to help my DD become a good pitcher (she never became "great), I made some mistakes.

(1) First and foremost, I would have found a good pitching instructor. I would have researched each potential candidate thoroughly. I would have understood the "why" things work the way they do in pitching from the very beginning.

At least in 1995, we had an excuse for going to a bozo for a couple of years because there wasn't any information available. No one has that excuse in 2009. Hal, Bill, Amy and Boardmember know there stuff. All you have to do here is ask, "Hey, my pitching coach says XYZ. Is that right?" If the answer is "NO", then you find someone else immediately.

(2) I don't think pitching practice was a problem. The pitching practices were really focused on form, ball control and movement. She only threw "flat out" for maybe 50 pitches in a practice session. That was always at the very end of practice, so she was always warmed up. We would do speed work maybe once a week.

(3) The mistake I made was when I coached her team. I would let my desire to win overshadow common sense. The number 2 pitcher on the team was not even close to being as good as my DD. No one ever questioned pitching my DD over anyone else--everyone wanted her to pitch. So, it was real easy for me to pitch my DD every game.

Add the warm up time and game time for a pitcher, and she was probably throwing 200 pitches for each game. Almost all of those pitches were at maximum arm speed. It is simply ludicrous to think that any person can speed up her hand to 65 mph and then stop it five or six hundred times during a day, two days a week for years and not have any injury.

(4) The other problem was throwing the over-the-top drop. I should have approached that particular pitch very, very carefully. To get the very sharp break on the ball, the pitcher has to really twist the arm and has to get on her front foot. That will make the ball dive--but, it is very hard on the arm. At the time, the only thing that was important to me was getting a big time break on the ball.

 

[SoCalSoftballdad]

Very insightful, thanks for sharing your experience. IMO, your key points are a) use the best PC you can find b) as a parent, educate yourself on proper pitching mechanics to help alleviate possible injuries c) don't treat your best pitcher as a "work horse" even if it means not fielding your best pitcher some games, and d) be very careful about over practicing certain breaking pitches that might put a lot of strain on the arm.

Couple of follow-up questions: 1) would you recommend light conditioning (for more flexibility and strength of the pitcher) and ice down of pitching shoulder, even at 10U level; and 2) quality of the practice session is more important than the quanity? For example, have DD practice pitching only 2 days a week, but very focused instead of 3 or 4 days a week. Might save some arms in the future? but then again, maybe the extra work allowed them to play college ball?