Be aware of the pitching coaches that lie to the girls and parents, too. I see them pitch in a game and I am wondering "What in the world?"
Forgive me if I've told this story before. A few years ago someone I knew was telling me about a pitcher on another travel team. He was saying he'd heard from some of the parents of girls on her team that she was throwing 60+ mph.
That's interesting, I said. I'm her pitching coach, and I have her around 55 mph on my Jugs gun. Amazing how the legends grow.
I would like to know if there is a way to determine a girls pitching speed without a radar gun?
I watched a pitching coach set up a station yesterday.
Girl is at 40ft to plate
He strung a rope across the front of the plate about 4ft off the ground
about 8-10ft behind the plate on the wall tarp were 2 horizontal lines.
One about 6 inches up from the ground
One about 18 inches up from the ground
The pitcher had to keep the ball under the rope
If she hit the wall near the bottom stripe he said it's about 40mph
If she hit the wall at the top line it was about 48 mph.
I don't know the exact measurements or how exact this process would be but with some trial and error/experience I do see how it could give you an option.
So I tried to gauge my DD's speed with the calculator method last night. Definitely a lot of user error. After I figured the best way to stop watch her was to actually catch the pitch with one hand and hold stop watch in other, I got more consistent readings. Here is some of the math we used and the results.
We pitched from 43' with my glove being held right at the point of the plate. I then measured her stride and made a mark at her approx release point. That was 4'. So for the experiment we used 39' as the distance traveled. She consistently was between .55 and .59 in the times. After calculating the resluts I get speeds between 45 and 48 mph. Pretty consistent to what she actually was clocked on a gun. It was neat to discuss with her the difference in speeds and how just getting 1/10 of a sec quicker to the plate effected the speed results. I was also able to explain that imagine adding 12 inches of stride with no more velocity and how that would effect the results. To me, this worked so much better than just pointing a radar and reading a number. I will definitely use the drill again.