HS Softball Started

[Northball]

First day of practice yesterday (Minnesota). 25 kids for the varsity and JV ranks, including three 8th graders and a 7th grade possibility. Five missing due to state basketball tourney this week. Three are new to organized ball. One of those is an exchange student and I'm told she has a tremendous opera singing voice. Maybe we can come up with a dugout chant that will really throw the opponents off their game.
First time in at least ten(?) years the team has been able to be outside for first practice. Sunny, about 70 degrees, and little wind. Fantastic.

 

[RADcatcher]

This has been neat to read through!
Have a great season everybody!

 

[Intheboondocks]

First day of practice yesterday (Minnesota). 25 kids for the varsity and JV ranks, including three 8th graders and a 7th grade possibility. Five missing due to state basketball tourney this week. Three are new to organized ball. One of those is an exchange student and I'm told she has a tremendous opera singing voice. Maybe we can come up with a dugout chant that will really throw the opponents off their game.
First time in at least ten(?) years the team has been able to be outside for first practice. Sunny, about 70 degrees, and little wind. Fantastic.

It was great out yesterday, DDs school ended up with 23 kids registered, half are 7th and 8th graders. It appears like we won't be trying to cram the entire season into May this year.

 

[tim_s]

we have our preseason meeting thursday.......16 signed up as of right now......next week is throwing/conditioning only......full practice the week after

snow is 100% gone, infield isn't horrible after a bunch of wind, despite a fair amount of rain.....after the 23rd or so I don't see many nights below freezing on the extended forecast, and most days in the 40's to mid 50's from then through early april

not bad for Maine spring......

 

[DonnyS]

HS Softball for us is a 2+ month period of time where mostly below average to no talent is assembled on various teams throughout the area to play games that are often painful to watch. My only hope is that DD has fun and doesn't get injured, so that we can start playing real softball again on her travel team for the balance of the summer/fall.

I realize that was pretty negative and understates the importance of HS athletics in the development of young female athletes/soon to be college students/professionals. But this is a softball forum not a life coaching forum.

 

[Greatdaytobeawildcat]

CT here. Pitchers and catchers report today. Full team tryouts start Monday.

Defending conference champs and state semi-finalist, but lost our ace to graduation (pitching at a very good D3). New ace is very good though, and the lineup is full of returning bats, so should be another good season.

Only uncertainty is whether we'll have a JV (we probably have a team and a half, and it's probably on the edge of having too many girls having to double roster to make it work. But also would hate to cut girls (thinking about future).

 

[Northball]

It was great out yesterday, DDs school ended up with 23 kids registered, half are 7th and 8th graders. It appears like we won't be trying to cram the entire season into May this year.

I'd give you an Amen, but March is the snowiest month so I'll have to see it to believe it.

 

[Intheboondocks]

I'd give you an Amen, but March is the snowiest month so I'll have to see it to believe it.

I am well aware, but if we can get more than 4 games in April like last year, I'll call that a win.

 

[CoachJD]

Here are some observations about HS tryouts:

• Coaches should not coach during tryouts unless safety is involved. The goals of tryouts are to assess what skill level players have and their overall abilities.
• I have seen tryouts where coaches want to comment on everything. For example, every swing in the cage. Players are doing their best with what they know and any attempt to change things might make things worse.
• The hardest part of tryouts is knowing that some players will have to be cut. However, it is kinder to cut them than to keep them for a season when all they do is practice and never get a chance to play.
• Tryouts have to be well organized. For coaches, there are opinions and measurements.
• I let players know that I might ask them to do a few things and that when one person is coached, they all are coached. For example, yesterday, during hitting, bats were lying in play and the next hitter was not picking it up. We were doing situational fielding and base running. I can't run over every time to pick up a bat.
• If freshmen are trying out, the tryout has to end on time.
• If there are any questions about a player's ability, get another look at them at the position that they most want to play.
• During tryouts, players will wear their TB uniforms to impress the coaches as to what level of play they play during the summer. Those uniforms really don't mean much given the various levels some of these TB teams now have.
• The way players carry themselves during tryouts screams as to what is in store for coaches during HS season. For example, one young lady was in the cage and she had swung and missed perhaps 12-15 balls from a machine at 55 mph. I asked her if she realized how she was missing the ball. (She was swinging under every ball.) Her response was that she has a hitting coach whom she is supposed to listen to and not the HS coaches. OK well, that won't go well. When every other player is killing the "meat pitch" and you can't hit one foul ball, you might be in real trouble.

These are just some observations. To be honest, I could type pages of observations but I'll leave well enough alone.

Love these. Some don't really apply to our situation, but I agree nonetheless.

Our JV team always has about 6-8 new players. While our program is pretty healthy (we're 1A in size, but this year we're playing 2A to get more local competition), we're not at the point where every girl trying out is an experienced player. This year we kept 29 players for two teams. 7 are brand new. But they're the best brand new group we've ever had. There's only one who's struggling badly after two weeks; we kept her because she came to almost every open field during the off season. She's trying hard, and there's no real harm in keeping her around to see if it eventually clicks.

We do a small amount of coaching of these players in tryouts. Some of it is for basic safety ("hold the glove like this so you don't get hit in the face"). More of it is to see how quickly they can pick things up, if they're coachable, etc. Another example is giving them 1 or 2 small hitting pointers just to see if they can figure it out. But I agree it's a tryout and not a practice, and our job is evaluation and not teaching in that moment. I tend to say very little.

I hate cuts. It's a weird thing because I get really excited when we get a crazy number of signups, but then when we get to tryout time I always hope we get exactly the right number. We cut two this year, the first time since 2020. Two others, both girls I did not want on the team for various reasons, decided to not try out.

The TB uniform thing is funny. We do have a few travel players, but every one of them got into travel because I helped them (recommending teams, putting them in touch with coaches, sending them tryout info). There are only 3 girls on the HS team this year who had any baseball/softball experience before starting with us, so I know them all. The travel players are also obviously going to be our best varsity players, so they have no need to flaunt that.

The results of our tryouts were interesting this year. Three Freshmen made varsity. Two were a given. The third is a girl who has played with us before, but didn't play last year. She surprised everyone with her tryout. She might not be ready ready, but because of the low level of our JV games, I think she'll get more out of being a bench player on varsity (my bench players all get decent playing time) than she would getting walked 4 times a game on JV.

But we also have 4 juniors on JV. Three of them for their third year. Good kids, but not serious softball players. They're a little pack, and all three have some potential, but I'm not sure they'll ever get a serious varsity run. That bums me out because I do consider it partially a failing on my part. We haven't figured out how to develop them enough, how to make them take the game more seriously, etc. One of those three was voted a JV captain. I'm interested to see if she can lead.

The last interesting thing from tryouts: For a couple of our Varsity/JV bubble players, I sent them a personal message before posting rosters to let them know why they were sticking with JV for now. I messaged one girl after tryouts and explained it. She responded positively and understood. Then 1 minute after I sent out the rosters, she messaged me saying she was thinking of quitting. It took a back and forth for a while before I got to the bottom of it: She was fine being on JV, but seeing a certain other girl on varsity upset her. We've smoothed things over. She's actually right. She's a better overall player, but for roster construction/position needs and grade/behavior concerns, we made the right decision for now.

The other notable thing from the first couple weeks: We've been outside more than ever. I've had to change up my usual routines quite a bit as I've developed a lot of indoor practices, but we've had so much field time this year that I've taken advantage of that. It's been good, but it feels so different that I keep thinking I'm not doing enough/the right things.

Last chapter of this novel: Toward the end of last season, my #1 pitcher fell apart. Minor injury, and once that got better, she just forgot how to pitch. Confidence shot. Mechanics a mess. 100% healthy, but maybe still thinking about the knee. Her travel team stopped using her as a pitcher. I even greatly limited her in our summer games.

She's spent the past 7 months trying to rebuild from scratch. She opted to not play basketball this year and refused to take significant time off from working on pitching. It's been a difficult process. I purposefully scheduled an away game against a weaker team for our first game, and I told her months ago she was pitching. We have a Freshman who is fantastic, probably better than her, but I need both of them. The plan worked. We scored a bunch in the top of the first, and she dominated. She wasn't perfect. A few HBP, but no walks and plenty of strikeouts. After the game she was excitedly talking about fixing some of the mechanical stuff, knowing that it's a work-in-progress, but it's not hopeless.

She's not my DD, but she's been with us since 5th grade and she's a junior now. I love that kid like she were my own, and it was painful to see her doubt herself. To see softball stressing her out instead of being a source of joy. She had fun today, and it was great to see that.

 

[NJZoo]

My freshman daughter has been anxiously awaiting HS softball season. We had to hire a new coach in Oct (the varisty boys soccer coach) because the coach from last year was not retained (after only a year on the job). As a result of the late start, we didn't have a real winter workout, only weight training after school. We were doing winter workouts with our club team so I wasn't too upset about it

Our district is really odd, we have 2 high schools a mile away from each other that service 4 towns. Yet, somehow, it's the other school that is the athletic powerhouse, while my daughter's HS is average at best. But all of the kids grew up playing with and against each other. We have 1200 kids in the school and I think they had around 30 total try out. Anyway, I think our Varsity softball team won 4 or 5 games last year, while our sister school was runner up in the state. Including my daughter, we have 3 freshman club girls coming in.

The first day of tryouts, before they even threw a ball, the coach separated them into Varsity and JV. And, I'll be damned if he wasn't dead on. 1 or 2 JV girls ended up getting a practice in with the Varsity team over the following week, but they clearly weren't on that level.

They had their first scrimmage Friday (In NJ can't play your first game until 4/1) and my daughter and her 2 fellow freshman all started. They beat the other team by 20...but they were not good at all. I think a realistic goal to shoot for is to finish .500 on the year. My daughter did say that he told the 3 freshman to take charge on the field and not defer to the upperclassmen just because of their age. So, we shall see.