Scheduling for HS Teams

[PJR202]

I appreciate the caveat you put on there, as I HATE this adage. To believe "playing against tougher teams will make you better" is living with blinders on.

Playing competitively against tougher teams will make you better.

Too many lower level coaches who aren't good at their job but believe that they just need to go get curb stomped on a weekly basis and they will magically get better.

Totally agree. This isn't basketball. Individuals may perform better somewhat as the season continues, but overall they're just using whatever level the brought in from the offseason and trying to hold onto it. That especially applies to pitchers.

Really the only thing I see kids get better at throughout the season is communication and learning to avoid mental mistakes, and things that have nothing to do with their individual skillset. There are just too many games to expect much improvement to happen in those 1-2 practices they manage to get per week during the season. This is why hold two practices a week year round. Getting many of them to show up is another challenge entirely.

 

[tim_s]

early in the year with a young group, you want some games to build confidence.......i def like some games that are going to push you, especially for non-con games

but it all depends on your team, what you'll see during conference play, age experience of roster, e

 

[CoachJD]

I appreciate the caveat you put on there, as I HATE this adage. To believe "playing against tougher teams will make you better" is living with blinders on.

Playing competitively against tougher teams will make you better.

Too many lower level coaches who aren't good at their job but believe that they just need to go get curb stomped on a weekly basis and they will magically get better.

Agreed.

Though I do think one or two games each year against a vastly superior opponent is good. I want my girls to see what it's supposed to look like. They need to see what an Actually Good team plays like, how they act, how they warm up, all of it. Yes, I can and do teach them these things, but they need to see it for themselves.

But doing that regularly has to be demoralizing.

This year we have two of those games. One during the second week and one at the end of April. I think if those two opponents played each other, it'd be a good game. So I'm looking at it almost as if we were playing the same opponent. I hope we do much better in the late April game than we do in the early season one. That'll show that we've improved, even if we get beat badly in both.

 

[The Man In Blue]

Agreed.

Though I do think one or two games each year against a vastly superior opponent is good. I want my girls to see what it's supposed to look like. They need to see what an Actually Good team plays like, how they act, how they warm up, all of it. Yes, I can and do teach them these things, but they need to see it for themselves.

But doing that regularly has to be demoralizing.

This year we have two of those games. One during the second week and one at the end of April. I think if those two opponents played each other, it'd be a good game. So I'm looking at it almost as if we were playing the same opponent. I hope we do much better in the late April game than we do in the early season one. That'll show that we've improved, even if we get beat badly in both.

You should invite the two teams for a three-team round robin ... then make your team watch the two play each other!

 

[Cannonball]

I have mentioned this before but when I was an HC, I wanted a schedule that was 1/3rd teams that should beat us, 1/3rd of teams that were as talented as us, and 1/3rd comprised of teams that we should beat. I figured that we would still beat most of the teams equal to us and more than our fair share of teams better than us. I didn't expect to lose any games to teams not as good as us but wanted to schedule games where my non-starters could get varsity playing time. In softball, we ran our own tournament and it was stacked. We knew that we would be tested in that tournament since more than half of the tournament was comprised of larger schools and schools that had great traditional programs. We went up North for a smaller tournament comprised of schools our size.

 

[Dabears17]

There are only two other strong teams in our league, so we need to schedule a somewhat aggressive out of conference schedule to build a case for an at large bid if we don't get an auto-bid to sectional playoffs. Definitely need to schedule a couple teams you should beat to build confidence and get the bench players some innings.

I agree with the 1/3rd, 1/3rd, 1/3rd rule. We are a small school, considered a 'C' team. At times in the past, we had trouble scheduling some 'A' and 'B' schools because losing to us will hurt their chances at an at-large bid and a win isn't as many points as a win against 'A' and 'B' schools.

 

[reagansdaddy]

What's your philosophy on scheduling, especially the tournaments where the competition is definitely stronger than your team but you have 3 pitchers , 2 of which are more experienced but not overpowering. Do you stick with that or try and find easier tournament....we have a solid infield but OF are all freshman with very little experience. I'm a believer in you play tough teams to make you better in the long run......your thoughts

You've got lots of good advice on this thread from people who are much smarter than I am. I will only add one thing. I tried to play teams better than us in our scrimmages - I wanted to know where our weaknesses were and how good teams would take advantage of them. Then I wanted to open the official season with a couple teams we should beat to build confidence. We play in a conference in which we are the smallest school and when I coached we saw a D1 caliber pitcher once a week in conference which could just destroy the vast majority of our girls who had very little experience outside of rec ball. So, we always wanted to get off to a good start knowing that the meat grinder was coming for us.

 

[Mike-Coach-Q]

I have mentioned this before but when I was an HC, I wanted a schedule that was 1/3rd teams that should beat us, 1/3rd of teams that were as talented as us, and 1/3rd comprised of teams that we should beat. I figured that we would still beat most of the teams equal to us and more than our fair share of teams better than us. I didn't expect to lose any games to teams not as good as us but wanted to schedule games where my non-starters could get varsity playing time. In softball, we ran our own tournament and it was stacked. We knew that we would be tested in that tournament since more than half of the tournament was comprised of larger schools and schools that had great traditional programs. We went up North for a smaller tournament comprised of schools our size.

I try and follow the same blueprint as Cannonball

 

[warbird]

I appreciate the caveat you put on there, as I HATE this adage. To believe "playing against tougher teams will make you better" is living with blinders on.

Playing competitively against tougher teams will make you better.

Too many lower level coaches who aren't good at their job but believe that they just need to go get curb stomped on a weekly basis and they will magically get better.

THIS! I hate this adage as well. Playing better teams will expose your weaknesses but it will not make you better unless you as a coach realize these weaknesses and then work to improve them.

 

[Orange Socks]

THIS! I hate this adage as well. Playing better teams will expose your weaknesses but it will not make you better unless you as a coach realize these weaknesses and then work to improve them.

DD2 HS team has got to be the worst team I have seen in recent memory. They just don't have the experienced players nor pitching. Tuesday's night's game was a 2.5 inning beat down. 18-0. They held them to 2 runs in the 1st inning and then our pitcher went on to either walk or HBP the entire roster twice. Scoring 16 runs in the 2nd. We only had 6 AB's the entire game. Yeah Yeah Yeah. Get better right.

When you know that your team is getting nothing out of a game why not put your 2nd and 3rd stringers in the game to make good use of everyone's time? No one learned a thing about each other's team that they already didn't know. Thankfully the game only lasted an hour. I spent the same amount of time driving to and from the game.