I have pretty much coached my daughter in softball since T-ball. I never really intended to, but it always seems like it just worked out that way. Nobody else was willing in T-ball so I reluctantly Volunteered. Eventually we decided that she needed to play at a little higher level so we took her into the city to play rec ball there. I thought that would be the time I could get away from coaching, but circumstances changed and I ended up taking over the team because our coach basically went crazy. So I have been coaching here Travel softball team since then. Now I'm no softball genius and have always known she would need to eventually be coached by a more knowledgeable staff, but we have struggled on when that would need to happen. She has very lofty personal goals. She want's to play for the Florida Gators(no idea why!) I had targeted Freshman year as when I thought we should put her on a true showcase team, but sometimes you just have to take the opportunity when it presents itself. She was recently accepted into one of the most known and prestigious softball organizations in the Midwest. The particular team that she will be playing on is actually power ranked 3rd in the nation. This will afford her the opportunity to be seen by many more college coaches because they play in a variety of showcase tournaments. She is a pitcher and a pretty darn good one. She rocked her tryouts and really impressed the coaches with her ability to pitch to location, pitch with movement and command all 7 of her pitches. For a 12 year old, that's really uncommon. I was always confident in her ability but it was really great to hear if from the coach of such a high level team. He told me that they had at least 10 other girls come and try out for the team that they turned away, and that Reagan was the only one that was able to hang with the rest of the team in all the drills and conditioning. It's going to be a big change for me, watching from the stands instead of coaching, but I think I'm really going to enjoy it. I think this is the opportunity that will allow her to really grow as a player and a pitcher. She's now on a team that she will be able to trust to make the defensive plays when the ball is put in play. In the past, that hasn't always been the case. She's put in so much work to this point, it's just really great to see that it is paying off. Just super proud of her work ethic and drive.
That is really awesome! Congrats to the both of you and look forward to hearing how she does on the new team.
That is great !! Congrats to her and you for making sure she had the opportunity over the years coaching her !! Tim
Congratulations But don't let the club team coaches overuse her good arm. I know they say that underhand pitching "won't hurt her arm she can pitch all day/weekend. My 17yo daughter plays on a very very competitive HS and club team. For HS they have the next big "all star" pitcher which is 2 years younger than the rest. The coaches pitched her almost every game last spring and her parents thought it was great their daughter was on the varsity team. At the end of he school year she was having hip issues. She couldn't pitch all summer or fall because it became to painful. She ended up having a stress fracture in her hip. HS and club team coaches are going to push will push kids right to the edge for a win. I'm not saying your coach will do this but I've seen it happen a lot with different teams my daughter has played.
I think we are pretty fortunate to find a team of this caliber. They already have two other A level pitchers on the team which will lessen the load for my daughter and allow her to play other positions as well. It's very important to us that she's in an environment that will allow her to grow and be a versatile player. In the past she has basically been the only pitcher on the team and that was not only hard on her, but it limited our ability to play in higher level tournaments. We had to pretty much play only single elimination tournaments which were typically only held at the C level of competition. From what I have seen at the two practices we have been to, both of the other pitchers look to be very good as well so I feel confident that they will share the workload. The best compliment I can give my daughter is that she is a pitcher, not a thrower and that makes a huge difference in how their body can handle the workload. Sometimes she will get outside of her mechanics and start to force things, but she has developed to the point that she can tell when things aren't quite right and make the adjustments and get back to pitching. Typically when they stay within the motion, they are good to go. It's when they get outside the motion that they tend to injure themselves. It's also important that they don't over use the curveball and screwball as those can be hard on the elbow.
Being a versatile player is so important. My daughter refused to do anything except pitch. She was careful and actually pulled herself out of a couple of games in both her Junior and Senior years in high school. She played well and played hard and became very good. We don't have club teams around here so her opportunities were limited other than school ball and Dad catching her. When she went to college out west, she went to the tryouts for the D-1 softball team. As the tryouts began the coach stood before the approximately 80 girls and said, "I am holding this tryout because I have to. We have 5 pitchers and we need 4. We have extras at every position. We might be able to use a utility infielder but that is it." After that my daughter said a third of the girls left. The rest began to go through testing drills. Running, throwing, fielding and base running. My daughter said that after an hour there was only about 20 girls left. She was amazed that she and one other girl were neck and neck in each of the trials. At that point the coach had the remaining girls sit down and excused all but 5 of them. She then asked them which position that they played and 1 of the girls said that she was a catcher, 3 of the girls said they could be utility infielders and then my daughter said, "I'm a pitcher!" She said the coach did a double take and said, "Are you sure?" My daughter said yes and she was sent off with a pitching coach and a catcher. My daughter had me for a coach and I had my routines that she and I used to develop her muscle memory. She said that the pitching coach had her throw the exact same order that she had thrown with me for the past 10 years! After about 5 minutes the pitching coach told the Coach that she should come over and watch this girl. The Coach watched for a couple of minutes and then put on a glove and caught her, herself. They excused the 5 girls for the day and invited them back the next day. When they got to practice the next day with the whole team they warmed up, worked out and then ended in a scrimmage. My daughter got to come in and pitch and did amazingle well. The Coach asked her to consider playing infield BUT my daughter had no interest. The Coach excused 3 girls leaving my daughter and the other utility infielder to come back the third day. After that practice the Coach sat down with my daughter and tried again to get her to consider playing another postion and when she wouldn't. She gave her the name of the intramural team coach and told her that she should play with that team that fall and there was a good chance that she would be brought onto the team at some point in the spring. She also suggested that my 5'4" - 105# daughter put on 15 - 20#. My daughter called me all frustrated that she hadn't "made the team" and that she had to put on weight. As hard as I tried to convince her that she had done amazing to get that close to actually walking on to a D-1 schools team and to having been given a chance to be there in the spring if she would play along but at 18 she couldn't see it. So getting your daughter to be versatile, seeing the big picture and keeping her love of the game alive is critical.
I totally agree. One of the questions an assistant coach asked us is if we would be opposed to her playing some outfield. Honestly, I think they were testing out our though process. Were we the type of parents that thought our girl was too good to play outfield. Our answer was simply that we want her to be a well rounded player and that even though she hasn't played a lot of outfield she would play where ever the coaches asked her to play. You never really know where the opportunities will be so it's important to be prepared for whatever opportunity is presented. I can understand how hard it is to get a child to understand that though, even parents. There's a girl that goes to the same school as my daughter. One year younger. We talked about inviting her to play on our travel team last fall so she could get a taste for real competitive softball. Her dad told us that she only pitches and plays first base. I simply told him do not have room for players with a limited skill set, all of our players will play in the infield and outfield at times so that they can become more well rounded and valuable players when they move to the next level.
I'm not trying to sound mean, but that sure does stink she let an opportunity pass like that. Good luck to your daughter Stephen, hope it all works out. Don't forget that she needs to enjoy her high school days as well and not look past them for college.
She will I'm sure. She's just pretty goal driven. She has said that she wants to play college softball for the last two years. I enjoy the fact that she has goals and is driven(more than I ever was). We just have real issue with school sports in our town. There's just no work ethic with most of the other kids she goes to school with. It's really tough watching her out there competing and seeing other girls basically playing in the dirt, junior high aged girls playing in the dirt.
She's 24 now and has finally realized that walking on to a D-1 school is a big deal but too little too late! If she would have only listened to her parents.
