Girls fastpitch softball anyone else invovled?

[Tig]

The worst game I ever witnessed was a 7-8 grade girls softball game........ most disgusting sporting event I ever witnessed.

Fortunately, up here that sort of rabid mob potential is reserved for life and death type situations, like minor hockey. (insert sarcastic smiley here)
In HS ball, a new coach was yucking it up while he ran the score up as high as he could against my grade 10 squad. The teachers supervising his team did not look impressed. I never saw that coach again.
On a couple occasions, when we were seriously over matched in a house league situation and were being seriously abused I have approached the culprits (in one case the head ump to address the behavior of a parent ump at second) I simply laid out the situation as follows; "We're over our heads, but on a good day we think we can make this a fun game. You don't need to do this to win." and I left it at that. The results were mixed at best, but I hope that at some point they will understand the message about respect and winning with class.

Our holy grail was the three pitch inning. Oh, the game within the game.

 

[Danno1]

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Lot of good stories.

But back to the OP. I don't think you did the wrong thing in this particular game. Your daughter had a terrible previous season and worked hard off season to correct this. She needed the reward and the confidence booster (as did the whole team). And you had no other pitcher anyway. But, to do this every game would not be a good thing (as some of the other guys mentioned).

What might work well for you is to have her train some of the other girls to be pitchers. She now has the training; pass it along. Not only is this good for the team, but I've noticed with myself when learning something, it helps reinforce the skill to me when I teach others.


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[dmccarty]

I am not a big sports fan, never have been and never will be.

I played full contact football in 5th and 6th grades and the team that won the city championship those two years was bribing the referees. The referees were allowing the other team to face mask the center and tackles play after play. We were really lucky a kid did not get seriously hurt. Looking back at the situation our couch should have talked to the referees, and if the face masking had continued, he should have called the game. One game we scored against the city championship team which would have given us the win. The referee said we had not scored even though we knew we had crossed the line and as a result we lost the game. After the game the referee apologized to our team and said he would not make that mistake again. You mean being bribed?

Fast forward to my kids who have played soccer and basketball. I have seen soccer games where players should have been thrown out of games for deliberately knocking down and kicking players. Kids taken off the field with injuries that should not have happened. My kid's first and only basket ball game had THREE children taken to the hospital/doctor due to head injuries including our child who did have a concussion. I have photos of two of the kids being injured including our own. Our school has some very mature parents but I thought they were going to riot over all of the obvious missed calls. After I left to take our child to the doctor, our coach called the game to prevent more injuries. First time he has ever had to do such a thing. Those refs were never hired again. I also blame the other coach for not controlling a couple of her players.

A few years ago I was taking photos of a women's only, full contact, football league. :shocked::shocked::shocked: There are, or where, TWO such leagues in NC. The games I saw were some of the dirtiest, trash talking events I have ever seen. :laughing::laughing::laughing: One team from FLA looked like it had one player who was a man. :shocked::shocked::shocked: This team would walk on the field all lined up which was very impressive and all of the players would be wearing helmets. Hmmmmm.... During the game I had noticed this one player was making some very good defensive plays AND that the player did not have the body shape of a women. I noticed this but it really is hard to tell someone's gender when they are wearing a helmet and pads. During the game the NC team started to comment about this player having an adam's apple. :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing: I never got a photo of the player that showed the throat area but I did try. I do think the player was a man.

At least this cheating was not likely to get someone hurt. The player was not any bigger than the other players though the player did have some rather large biceps. :confused3::laughing::laughing:

Later,
Dan

 

[scesnick]

Had our third game today with a team that was VERY, VERY young. I took a chance and pitched a girl that has been working with her father on pitching. She actually did very well for her first game. No steam on the ball at all but she was throwing it acrtoss the plate so I was happy with that. But, like I said the other team was super young and we jumped up 10-0 in the 2nd. So, I pushed my luck a bit and tried another girl who claimed she has been working on it also. She wasn't terrible but walked quite a few, but the pitches were atleast around the plate. I also sat my daughter all but the first inning when she played 1st. I also moved around all my "lesser " players to positions they normally would not play and sat some of my better palyers for a few innings.
Well, they ended up scoring 5 in the 3rd and 4 in the 4th. So the score was 11-9 going in tot the 5th inning which, due to time restraints was determined to be the last inning. I knew I had my less hitting girls coming up in the bottom of the fifth ( the our last at bat ) And their team had their good hitters coming up so I had no choice put to put my daughter on the mound to preserve the win.

I heard grumbles from multiple parents when they got close and a sigh of relief when we won.

 

[MossRoad]

Good job coach. Sometimes, when you know how the other team will play, and you can work your less experienced players, its a good experience for all of them. If the other team makes some ball contact you get your infield working on making the plays at the bag where it really counts. If the parents of your players are grumbling because the game was getting close, have a talk with them after the game to tell them you had confidence in their kids to play the game and they need the experience rather than watching a pitch-fest strike everyone out 1-2-3. Some of the parent will get it. Others won't.

In our grade school league, I always made it clear that all the games during theregular season were just practices for the tournament, which was single elimination. It doesn't matter what your record for the year is, plenty of teams with average records have become tournament champs, and plenty of undefeated teams have gone out in the first round due to overconfidence.

Remind them that your goal is to build the skills of the kids and let them have some fun. Winning games is a secondary goal. A good measure is if you can honestly and clearly see them improving each week. If you can't see improvement, time to change course. If you can see measurable, visible improvement, you're doing a good job.

 

[Tig]

That's awesome csenick. To heck with the parents, you ran a great game for the kids.
Good job coach!

 

[tractorshopper]

The absolute worst for us was playing a nearby city in 10U girls basketball. We had a weak team to begin with that year, but had a couple better players out for a school event, so went through a game getting pounded. Was sad to see the other coach would only put her weak players in for the minimum allowed time (3 minutes) and kept pounding us with her best 5 players. At the end of the 4th qtr they were up 32-2 on us and with 13 seconds left in the game called a time out instead of letting the clock run so she could get her players refocused.

I talked to her later on and told her I didn't appreciate it one bit. She said I had to call the time out, my girls were getting frustrated because the refs weren't calling anything. I said your girls were getting frustrated? Think about mine. The refs stopped calling so much to let the clock run because this game was over in the 1st quarter. She still didn't get it. Some people never will.

 

[sld]

I get sick of the everybody gets a medal mentality. I have been involved in kids sports for years. You did nothing wrong.

In fact, if you beat every team 20-0 and your daughter pitches you have done nothing wrong. The weaker players need to get better or quit. That is how it used to work.

I always welcomed the start of a new year to see who would quit. Parents are making kids play when they don't want to and they have no business wasting everyone's time.

There are usually less competitive leagues for the kids that don't really want to play.

 

[aczlan]

I get sick of the everybody gets a medal mentality. I have been involved in kids sports for years. You did nothing wrong.
In fact, if you beat every team 20-0 and your daughter pitches you have done nothing wrong. The weaker players need to get better or quit. That is how it used to work.
I always welcomed the start of a new year to see who would quit. Parents are making kids play when they don't want to and they have no business wasting everyone's time.
There are usually less competitive leagues for the kids that don't really want to play.

I'll have to disagree. There is a line between "Everyone gets a medal" and beating a weak team by 50-0. Once you are ahead and its obvious that they arent going to be able to catch up, switch people around, let some of your weaker players try other positions and stop running up the score just to run it up...

Aaron Z

 

[scesnick]

I am not much a fan of everyone getting a trophy either. I remember when I played little league we actually had cuts! If you weren't good enough you got cut. That would go over like a lead baloon now in little league.