All About Fastpitch Softball Blog

What do you think?

Who does the softball coaching job better?

Men or women?

Women, I think, have an advantage as far as being able to relate to the players and understand them. However, men can sometimes get a response out of players that most women can’t/don’t get.

Then again, others will say that gender doesn’t matter, it’s the individual themselves that does.

BUT, “in general” - what’s your opinion?

Are men better at coaching women’s softball or do women do a better job coaching female softball players?

If you’re a Fastpitch World member – you can answer this question in the forum. If not, leave a
comment here and let me know what you think. I’m interested to see what you have to say.

Who does it better?

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Just this evening I had a number of thoughts come to mind about how things have changed in the past 20 years. My daughter is playing in Bobby Sox tournaments as I did 20 years ago. She’s also playing ASA, but we gave Bobby Sox try this year and that’s primarily what’s bringing about all these thoughts on change.

Of course, Bobby Sox, in and of itself is one of the major things that crossed my mind. Bobby Sox is nothing like what it used to be. In Hawaii, from a league that had a number of different associations with multiple teams per age division per association to a league with where just 3 districts participate locally. It’s just much smaller than it used to be and the age divisions and minimum play rules have changed a little bit too.

Now-days ASA is a huge deal. When I was growing up, I had never really even heard of ASA until I was older. Yet 20 years later, my 7-year-old has played ASA for 3 seasons already.

Okay, I just realized, this post is going to make me feel old…LOL.

…but I’ll go on…

Tonight I saw a base bag for the first time in a looooooong, long time. I remember having to help our coaches put away bases after every practice. We had to get all those bases with straps and pegs into that big duffle with the pin that secured the top portion of the bag shut. I don’t think my daughters would even know what to look for if you told them to go get the bag for the bases.

Then there’s the face mask requirement. I’ve gotten so used to seeing young ladies play with face masks that, now, when I see a player without one it looks so “dangerous.” Yet, when the face mask became mandatory for batting helmets in youth leagues, I was right there with the girls feeling all the frustration of having to switch over. I was glad that change hadn’t been made when I was playing because I really wouldn’t have wanted to hit with a mask on. As a mother though, I’m so glad my girls are wearing one.

We can’t forget those racer back jerseys so many players love. There was none of that around when I was playing. Even playing in a sleeveless jersey was a stretch for my imagination. When I saw all the teams coming out with the racer back jerseys and shorts, I seriously began to think that, one day, girls would be playing softball in those skimpy volleyball-type uniforms.

After the popularity of the racer back came the emergence of those little black velcro things that scrunch up the shoulder or back of the jersey. I don’t even know what they’re called and I’ve been searching can’t find them online without knowing what the proper term for them are. If you know what they’re called, please post a comment here and fill in the blank for me. I’m sure it’ll come to me later, but if you get to it before me, please, post it in a comment here.

Oh yes, and we can’t forget….Under Armour! I used to wear those 3/4 sleeve undershirts and think it was so cool. But now, it’s all about the even “cooler” (and more expensive) Under Armour that the players HAVE to have. I don’t even know if my daughters realize that Under Armour was unheard of when I was their age. Eeek!

And, of course, the bats! Gosh, I can only imagine what kind of stats I could have had if we had today’s bat technology when I was playing! My hands certainly wouldn’t have stung as much that’s for sure…and I probably would have had more than 1 home-run per year in high school. Maybe some of those hard hit grounders would have made it through the infield. Whenever I see a young lady hit a towering line shot, I always think of how fun it would have been to use that type of high performance bat during my career.

Anyway – those are just a few of the things that come to mind tonight as I think about what has changed since I was playing as my daughters are now. Other things include offensive/defensive strategy, pitching technique, attitudes of players, perspective and philosophy on strength training/conditioning/stretching, the whole “travel ball” concept, and I’m sure there’s more, but I’ll stop there because all that’s getting a little too serious for me. We could probably get into all kinds of good discussions along those lines. But back to the “lighter” side of this topic…What else do you have to add?

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“Don’t throw hard. Just throw strikes.”

Eek! I cringe when I heard coaches or fathers saying these words to their young (or maybe even not so young) pitchers. I know I’m guilty of it sometimes too. Well, not the “Don’t throw hard” part, but the part when I see a pitcher trying to hard to be too “fine” and I just want the ball in the zone because I know the batter isn’t going to do much, I catch myself saying something to the effect of just having the pitcher get the ball over the plate.

But I do NOT tell a pitcher to slow down in order to gain more accuracy.

So many times I hear young pitchers being told to slow the ball down and not throw hard in exchange for strikes. More often than not what I end up seeing is this young pitcher begin to throw both slow AND wild. So she just went from having 1 issue (not throwing accurately) to having 2 issues (not throwing accurately AND not throwing with any speed/power).

How often to you hear coaches telling their infielders, “Don’t throw hard, just get the ball to the 1st baseman’s chest.” I don’t know, maybe you hear something like that on occasion. I personally can’t think of a time I’ve heard that though. If we don’t use this “logic” for throwing overhand, why do so many insist upon using it for throwing underhand, for pitching?

I know some young pitchers try to “aim” the ball on their own. My 8-year-old does this. She starts of throwing nice and strong. Sometimes she’s a little off – the ball is the right height, but off left or right OR the ball is straight, but too high or too low. These are very minor “problems.” Yet, she will try to slow down to gain more accuracy. It NEVER works. She still throws off the plate, sometimes even worse than when she was going all out, and her ball has very little on it.

So I just remind her that she’s not gaining much by trying to go slower. I ask her if the ball was going straighter (where she wanted it to) when she was throwing slow. She always says, “No.” So she’s beginning to realize that’s not the answer. She’s starting to correct the part of her motion that IS causing the inaccuracy (releasing too late or too early, not keeping her arm swing close to her body, not stepping toward the target, etc).

The results are much better with those kinds of adjustments than they are with “slowing down” to gain increase accuracy.

I talk a little more about this in the most recent Fastpitch Talk Radio episode. It’s just a short episode and you can listen to it HERE.

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