Another Fine Saturday at the Park
Every Saturday my day begins at 10AM w/ my minor baseball team, proceeds to 2PM with my major softball team, and ends with a senior softball game at 5PM. All three of the teams are young and all needed major work. Finally, we are starting to see the improvement in all of them and it is substantial.
It was uplifting when I asked our minor baseball team after they hit very well, pitched very well, and fielded very well what they learned. It was like hearing myself recited back to myself. They said they learned focus, creeping, swinging, being aggressive, head in the game, it went on and on and on, it was very impressive. I guess they do listen after all, though at times you wonder.
I ended it by introducing a new word to them. A big one for 8-11 year olds. The word? Execution. I told them they obviously know what to do because they just finished telling me everything they were supposed to do, therefore, the word for the rest of the season is execution. They needed to execute the plan the rest of the season.
My major girls are struggling a bit. But not because they are not talented, because we have struggled to throw strikes. That is pretty typical for this age group in the fall, but it has been a little more frustrating this year for some reason. We play a number of teams that I feel we are better than but we don’t win because we don’t throw strikes. When we do throw strikes, we tend to win.
Amazingly, when I got home tonight my wife was telling me how much fun today was because all the teams performed well. She said it was a different game when we threw strikes. She said, and get this, “It’s all about the pitching”….lol. She must listen too! My mantras are starting to permeate my life, this is pretty cool stuff. I have said this a thousand times before, but as coaches and leaders, we really need to watch what we say, because people listen.
Anyway, today our major softball team threw strikes and hit the ball. And though we lost, it was a fun game.
Finally, our senior softball game. We played against a bunch of big girls all much older than us. That was one of the funnest games I have been involved in in a long time. We bunted, swung, stole and kept pressure on their defense. It was awesome. They did the same to us but we made the plays for a change. It was really a lot of fun playing “softball” the right way. A total blast.
Anyway, it is 11:30 right now and I still have a smile on my face. Not because we won, but because I am so proud of every one of our teams today. The score is irrelevant. Our fall objective was to improve every player’s skills and prepare them for the spring. This plan appears to be on course.
What is the best day you ever had on a ball field? What made it special?
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