Mental advice

That’s what I’m recognizing more and more as I study the best players in the world. There is just something different about their eyes. No they don’t have the ability to see better than 20/20 or anything like that. In fact I have no idea whether they were contacts/reading glasses or not. What I mean is:

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I began the week as always … rooting for The University of Arizona. By the final game of the championship series I found myself … rooting for both teams. Not because my loyalty had waivered, but becasue I found an even greater appreciation for all of the girls that game after game “NEVER GIVE UP.” Both UCLA and The University of Arizona fought hard all 7 innings of both of those games.

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Have you ever watched the first few games in a t-ball players career? They are so cute when they hit the ball and then panic and run the wrong way when everyone starts yelling “RUN!!!”

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When students first begin learning to multiply we provide them with a Multiplication Chart. We teach them how to go through the rows and columns and memorize the values of 2 times 3, 2 times 4 etc. The expectation is that they begin memorizing the values, so that as they increase the frequency of going through it, the totals will just roll of their tongues on demand.

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For years I’ve used the term “Practice doesn’t make perfect … Perfect practice makes perfect.”

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For those of you that don’t live in/around the state of Georgia. King of the Mountain is a tournament that is held every year in about 12 different locations just to ensure that I have to drive hundreds of miles in 1 day trying to get from location to location to see as many of my players as I can.

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The first thing I go through will all of my players is a mental exercise where I get them to realize that they alone are responsible for their effort and their attitude. That no matter what goes on around them, no matter who says/does what around them they must concentrate on doing their absolute best on the next play at hand.

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What I love about my friend Bobby Simpson from Higher Ground Softball is that he challenges EVERYTHING that has to do with the the game of fastpitch softball. Nothing is safe. At dinner last night a group of us were discussing the game in general and he challenged several things:
1. He asked some of the coaches how man double plays were actually ever turned during the entire course of a season? In the course of the typical 60+ game season most of the schools were under 10. Then he asked the coaches “So if there are less than 10 plays made in an entire season, why do teams spend so much time practicing them?”
2. Same basic question regarding pick off plays. How many times does the team end up in a pickoff play defensively? Again the answer was very, very few because most teams are conservative. So he askd them again how much of their practice time was devoted to working on something that would so seldom ever happen. At this point most of our eyes were spinning because he was challenging us to really think through every aspect of the game and not just accept the common philosophy of what should be practiced or what should be done.
3. Knowing that I teach slapping, and that one of the other coaches teams is explosively fast and does a lot of slapping he asked us a question I’d never heard before “Why do slappers run towards the pitcher and go past the foul line?” At first I didn’t even understand the question but as we discussed it further I began understanding that what he meant was that from the base bath itself is 60 feet from the back tip of the plate, and if they ran closer to the pitcher then they would have to run further than 60 feet. I love to be challenged that way so we started discussing math and angles and hypotenuse’s (can that even be pluralized?) So we drew it up and used a straw to mark the distance from our imaginery plate to our imaginary first base and what we discovered was that because the angle changes slightly as they approach the pitcher they don’t really have any further to run so I was greatly relieved.

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Just received an email from the parent of two girls that I love working with. The email was so exciting, that I just had to post it immediately.

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I was just reminiscing tonight about the classic romantic comedy “Pretty Woman.” The movie begins and ends with the exact same line “Welcome to hollywood. Everybody has a dream. What’s your dream?”

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