Currently our softball team is 1-2. It is a pretty interesting season to say the least.
The team has too many players, but we can’t cut people because everyone paid. So next season, we will be more judicious with who we let on the field.
The problem we are running into right now is the gap in skill, and attitude toward the game. There are some people who are really competitive and want to try to win, and there are people who really want to just play for fun. This would be okay if people were all same level of skill, however the people that want to just play for fun, some of them are really bad. It will take the whole season to train them or more to essentially teach them everything that was learned in little league. 🙁
There are really only two things that bother me about the team, that I was talking to the other manager that bothered him too. It was people watching the ball when they hit it on the ground, and not running hard out to 1st. And people not listening to the 3rd base coach.
I had an incident where I told a person to run on anything because there were 2 outs. I made sure he knew, and he and he told me “yes, I know that”. Then the ball is hit, he runs 2 feet and stops to look at the ball for a few seconds, while I am telling him to continue to run. 🙂 Stuff like that does kind of make me sad because it makes me feel like I am not doing a good job in telling them what to do.
Very messy games we had, dirt over our whole body.
Our games have gone this way so far
game one: Lost 15-0 (Mercy Ruled)
game two: Won 18-8
game three: Lost 7-6
In game three my sister game to play for our team because we were missing a girl. That was a crazy game, because we were down 7-3 with 2 outs in the bottom of the 7th. During the whole entire game, the team was not hitting the other pitcher well. Then the last several plays went like this.
Doug pop up is dropped by SS,
Dana hits a single over SS head,
Brian hits a triple, Doug and Dana score
7-5
Then my sister goes up there, and since she has only had 2 practices with her livingwater team, she is a little nervous. She doesn’t really want to make the last out for the team, so tries to draw a walk. However the pitcher doesn’t do that and gives her a good pitch to hit. So she hits a nice solid single into the outfield. Brian Scores
7-6
Now we are all going crazy on the bench. My sister is at 1st, and there is a guy coming up to the plate. This is where we had the conversation of “are we playing for fun or playing to win come up”. We had decided we wanted to play for fun, so we let the guy hit in that situation (even though he hasn’t really been practicing with us). We could have put in a pinch hitter who we knew would have a good at bat, but left it like that. He grounds out and we end the game
7-6
Overall, i feel like parts of the team are getting better. However, it is kind of hard to tell how well because right now most of the plays are to the good solid players on our team. CF, SS, Pitcher, and 1st base (all guys). Around these 4 positions we get around 75% of the outs for the game.
The way our team is working with the 12 guys and 6 girls, is that there are 2 teams of 6. 4 solid with 2 below average players (in terms of defense mostly, offense slightly) So that is how we are rolling around.