Let's GET GOING Illinois Pitchers!!!
/Dear Illinois Pitchers,
As you know, our big, hairy, audacious goal at Practice Pro is to make Illinois the powerhouse of pitching. We love where we live and we want the whole sport to grow. When there are excellent pitchers and teams in this area for you to compete against, the better each and every one of you become. If we grow good pitchers, the hitters will be able to hit, the fielders will be able to field, and the more we will love to play!
How do we grow good pitchers?
I say this constantly: pitching is a skill that needs to be developed year-round. If you fail to recognize this, you’ll be very sorely disappointed at the result. The money, time, and energy you invested in your abbreviated amount of lessons may go to waste.
Pitching is a team sport between a pitcher an her parent. It must be practiced together.
Consult the experts. If you do so, you’ll learn the best mechanics and mindset faster. Below are excerpts from an interview I did a couple of years ago with two of my favorite collegiate coaches. We talk about the mental game and dealing with the challenges of the pitching position. Erica Hanrahan, head coach at DePauw University, and Laura Matthew, now the head coach at Belmont University. At the time of this interview, Laura was the head coach at Wright State University.
Sometimes pitchers get pigeonholed as being perfectionists compared to other players. We love stats, accuracy, and accomplishment. I asked the coaches about what being a perfectionist means. I wondered if pitchers can “over-do-it.” While goal setting is usually seen as motivational, perfectionists may see the failure to achieve a goal as grounds for quitting. Here’s what they said.
Laura: That’s a really good question. I think one of the challenges that female athletes and women in general, we have this unrealistic expectation for ourselves whether it’s how we look or how we feel or how we perform. Sometimes we have to give ourselves a break from beating ourselves up all the time.
My coach used to say this and I loved it. “You are not allowed to say something to yourself in your head that you wouldn’t say out loud to a teammate”.
Why do we say things to ourselves that we wouldn’t say to others? That’s something that’s always stuck with me. We hold ourselves to a high standard but that standard needs to be effort. Can we look ourselves in the mirror and say that we gave everything we had? That’s the standard we should have.
It's not always about outcome. If we tell ourselves that we have to strike out X amount of people each game, that’s a great goal, but did we do all that we could do get the job done? There’s a lot out there we can’t control. We can’t control the umpire, we can’t control that that girl just stuck her bat out and crushed the pitch. But I know I came prepared and gave my best attitude and effort. I think that’s where we can hold ourselves to a high standard without tearing ourselves down.
Erica: A lot of pitchers must do a lot of self talk. Being a pitcher is a very unique position.
How many sports has a circle drawn around an entire player and then at the end of the game, that player is the only person on the team that gets a win or loss on their record column? Think about that. We say that the team won or lost, but the pitcher is the only one that has that put in their records in high school and college. Pitchers are given this inherent pressure just from the position they play for this particular sport.
Here’s the thing: you have to get over it.
You picked pitching and that comes with the position. Sometimes it can be really exciting and sometimes it can be really demoralizing. That’s why we play sports: it mirrors life. Look at life right now. If Abby wasn’t resilient minded and thinking about your future she wouldn’t be sitting here interviewing two coaches, she’d be stuck in her own ways. That’s the greatness of athletes and ability as pitchers. Every day is its own unique thing.
You can hit your goal and it can be great. On the other hand, it may not be as good as you want. You have to think about what you can take from today to make yourself better tomorrow. Make it reasonable and put it in perspective. Now that you’ve gone through a worldwide pandemic, nothing should seem that bad! When we get to play we should all be excited!
In order to fulfill our mission of helping our state be the most competitive in all of softball, we need to build the physical and mental capacity to practice and play year round, continue to incorporate entire families into the sport, and keep getting smarter about how we go about it. We are grateful and excited to be on this journey with you.
Since this interview, the Wright State softball program was cut permanently from the University due to financial struggles from the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m so sorry to Coach Laura, all the players and staff. This situation makes me sad, but it also makes me think about how grateful I am for all of my exceptional students and parents, all of the opportunities I had to play growing up, especially those I took for granted, and for the great game of softball.
