In the last 10 years, only one team in the DI WCWS had pitchers from Illinois on it. As far as high school competition, the IHSA used to have a state bracket in which the winner of the city tournament went directly downstate. Unfortunately, the city schools lost too many games by too much of a margin, so they began to mix the city conference with the near suburbs to make the championships more competitive. The city's conference is improving though, with Marist winning 3 state championships since 2010 and a few schools sending players to university with softball scholarships.

If I don’t get to pitch on my current team I’m probably not a good pitcher. I will quit pitching.

Coach Andrea tells a great story about not getting to pitch on her high school team. They had an outstanding pitcher who ended up getting a D1 scholarship. Consequently, Coach Andrea never got mound time on her high school team. When the yearly team awards came out, she won “best outfielder.”

Slow it down to get a strike, pitching lessons are only for serious pitchers, and you have to master a fastball first.

These are concepts which most beginners believe to be true - but many are simple misconceptions. So much of windmill pitching is counter-intuitive. The culture of pitching in Illinois is misunderstood.

Here are 14 things that are not true about softball pitching.

1. Lessons (learning to pitch) are only for serious pitchers.

A parent thinks his or her daughter simply needs to throw more strikes. If she slows down and focuses, she’ll get better, they think. First, focus on accuracy, and she can speed up as she gets better.

Is one of your biggest struggles getting your daughter to practice? Are you having trouble getting yourself to practice with her? Do you want to teach her to be independent and take initiative on working hard? Would it be better if she could sacrifice her current comfort for her future success?

Ideally, you want to build up to 400-700 pitches per week without a mechanical breakdown or reduction in speed. These do NOT include warm ups that don't make it beyond the 12 o'clock position or that are not full speed. 

I admit - it was a bit of an attention-grabber headline. Even so, there is truth to why I would never teach a pitcher to throw like Monica.

When you watch the Olympics, and if you paid attention in class, you’ll be able to see what the pitcher is doing well. Is she doing her 5 fundamentals ? Is she executing her take away, plug, stride, arm circle and banana? If not, how is it possible this pitcher could still get to the Olympics? Should I do it that way too?

Do you hate to lose more than you love to win?

As we are smack dab in the middle of the NCAA collegiate season here in 2021, I’m sure many of you have had occasion to watch some of the outstanding matchups in D1 softball on ESPN or maybe even the Big 10 Network.

Preliminarily, before I dive into the main topic at hand, I want to point out the fact that there are numerous games on television multiple times a week broadcasting softball on ESPN and individual conference networks. This in and of itself is an astronomical win for our sport.