How Did We Get Here? The History of Illinois Through the WCWS

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How Did We Get Here? The History of Illinois Through the WCWS

This brings me to the discovery of who I am and how I love a BHAG. I read it first in a book called Build to Last about businesses, then read it again in a book about accounting, and then I heard it a third time at a softball conference. A coach was able to win a DII National Championship because he believed his team created a BHAG, a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. This is definitely not a SMART goal. BHAGs are seemingly unattainable; they are moonshots. They put your brain on a different plane of thinking. They scare you, challenge your courage, and mainly get you excited.

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15 Savvy Ways to Watch the NCAA Playoffs

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15 Savvy Ways to Watch the NCAA Playoffs

The road to the Women’s College World Series is one of the most exciting events to watch on TV. Regionals start today, May 17th, showcasing the best athletes in the country as they execute incredible plays and engage in jaw-dropping, extra-inning games. This year, don't just sit passively. Actively analyze the games and apply what you observe to your own development. Visual learning can improve your skills simply by observing. It's an excellent way to relax while getting better at the same time. Girls with older sisters who pitch often have an advantage from watching their siblings play.

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Mental Toughness

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Mental Toughness

How can you tell if you are mentally tough? Is it your endurance, your ability to come from behind, or strike out the last batter of the game? You might think a person who controls their emotions as tough, or one who can maintain complete focus amid a crowd of screaming fans.

I believe a mentally strong pitcher has a plan and sticks to it. She helps her teammates recover from their errors. Perhaps most importantly she understands the game, knowing when she’s in a crucial situation and can execute during those times.

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12 Insightful Tips About Pitching

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12 Insightful Tips About Pitching

I had to opportunity to attend my 5th National Fastpitch Coaches Association convention at the beginning of this month. This year we went to Atlantic City. I learn a great deal of information about mechanics, team and staff building, the mental game, and - get this -  even other positions besides pitching. But the best part is hanging out with my favorite coaches and talking about the game. 

What I find most inspiring is that my coach-friends absolutely love what they do and are super intense about improving. When there are breaks in between seminars we talked about what we liked, didn’t like, and what were planning to adopt ourselves. They love a healthy debate and rarely get to talking about anything else. It’s not like other jobs I’ve had where everyone wishes they were back home or at the hotel bar. Everyone is excited to be there. How could you not? It’s one of the most rewarding jobs in the world. 

In an effort to be festive, let's honor the 12 days of Christmas with the top 12 things I learned at convention. 

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When You Lose Confidence In A Game

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When You Lose Confidence In A Game

Most players have started their season already. Games will be testing your and your team’s abilities. They are an accumulation of all the work you’ve put in all winter. While the offseason was a time when you’ve learned new things, like improving your pitch repertoire or making big changes to your fundamentals, the in-season is all about performance.

Even though you’ll be learning a lot during the season, if you want to play and if you want to win, you’ll have to give the coach a reason to let you pitch. Giving chances in order to let the pitcher learn or see if she can handle pressure might be few and far between.

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Why Doesn’t My Daughter Throw Strikes?

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Why Doesn’t My Daughter Throw Strikes?

One way I like to explain it is through Martin M. Broadwell’s work. He was a management trainer in the 60’s. He wrote a famous article called Teaching for Learning in which he described the four stages of competence. I thought it would be fun to apply this not only to a pitcher’s experience, but also to a parent’s experience of getting his or her kid involved in pitching.

We want to reach “unconscious competence” in pitching and parenting. It’s when a skill can be performed easily without thinking about it. Here are the four phases, the first three leading up to our goal of “unconscious competence.”

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10 Quick Tips About Mechanics

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10 Quick Tips About Mechanics

If you’ve gone through one of our programs at Practice Pro, you know there is a lot to remember. I’ve broken down 10 of the most helpful tips to remember from your pitching lessons.

Learn first, then do “fixing” later. Many coaches won’t do a video analysis on a pitcher in her first year or two of learning. While we look at video, we don’t try to “fix” a young player's problems when she doesn’t know the principles in the first place. If you start “fixing” too soon, players get discouraged, especially with detailed video analysis. Those tend to point out only problems.

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Embarrassing Mistakes, Patrick Murphy, and How to Muster Courage

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Embarrassing Mistakes, Patrick Murphy, and How to Muster Courage

Good things happen when you sit at the front of the class. I'm living proof of that.

When I was a kid growing up, adults and teachers would tout sitting in the front of the class as the holy grail of all serious learners. And it stood to reason that if you sit in the front of the class, you must pay close attention - as there is no one to hide behind and less opportunity to distract yourself without the teacher taking notice. And though I accepted this as truth, I didn't always like to sit in the front of the class. It's not always comfortable to make direct eye contact with the teacher or be "called on" more often, so I always thought the middle of the room was safer. But nonetheless, I knew that teachers wanted their best pupils to sit in the front of the class, and because I cared about being a great student, I embraced the uncomfortable and leaned in.

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Is It Time for Your "Battery" to Create a Code of Conduct?

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Is It Time for Your "Battery" to Create a Code of Conduct?

Knowing a team's rules can tell you a lot about their values. But just like setting goals, these values only matter if people follow them. Good teams make sure their members act according to these rules because it keeps the team culture healthy. When everyone feels confident and clear about how to conduct themselves and how teammates should, it’s easy to refer back to or coach people back to good behavior. I thought this idea should be brought into the parent/pitcher relationship. When I was younger, my dad and I did not get along when he caught for me.

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How Stats Are Changing How We Treat Teams

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How Stats Are Changing How We Treat Teams

The Practice Pro coaches and I worked with 13 teams in Pitching School this preseason. That means an organization reserves an entire class time, once per week for the entire session. What I like about this is that we have closer relationships with their team coaches, helping them progress faster. There is less confusion on 'my one coach said this, and my other coach said that, so now I'm confused and starting to get irritated.'

One of the team coaches wanted some information from me. She asked which pitchers had pitches that were...game ready, game dependent (depends on the day), not ready, but working on it.

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3 Ways to Know if You "Have" a Pitch

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3 Ways to Know if You "Have" a Pitch

As soon as a player is able to throw with a good arm circle, has decent posture, and throws at her fullest effort she's ready to learn the change up and movement pitches.

Even 10 year-olds can learn movement pitches. If I were to wait until a pitcher perfected her fastball to teach her a curveball, we might be waiting until she is a high school or even college!

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How To Get Your Daughter To Practice

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How To Get Your Daughter To Practice

You are always trying to "get" your daughter to practice. After all, she said she wanted to be a pitcher, you are spending tons of money on lessons, she is super athletic and is going to be great!! Yet...she won't practice!  You even set up the basement to look like an exact replica of the Rosemont Dome! You nag her, you try to reason with her by explaining all of the benefits of practicing. You feel you have given her all the tools humanly possible, but alas, there she remains comfy on the couch, TV remote in one hand, cell phone in the other.

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Will Illinois Ever Rule the Softball World? Master Indoor Practice First

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You know what they say about Chicago, “If you don’t like the weather, wait fifteen minutes.” Illinois is not known for it’s stellar summer sports, and we love to blame the weather. But sports are about overcoming obstacles, not using them as excuses. Our Big, Hairy, Audacious goal at Practice Pro is to make Illinois the powerhouse of pitching - with our pitchers competing on every team in the WCWS by 2035!

One way to do this is to make our obstacles our assets. Our cold weather could be one of our greatest assets as a Midwesterner. We do a lot of pitching into close nets in our basements. Pitching without a forty foot target or even “fake pitching” allows pitchers to throw with great fundamentals. You might have noticed that a pitcher can execute a fake pitch with perfect mechanics, but as soon as she gets the ball and tries to actually throw to a target - rotten they go. She reverts back to what is comfortable. She does what her neural pathways have been built for - incorrect mechanics.

If I could train a pitcher for a whole year into a close net without a target, I would. But 9-year-olds get fed up with that in about 10 minutes, unfortunately. So, if it’s freezing outside, and it’s very beneficial to not pitch a full distance, what are our options? If it’s snowy and fields are unusable, if indoor facilities are booked, if it costs $60 per hour to rent a cage, if parents don’t have time to organize and rent school gyms, what can we do?

Create your own practice facility at home! Check out what some creative folks have done to their basements below.

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If possible, set up a 7 foot net in your basement and pitch real balls into it. Add pieces of tape as targets onto different sections. Even if it’s not full distance, looking at different location varies your release point, improving “feel.” Some players have hung blankets from the ceiling to throw into. When ceilings are too short, they pitch from their knee to practice their arm circles. One pitcher rolled out a pitching matt in her dining room and just did fake pitches. I’ve seen a person attach a ball on a stick to the wall at different angles to practice movement pitch spins.

The second best ball-choice are compression balls, the third are any other type of ball. Lighter balls improve arm speed, heavier balls increase body awareness. Don’t throw full speed with a full pitch using balls over 9 oz. Some studies show the increased weight is not worth the (arm health) risk compared to the benefit. If you want to get stronger, lift weights, don’t throw heavier balls. If you want to get faster, get more of reps in.

Pitching into a net can get boring if you don’t challenge yourself and get creative. Based on what we learned during Covid, long winters, and feedback about practice struggles, we created and online practice club. We give you daily pitch-by-pitch practices that are fun and varied so pitchers will never get bored. If you forgot how to do a drill we’ve added short videos so pitchers of any age and experience level can follow along. We have practice groups for beginners all the way up to college-bound athletes. The best part is the motivation! We give out Practice Pro merch for those who complete their weekly practice.

If Illinois is going to be the pitching powerhouse of the country, we’ll have to overcome weather and space obstacles. We’ll have to show our toughness in a time when other parts of the country have sun, warmth, and space. We’ll have to be relentless in our pursuit of advancing our game!

7 Little Changes That'll Make a Big Difference With Your Mechanics

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7 Little Changes That'll Make a Big Difference With Your Mechanics

Have you plateaued on speed? If so, you’ve reached the point where every minute movement of the body becomes important.

When a pitcher first begins to learn, the speed piles on as she executes on basic fundamentals and becomes stronger. After the initial building phase we start to correct errors in lessons. One of the most common errors is a 'swimming” left arm. Luckily, it’s the easiest to change.

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You Did WHAT to Be Great??

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You Did WHAT to Be Great??

I want to be clear that there is a level above GREAT. That level is the ELITE level. And to be ELITE, you do have to possess certain innate qualities (talents). Sadly enough, most players with the ability to be ELITE will never get there because the extra effort it takes to get there is the same formula it takes to achieve GREATNESS, and not everyone “really” wants to do the work.

To measure GREATNESS more specifically, you will be in the top 10% of ALL pitchers at whatever level you compete at. ELITE is the top 1%. And to be clear, it takes an ELITE desire to become GREAT to actually achieve GREATNESS. This is the level I hope all of my students in pitching school are striving to attain.

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Golden Rules of Goal Setting

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Golden Rules of Goal Setting

I've grappled with the concept of S.M.A.R.T. goals, despite being a frequent teacher of it, as it often felt inadequate. The idea of a goal being both "reaching" and "attainable" seemed paradoxical. However, a few years ago, I stumbled upon a transformative solution. I began by crafting a S.M.A.R.T. goal—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Then I added a second, much bigger, long-term goal.

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Unlocking Team Culture: Innovative Ideas from the NFCA

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Unlocking Team Culture: Innovative Ideas from the NFCA

Last week I wrote about insights I gained about overhand and underhand throwing at the annual NFCA conference. At the conference, coaches are really eager for practical knowledge – the strategies and drills that make a real impact. They crave the kind of guidance that can be put to use immediately. However, I like to add in what's neglected - team culture building.

As Christian Conrad, the Assistant Coach at the University of Arizona, wisely put it, "Instill in your team members a sense of great self-worth, that each can be the most important on the battlefield at any given moment."

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