Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach Part 5: The Valley

Make Sure to Read All of My Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach

Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1
Part 3: Early Years
Part 4: Kid Pitch
Part 5: The Valley

We moved to Hazel Green in the middle of February. We continued Aubree's hitting lessons, but one thing was now set in stone and accepted. Until she grew, she was never going to drive the ball out of the infield nor was she going to beat any throws out. This isn't anything new, if you've been reading. It was just tough to accept until that moment. Finally speaking it gave it life and acceptance. Don't work with the tools you want, work with the tools you have. 

This presented a problem. She was a good second baseman, but she was an absolute liability hitting. Perhaps if she could play other positions, teams might show some interest. There was still that arm. In the end, we had to address the underlying issue, something she couldn't help: her size.

Aubree had always been on the bottom of the growth chart. That wasn't shocking. We are short people. I was barely on there, myself. I was stocky so at least my weight would put me in the 25% range. Aubree wasn't on the height or weight chart, at all. We didn't realize that was such a big deal. But we knew we wanted her to grow and the doctors, for years, had said that they considered putting her on artificial hormones to get her to grow. So, we scheduled a meeting with the doctor, primarily to get them to get off the fence about it. 

He asked about her playing sports. At that point, she was still playing rec softball but also soccer with the local league. Between four to six days a week, she was playing. On weekends, she was traveling for soccer and playing several games a day. We were shocked when he told us that she had to quit playing two sports, for sure, but possibly even all sports for the time being. She was burning more calories than she was taking in and she WOULD NOT GROW if we couldn't fix this issue. Based upon the two sports she played, we knew that she was burning the calories in soccer. So, soccer had to go.

This was a hard thing to accept. I believe kids should play multiple sports. 

In the meantime, we had decided that we would move her to the other side of the plate and make her a slapper. Power would no longer be an issue since slappers aren't typically going to be hitting out of the infield, anyway. More importantly, it put her at least two steps closer to first base. Of course the issue was that travel ball teams were hosting tryouts and she would need months before she was game ready. Still, she had to start trying out. 

This began the most frustrating part of her young softball career, at least to date. We started out trying out for an elite travel team. I knew that she probably wasn't good enough, but I thought she could ball out and maybe get lucky. I spent the entire ride trying to hype her up, or rather telling her not to screw up. 

By the end of the warm-up drills, the writing was on the wall. She wasn't in the ball park with these girls. To me, she wasn't showing any urgency, either. Like she couldn't tell she was out of her league and that angered me. I felt she wasn't going to extra distance to make up for her limitations. 

And I told her that, after tryouts......for the next hour.

So, of course, when we get home, I've got her out in the back yard practicing like it was her fault she wasn't prepared. And as I am yelling at her as if that will make her walk back to tryouts to get her on the team, I've got her running over the yard like it matters to those coaches. Just to be clear, this is a really bad habit that I know I have and even though I try to fix it, it still comes out. At least I was out there working with her now, taking some responsibility. 

Ball at the park was taking sign ups and Coach J wanted me and Aubree to play. Even though I had kinda sworn off the rec ball and we weren't even living in that area, I agreed for a few reasons. First, Aubree needed the practice. Second, I had doubts if we would find a team in time, so this was cheap insurance to ensure she would play. 

Over the next few weeks, we tried out once, twice, or sometimes three times a week with different teams. On the off nights, we practiced with the rec ball team. Seeing those girls at tryouts and just how amazing they were put a lot of doubt in my mind about Aubree's future.

Eventually after we got the "we will pass" from the coaches, my frustrations began to bubble over and I know I let a lot of it spill over onto Aubree. Even when she had great tryouts, she just wasn't good enough. She began to give up, I could see it but I sure didn't help with my negative reinforcement. I was positive to the coaches and I would basically beg them to take her. I would say things like "someone is going to take a chance on her and get an amazing player." I don't know if I really believed it. 

We even made a team only to find out they decided not to have a 12U team.

I can't describe to you how difficult this was, as a parent. Even at her best, it wasn't good enough. We even had coaches refuse to let her try out when they saw her size. We were literally told "not to bother." And yet, when we would practice with the rec team, she was better than most of the team, if not all of them, from a technical perspective.

At this point, I had accepted that Aubree just wasn't cut out for this life. The only thing that kept me pushing forward is that I refused to believe that anyone's ball career was over at 10 or 11 years old. It was the valley, the low point for us. Still, I don't think Aubree had given up. Maybe she didn't know that was an option. Maybe she didn't understand the gulf between her and the other players.

It was at this point that I finally got it. Dropping her off at hitting lessons wasn't enough. Getting mad and making her work when her head wasn't in the game wasn't enough. We had to work, every day. I had accepted that she wasn't going to play travel ball, but we work over the season and make one next season.

In her short time at her new school, she made friends with a group of players who all played on the same travel team. Guess what. They needed another player and we needed a team.

We had to get out of this valley, some how. At this point, it didn't matter how. 

Alabama Bass Trail 2018: Year in Review

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This first year in the Alabama Bass Trail was humiliating at times, frustrating most of the time, and occasionally fun. It was certainly rewarding, and not in terms of  checks cashed, 'cause there was only one of those. 

Entering this year, the game plan was to cash three Top 40 checks. I had Pickwick, Wheeler, and Logan-Martin circled. Why those lakes, you ask? Pickwick in February can be tough, for sure. But I've spent a fair amount of the winter months on February and the lake sets up well for a versatile fisherman. Of course, that tournament was moved until this weekend. More on that later. 

Josh and I fish Wheeler typically once a week. I've also had a lot of success on Wheeler in 

April. We know that lake. We've been very, very successful fishing it. Of course, my engine blew up on the run to the dam for a pattern that the tournament was won doing, we ended up having to be DQ'd. Then there is Logan-Martin, which actually went exactly like I expected and we almost cracked a Top 20 finish, hitting 13 pounds and a 21st finish. 

ABT on Guntersville was a roll of the dice and we came up snake eyes. No big surprise. One day I will figure that lake out. 

ABT on Weiss wasn't great, but we did OK for our very first time on the lake. Heck, at least we had five!

Anyway, months passed and Josh, Brad, and I had teamed up for a pretty solid tournament year outside of the ABT. Heck, the last year has been fantastic, in terms of our growth as tournament fishermen. I've hit a lot of personal bests. 

But these bigger tournaments have been another beast for me and this Pickwick tournament was probably the biggest and best learning experience I've had. So let me tell you our plan, what we did, and what we learned.

The first thing we learned from the very first ABT/Guntersville tournament was that a single day of prefishing before the tournament isn't enough. You really need three consecutive days on the Tennessee River to be competitive, especially if Guntersville isn't your lake of choice. Now, for you older gentlemen, you can rely on decades of experience, something that we don't have. We have to have time on the water.

Second thing we learned was, you have to read the conditions. For example, we had two solid spots for the Guntersville event. TVA dropped the water level several feet over night and we didn't pay it any attention. As a result, we were shocked to find that our submerged grasslines were now completely out of the water. Our game plan was busted before we even blasted off as boat number seven and we didn't even know it. 

Third thing we learned was, you will never junk fish into a win. We've won a ton of little tournaments "just getting a limit." There is no winning a 225 boat tournament against very competitive anglers by "just getting a limit." So, with that said, have a game plan and live or die by it, cause you ain't gonna luck into 20-plus pounds "just winging it." 

On a related note, you can't have too many spots and you need to vary them. Again, in the former case, our two spots were essentially the same pattern and so both were equally effected by conditions. Had we varied our pattern, we might have had a few options. 

Lakes like Weiss, Neely-Henry, and Logan-Martin can give you a false sense of security because the difference between average and great isn't much. An average fisherman can catch 8-10 pounds without a problem and a good fisherman catches 10-12 pounds. But a great fisherman comes in with 12-16 (or more). That doesn't seem like much, especially for Tennessee river fishermen who are used to seeing the spread in weights go from 10-30 pounds. Because of this, we believed we were more competitive on the Coosa than we really were. Still, we were at our best on lakes not predicated on current.

Current-driven lakes were bad to us this year and led to some terrific lessons, such as those we learned on Pickwick.

Off the bat, you can't help your blast off and weigh in times, but it is something that you have to plan around, and not just in terms of your first spot. That's because of the other unknown: TVA. In the case of Pickwick, we found some schools of fish, but because of our weigh in time and when TVA turned the current on, we had lost that tournament before we left the harbor. Instead of kicking the current up at 9AM, they ramped up at 11 which meant our fish wouldn't have turned on for several more hours, potentially even AFTER our weigh in. 

So, that's a contingency you have to plan around. We saw a lot of that during the ABT/Pickwick. More than 30 boats were sharing three places and we wondered why that was, when there were tons of good ledges another five miles down river. The answer is, it's better to share 20 biting fish than to have 100 fish that refuse to bite. 

I had a great time fishing this trail and I am signed up to do it against next year. This isn't the first time we've faced a learning curve. Just a few years ago, Brad and I joined a larger club than we used to fish and got kicked in the teeth all year before slowly becoming one of the most competitive boats in the club the last few seasons. I expect us to do a much better job, though we can't much help how much time we will have on the water. Until then, we will get as much time on the water as possible.

By February of next year, there will be seven kids between the three of Josh, Brad, and I. My fishing time has dropped dramatically since we had three kids playing sports, two of them playing two sports at a time AND I am coaching a travel team, which you can read about in my Confessions of a Travel Ball Coach. 

 

Fishing Report for Alabama Bass Trail on Pickwick 9/22/18

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If you keep up with me on Facebook, you already know what's up. If you don't, well, click that link, follow me,  and then read on.

I hope you guys that read this, and there are a lot of you, understand why I write these reports and you know that I don't think of myself as very good at this sport. If you don't know this, let me enlighten you.

First, I love writing. Plain and simple. It's something that I actually like AND I think I am pretty good at doing. Why do I write? Well, because the sport of bass fishing is full of guides telling you how awesome the fishing is right now, how this or that bait and technique catches all the fish, and how everyone is catching giant fish. 

The truth is, and you guys know this, fishing isn't easy. Tournament fishing, especially on a bigger stage, SURE ain't easy. Reading from someone that puts those struggles out there in the public eye puts things in perspective, at least I think so. I'd love to hear what you guys think. 

Due to time constraints, I was limited to one day a few weeks ago and Friday before the tournament. Josh had gone out two other times, but had failed to find anything of note. I had high hopes that the ledge fish that Brad and I had found back in July, which you can read about by clicking the link below. We finished second in our club tournament. 

Fishing Report for Pickwick Lake 7/14/18

With the continued heat, I had hope that we would find ledge fish once again, but all evidence was to the contrary. Friday, we put in at Brush creek and ran down river. The thought was that we wanted to be away from other boats and we were willing to make the run to be alone and not fight over fish. 

We found some ditches and drains and marked fish on them, right where they needed to be. Five minutes later, we had caught two fish. We marked several other promising ledges, but couldn't really catch fish. That Friday, the current wasn't great, but it was around 25-30,000 CFS pretty much all day, and was kicked up around 50-60,000 later in the day, which turned on some schooling fish. The issue was, we didn't catch any measuring fish on Friday, but at least we were catching multiple fish in spots instead of junk fishing around for one here and there.

We were boat 60 and we ran all the way to this spot, which was past Waterloo. This did include two stops of grasslines which produced one measuring fish and several non-committal blow ups on top water. 

When the sun got over the trees, we made it to our ledge spot, but remarked that there were at least 25-30 boats centered around three different spots around Koger island. 

The current was awful, starting out between 15-20,000 all morning and while it did get a bump around midday, it was a modest bump. The water temp was 84 and made its way to 85 by the end of the day. 

We didn't catch any more measuring fish for the rest of the day and at noon had abandoned our game plan. The fish were still on the ledges but they weren't grouped up and they couldn't be made to bite. We fished hard as we could and hit everything we knew to try. Nothing seemed to work. 

We had the first weigh in slot, so we just put in on the trailer and left, but as we headed home, we noticed how pitiful the first flight weights were. Eventually, the weights for the later flights went way up and it ended up taking a good bag to win.

Here's the long and short of it: we out-thought ourselves. Running from everyone is great, provided that you eventually get current. That means waiting all day for that current. In this case, since we had the earliest weigh in time, it wouldn't have mattered if we had been there the second the current hit our ledge, we wouldn't have had enough time to fish. That's partly on us, but also a testament to how you can't control things such as TVA and your blast off/weigh in times. 

The reason so many boats were clustered on similar ledges wasn't because they were that much better. It's because the current would actually get to them with enough time for the fishermen to catch the fish. We know from friends of ours that recorded a top-10 finish that they caught their fish about the time we pulled our of McFarland. 

We also noted how we were fishing the "obvious" ledge stuff while a lot of people were fishing a lot less "obvious." The same friends showed us just how subtle the difference between 10-12 pounds and 16-18 pounds can be. 

In the end, you need to have a ton of spots and you need to start up river and make your way down river, based upon the current and the bite. 

Anyways, here is a link to the year review.

Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach Part 4: Kid Pitch

Make Sure to Read All of My Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach

Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1
Part 3: Early Years
Part 4: Kid Pitch
Part 5: The Valley

We moved up to kid pitch the next year, but Coach J didn't coach because his daughter had Seiver's Disease (sever inflammation of the growth plates in feet) and was on doctors orders not to play. In his place was Coach Bob, whom had played with us on Coach James' team.  And, wouldn't you know it, the rules for drafting were now completely different than the year before. I found myself with the exact team as I had the season before, more or less. Lo' and behold, that other team was back and they ALSO had the exact same team except suddenly they also had the best pitchers and we had no one that could get the ball across the plate. I requested we trade a player so that we had a chance to be competitive, but that didn't happen. I also noticed that one of the elite player that had been on our team was not on the roster. She had moved on to travel ball.

This year, instead of the "over throw rule", their new game was to have base runners go halfway between the bases and stand. For example, a runner would go halfway between third and home. If the pitcher threw it to 3rd, they would run home. If the pitcher threw it to the catcher, they would just stand there until the catcher came after them. When the catcher stopped and threw it to the pitcher, the runner would run home. This play would go on for minutes at a time. It confused the infielders something fierce and since they were young and couldn't really catch well, this meant that essentially every base runner scored.

This led to my first argument with a player's parents. One of the parents had seen the flaw in our game. We coaches knew it existed, but I refused to play the other team's game. It taught terrible base running and I didn't see the value for the fielders. It also meant we were run-ruled every inning because we would walk every batter, as it was. The parent no-so-politely blamed me for the inability to coach the kids to catch and throw the ball. In their mind, if the kids could catch and throw, we could get the base runners out. If they couldn't, it was my fault and they had no problem pointing out that fact.

There's truth to that, of course. Initially, my argument was that I wasn't going to play their game because it wasn't teaching anyone to do anything other than to win the wrong way. But it did call out something important and that was about the fundamentals of the game. I came to the conclusion that while our girls were struggling to throw and catch, it shouldn't be me that bears the responsibility for teaching them that at practice. There just isn't enough time in the day for a coach to teach that kind of minutia as well as the game itself.

Perhaps the way I told this parent that our problems were actually THEIR problem wasn't the best. Tact has never been my strong suit and because I prefer people tell me what I am doing and how to fix it doesn't mean others like hearing it that way. Regardless, when I said what I said, two things dawned on me:

These girls were playing 10U ball and couldn't throw or catch, my daughter included. Why was this? First, the premier talent was disappearing yearly from the league and somehow I had completely missed this. Secondly, those that remained, such as my daughter, were not getting the work they needed at home. These players needed more time, not less.

Eventually we took our two most fundamentally sound players and made them a third baseman and a catcher that could throw and catch and we were at least competitive. We could at least keep baserunners on third. As an aside, this was the revelation that catcher wasn't meant to be the big kid that couldn't run, despite my premonitions from my own past. I began to think that the best athlete on the team needed to be behind the plate and while this was true for just this league, it did change my outlook on the game and called into question my belief that softball was just baseball for girls. 

It was really around this time that I began to wonder if this game was for Aubree. She couldn't throw, couldn't catch, and even though she could put the ball in play, it wasn't going anywhere and she couldn't beat out throws. Add in that I was wondering if EVERY park was like this and if they weren't, maybe we were in the wrong place.

Changes had to be made and I didn't really know how. I did luck into several important things. First, I attended a coaches camp by local legend Dale Palmer, who has coached Sparkman High School to a handful of state championships. He has put untold players into college. I knew Dale from before all of this when he was coaching me on the football team. We also went to church together for the better part of a decade or more.

I came away with a few bullet points. Coach Palmer stressed tempo at practice. Have several coaches. Break kids into groups. Drill them over and over. This flew in the face of everything I had ever known. We practiced situational defense constantly as a kid. That is, put kids in positions and hit one ball at a time. This was the opposite. Keep them moving and hit them as many balls and make them throw as many as possible. 

Next, he directed me to his hitting facility and his hitting coach. It was really more than I could spend and I didn't think I really needed a coach, but I quickly learned that they had facilities that I did not and Aubree could therefore hit more balls in a shorter amount of time. He knew more drills and while I could pick that up fast enough, Aubree listened to him better than me, which I know now that players are all like that. They will listen to a complete stranger more than a parent. I hated paying for lessons and we didn't have a lot of money, still don't, but we needed to do for her what we could.

That included buying a $75 bat, which I thought was just the dumbest thing, ever. With that said, I am a very frugal person, by nature, and it seemed asinine to spend the money on lessons and on a bat. The thought of spending $500 or more per season for travel ball seemed excessive. Perhaps the most eye-opening part of this is experience was the hitting coach almost immediately moved Aubree to the right side of the plate to hit left handed. He believed she saw the ball better from that side and it was pretty evident she did, although she had issues with mechanics, obviously. I was worried that working left handed would just set her back even more than she already was. I rolled with it.

Lastly, he sent us to his summer camp, which was only a few days, but was excellent for Aubree to see girls of different ages and talent levels. It made her work in a different environment that was outside of her comfort zone.

That time spent wasn't just about getting her better but building contacts and learning philosophies. I was shocked at how wide-spread travel ball was, but I came away knowing that that was the future, but Aubree probably wasn't ready yet. I did have her start playing up to 12U whenever we could. She was already the smallest player in 10U and now she was the tinniest player by feet, not inches. But, she rose the the occasion, something that I knew would pay dividends later, if I could harness it.

At the season's end, coach Bob signed us up for a "rec ball only" tournament nearby. Bob had older daughters that had played travel ball and I guess he knew what needed to be done. Our eyes were truly opened that day. Not only were we way off the pace fundamentally, but the style of play we were having to bend to at the park had pushed us down the wrong path. Of course, it didn't help that none of these teams were real rec ball teams. They were all All-Star teams.

We knew, right then, our days of rec ball were over, at least at this park. That was driven home by the fact that we moved to the other end of the county and we couldn't play at that park, anyway. It didn't matter. Travel ball was the future, but with whom would she play with? It was a brave new world that I had no idea how to tackle. But we had to start somewhere.

Lesson's Learned

• Softball is an evolutionary game. If you limit your exposure, you limit the data and adapt to it, which may push you down the wrong path. 
• Fundamentals should be learned at home. 
• Parents are going to disagree with coaching and umpires, it's a fact of life. Prepare yourself to deal with both. 
• People who push boundaries will always push boundaries.
• Players listen to coaches that are not their parents. 
• Practice, especially at an early age, doesn't have to be long but it should be high-tempo. Get them reps, as many as you can. 
• Attend camps, not just for players but for coaches, even if you aren't a coach.
• When your player quits adapting and growing, its time to move on. 
• Push your player to play beyond their level. For some, this is just within the game itself, to make plays they don't think they can make. For others, that's playing up. 

Fishing Report for Wheeler 9/15/18

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Last week wasn't so bad. I got off the slide and we won a wildcat. In case you didn't know, I haven't been fishing a lot since I've been coaching our 14U travel softball team. You can read about those adventures by clicking the link to the first article and linking to the rest through there. 

Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach

It was nice to get back to some winning ways, even if it wasn't a big bag. You can read about that bag here:

Fishing Report for Wheeler 9/7/18

Anyway, we felt like we had the upper end of Wheeler pegged. Of our 15 or so junk fishing spots, there were three that seemed hot. So, we started out on those three. 

Ice. Cold. Like, we didn't get a single bite on the first two. 

The third spot is a ledge-like spot that has running current on top of some submerged rock in about 18 feet of water. TVA was pulling over 60CFS due to the hurricane so we thought we should get bit. The week before, we caught our three biggest fish, which included a largemouth, a spot, and a smallie that ended up being the big fish. We did get bit, but none would really chomp on the bait. They would thump jigs and shaky heads, but wouldn't commit. Eventually we decided that we needed to run to the dam, since the current should have the fish turned on real good. 

So, we made the trip up to the dam at around 7. With the sun going down, we struck out on our first spot, then we managed two keepers on crank baits on our second spot. The third was a complete bust. 

It was around 8PM and we had two fish. As tough as it was, we kinda knew all we needed to do was get a limit. So, we went to the place we knew we should fish, a spot we call "the nursery." 

This is a current break near the damn that a back flow creates an area that bait piles up, and so do the bass. The issue is, we've never caught any big fish there and it doesn't turn on until dark-30. Even then, there is a tiny stretch that holds bass. 

Luckily, it was dark and we hammered on this spot for the last 30 minutes. We quickly began to catch fish and while we got up to four real quick, the size went down and we began to catch a lot of shorts. I did lose one at the boat that would measure and broke one off on the next cast. At that point, I thought that was probably going to be the end of our chances to win. The fish were in 14-18 feet and were all on chunk rock. Additionally, they didn't want to eat the bait. Some would thump the bait for 30 seconds or more, but when you leaned on them, they weren't there. 

Luckily, I was able to set the hook and boat swing a super chunky spot in the last five minutes or so before we started our way back down river. 

We ended up winning with a little over seven pounds. The spot went 2.5 and was the big fish of the tournament. Once again, that end of the lake isn't fishing very good, probably because the water temps are still in the mid-80s. Seems like it doesn't matter how much flow there is on the river, the water temp dominates the fish. 

We caught around 10 fish, total. Nearly all of them on shaky heads. The other boats had one limit among them, many of them not even hanging around for weigh-in. 

It's time to get on Pickwick for the last ABT tournament! 

Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach Part 3: Early Years

Make Sure to Read All of My Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach

Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1
Part 3: Early Years
Part 4: Kid Pitch
Part 5: The Valley

To say that expectations were set high after her first season of softball would be an understatement. We had no illusions that Aubree was a great player, but having been asked by Coach Jeff to be on the All-Star team raised our confidence level for our little player. 

Winter came and went and before we knew it, softball season was starting up and I realized that I hadn't done anything to help Aubree get better. But, considering Coach Jeff would be coaching again,  I knew she would get all the help she needed.

So, when I got called by the coach, and it was not Coach Jeff, I was shocked. Coach James was the first assistant coach for Coach Jeff and would be taking over. I was asked if I would be the first assistant and I agreed. I was skeptical because, quite frankly, when I had gone to games, which was most of the time, I was the assistant coach for Coach Jeff and I really didn't even remember Coach James being a part of anything. Still, we had a solid team despite not having Coach Jeff or his two daughters.

Aubree began playing second base almost exclusively. She didn't have the range or the arm to do much else. When she hit, if we set her up to hit to the left side of the field, we frequently got the lead runner out. If there were no base runners, she wasn't fast enough to beat out a throw. So, we sacrificed her whenever possible, moving base runners around. I have no idea what her On Base Percentage was, but it had to be awful. She was certainly frustrated because she never got to score and everyone else did. We didn't really explain to her the HOW and WHY, because we didn't think she would understand. I know now that kids, especially girls, learn about TEAM play quick IF YOU LET THEM. 

What I will say is that Coach James did a good job of making sure we practiced, going so far as to finding a field we could use whenever we wanted to. But, it was obvious by season's end that we had gone from the best team to the worst team and I could not figure that out. I knew Coach James wasn't the best tactical coach, but I wasn't much better and I didn't know how to help, or even broach the subject. So, once again, I just let things play out thinking I would fix the problem in the off-season. 

Coach James did not coach the next year. I had decided that I had to coach if I wanted change. Aubree would be eight this season and playing coach pitch and this is the first major drop-off. The rec league went from eight teams to four. I didn't think to ask WHY this was the case, but it's a combination of attrition from travel ball and interest. Due to this, there were no slots left for head coaching. They league made it clear that I could not be a first time head coach. My only avenue was to be a first assistant and if a slot opened up, I could then be a head coach. It was as good as I was going to get.  So, I became the first assistant coach for an existing team under Coach J. 

I was surprised to get a call from Coach J, who wanted to meet in person before agreeing to let me coach. I was a little shocked by this, especially having to justify my qualifications to coach softball. But, I humored him and the conversation that ensued was a very constructive one that built a relationship I have to this day. It wasn't about my qualifications but about my personality. Coach J himself wouldn't claim to be a savant in the sport, though I am sure he has learned a ton since then. But, the type of coach he would put on the field was important to him and while we may make tactical errors as coaches, that wasn't nearly as important as the attitude we as coaches put on the field. 

We would coach together for the next year and change and form a friendship, but those were rough times and they started before the first pitch. 

Coach J had a core group of girls from his previous team, plus Aubree. We still needed a few players. The other teams were going through similar attrition, so there were tryouts and a draft. I took my role as first assistant serious and on a Sunday in March, with snow falling, I ferociously took notes of all the girls at tryouts. I ranked them, I had an idea of who I wanted. So, we proceeded into the rec room headquarters to draft. 

First thing that happened was, since we had the "most players returning," I was not allowed to draft until the other teams had caught up to our team. So, that meant scratching off the first eight to ten players on my list, which left a very muddy pool of players. In one team's case, a set of twins counted as one player and the "carpool" rule, which I didn't even know existed,  was used to secure a third player, who was an elite level player at this park. These players didn't count towards the team totals. Ok, that's the way it goes. So I stood ready to draft what was left. But I noticed that the coaches of the other teams were drafting players that weren't at tryouts. In one team's cases, they drafted them BEFORE players that WERE at the tryouts. 

Strange. Why would you draft players you hadn't even seen? For the most part, I felt I got the best of what was left. 

Long story short, the coaches knew the players. They had told the elite players NOT to come to tryouts. I couldn't draft players I had never seen play, right? I had agreed to a "carpool" rule that never actually existed, but instead I had just been worked over. I was furious. I would later find out that the weaker players from their last team were put back into the pool, which I would then get stuck with.  I called my dad from the parking lot. The conversation went a little like this:

"Son, did you ever wonder why you played with the same group of boys every year?"

"No, dad. I just thought you liked them so you drafted them."

"I never had a choice. No one wanted them. Every year it was a different rule but I always ended up with the same players after the draft. Eventually, I just told them to give me the same players every year."

Dad handled it with more grace and tact than I ever could, or at least I never saw him lose it. Me, on the other hand, did what I typically do. I ran my mouth. I called them cheaters. I pointed fingers and I told them I would take whatever players they wanted to give me, practice them until they were good, and kick their teeth in 'cause I was that motivated. 

I was wrong. Again, I can't give you numbers, but I can tell you we lost and we lost big. We were competitive in many games with two other teams, but the third team....the one with the twins and the "carpool" kid crushed us. They easily won the local championships and I just couldn't understand how they were THAT good and THAT much better.

That's because I believe people are honest and straightforward by nature or at least until they prove themselves to be otherwise. That is CATEGORICALLY false in anything with sports or competition. 

When pride and/or money is on the line, people will fold if they lack the integrity. Little league sports, in general, get a bad rap because of these parents. They are easy to find at any ballpark in America. If you don't know what I am talking about, perhaps you need to examine your own actions. 

In this case, the coaches in question were board members. They created the rules of the draft that benefited them. I also discovered mid-season when I drove by the park that was "closed due to weather" that they will lie. Many times when the park was closed, they would be practicing and it was during the slot my team had been allotted to practice. With the least talented players and the least amount of practice time, it was no wonder we couldn't compete. I had no problem losing. I couldn't deal with HOW we were losing. 

Which leads me to my final point on the subject, which is the first and only thing that has anything to do with what was actually happening on the diamond. First, this was "coach pitch," but the board had decided to have a three pitch and then one swing on the tee. Because I wanted to make my team better, the tee was a last resort and we didn't spend ANY time at practice hitting off a tee. The other teams had gone the other way, deciding to intentionally get to the tee because of the higher success rate of hitting AND they could aim the player, even if the player didn't understand why. 

Secondly, the coaches of this team decided to abuse "the over-throw rule." Technically, if your player is running to first and the defense over throws first, you can only take one extra base. Once the pitcher has the ball inside the circle, play is dead. But, the argument was made that if the player is rounding first during the throw, the over-throw rule doesn't apply. So, they had taught their players to simply keep running until the ball was in front of them. As you can imagine, this led to a lot of in the park home runs. Essentially, every crack of the bat resulted into a run. 

This situation festered until one game where the score was getting out of hand, yet again. That team was up big and a runner was rounding second. Our player threw the ball to the pitcher, as they should, and he sent the runner from third anyway and she scored. I crossed the field to have words with him and why he felt the need to run the score up anyway. His response told me everything I needed to know about him.

"Why should I rob her of a home run she earned?"

If I have to explain to you why this logic is faulty, then you need to think some things over.

This conversation got a lot of attention from people all over the park and I apologized to the parents, even though I felt justified. In the end, I came off as a sore loser to pretty much every bystander because I was the instigator. 

After that game, I decided to change the way our girls played. I bent my style of coaching to their style of playing. In the tournament, we beat that team. Essentially, we never threw the ball to first. We threw it to second. And then we threw it home on the next hit. Our girls batted out of their minds and we won. Aubree talks about that game to this day.

We won by compromising our beliefs in teaching players the game, not to win, and I still hate myself to this day for spending half a season teaching kids the wrong way to play the game, but that was the choice I was given. As I told parents, I can teach them the right way and we can play two innings or I can teach the wrong way and we can play five.

Beating that team had effects that went beyond one game and ended up just hurting my players. The momentary satisfaction we had resulted in players that didn't really understand the game. It cost those coaches the chance to select the All-Star team. So, when they ended up coaching the All-Star team anyway, they did not ask me to refer any of my players to the All-Star team, nor did they ask me to help, nor invite Aubree to play, which is a breach in decade's old etiquette for rec ball that extended back to my days on the diamond. As you will read in the next post, it also cost my son.

To end this on a funny note: I've cried on the field of play twice in my life. The first was the first at-bat I ever had at five years old. I struck out. I cried. The last time I cried on the field was this season. During an at-bat, one coach would pitch and one would catch, in order to speed the game up. One of our players undercut a ball and it hit me square in the nose. I've also had a bloody nose twice in my life and this was the second time. I tried to be a man about it even though tears were streaming down my face. Eventually I was alerted that tears weren't the only thing streaming down my face. My nose gushed blood for several minutes. I was a man about it and kept playing.

Lesson's Learned

• You are responsible for your kid's development. You don't have to practice sports every day, but stay active and don't procrastinate
• Believe people want the best for your kid, but never assume they do
• Understand the processes in team selection and be vigilant
• All people want to win, but not all people know HOW to win
• Do not sacrifice future development for immediate satisfaction. No matter the scale
• Be mindful that perception is reality and how you act in your mind and how people see you act may not be the same
• If you are worried about how things are run, get involved early. Change takes time and your kid is the one who losses when you wait 

Fishing Report for Wheeler 9/7/18

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So, there's a new Friday night wildcat for those of us that work for NASA. I've been wanting to fish it for awhile but life gets in the way, specifically those all day softball tournaments, which you can read about in my Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach. While we DID have a tournament that next morning, it was in Athens, which is a very short drive and we didn't have one of the early games. Josh and I teamed up to tame the upper end of Wheeler (sarcasm).

Now, if you read my last fishing post, you will know that we haven't tamed ANYTHING on that end of the river in months. After catching the water on fire over the first two months of the wildcats out of Ditto, our fishing hit rock bottom when the water temps got above 80 degrees. You can read about that by clicking this link. 

Nevertheless, we had an all-new plan we wanted to try this past Friday. We were gonna run-and-gun and hit as many of our junk fishing spots as we could. The reasoning was that we never seemed to guess right on what three to five spots we would fish with the four hours or so we had to fish. This time, we were going to hit a post for no more than 15 minutes and if it didn't produce, we moved on.

We started out at the 431 bridge and I caught my first fish on the first cast of the day on a Pop-R. We added another short fish or two but it was obvious that the better fish weren't there. 

Moving on, we hit a stretch of rip-rap above the bridge without so much as a sniff. We moved to the other side of the river and things went crazy.

Throwing a mixture of top-waters and cranks, we had three doubles and caught several more fish. In the span of five casts each, we had boated a limit and were culling. Then the spot went quiet, although there were still fish in the area chasing bait. 

Moving on. 

Next spot was a deeper area with a rockpile in current. We had been catching a lot of fish every time we had fished there, but never good fish. In three casts, Josh caught a nice smallie and a spot. I added a third cull. 

We didn't catch another fish the rest of the evening although we spent the majority of the evening at the upper point of Hobb's Island looking for a five-plus fish. 

Still, the 9.2 pound sack with a 2.4 pound smallie was enough for the win. Dock talk was interesting because some boats couldn't get bit at all while others could only get quality bites, just not enough to make a limit. Others said they caught 30 fish or more. We caught around 20 on the day and probably could have caught more had we stayed in some of the spots where we had been catching numbers.

Surprisingly, plastics and bottom baits didn't catch but maybe three fish all evening and even two of those was me swimming a worm in 20 feet. The majority of the damage was done on top waters. 

Fishing report for Wheeler Lake: Months of August and September

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Life has really sped up for the Fam and I. I'm sure you fishermen haven't been reading my Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach, but we have entered a new stage of life. Where I had been just an assistant coach who could and would fish whenever I wanted, I am now the head guy (or at least split duties with our other coach). Also, Alyse is coaching with us. 

But it gets better! The boys are playing hockey two nights a week AND the baby is playing baseball. So, Monday through Saturday, we don't get home until at LEAST 8PM. 

Brad and I did fish a Wilson tournament with our club and while we did catch fish, we couldn't find the right ones. With a small limit, we thought we could sneak in to a check only to find out that our buddy Wyatt found a three fish limit over 10 pounds and that paled in comparison to the 13 pound limit that took home the check. That's the last tournament we fished other than the Thursday Night Wildcats out of Ditto.

With that said, fishing time has been non-existent the last few months. We've been fishing some, but no more than once every two or three weeks. Josh and I did continue to fish the Thursday night tournaments, but the fishing was downright awful for us. That culminated during the Wildcat classic. We were caught in a super nasty storm on the first night of a two night tournament and ended up having to abandon the boat and seek shelter at a complete stranger's place. We came in late with no fish and didn't even bother fishing the next day.

So, with that said, let me run over some things that we've found from fishing Wheeler, specifically the upper end of the lake.

First, as I stated, the fishing has been really bad for us. The water temperature is still in the mid-80s and even with the rain we've had which has induced some really good current, it has had virtually no effect on grouping the fish. We have seen up to 40,000 CFS coming out of Guntersville and it hasn't done much.

I think some of that is because TVA has kept the water levels moderated and even low compared to the rain we've had. 

So, main points, which had been awesome in the early summer and late spring with anything more than 25,000 CFS have been absolutely dead. 

The south side of the river, just below the dam, has continually produced fish for us. Mostly, we've caught them on Strike King 3XDs, but we've never caught more than two keepers and typically lose a crank on every pass. The north side has been abysmal. 

We've junk fished a good bit and small fish can be caught on top water. In fact, when you get around them, you can catch three to five. 

The plastic bite has been non-existent, so there is almost no reason to bother slowing down.  That doesn't mean you can't catch fish. The spot pictured above did come on a shakey head, but you can fish for an hour and not get bit. You are just better off covering water. 

Although Josh and I never could get it together, he has been able to weigh in some decent bags on Friday nights in another wildcat. 

I guess I'm saying to avoid the upper river, if possible. There were some really solid limits caught in the last month that ranged up to 14 pounds, but they also had one really good fish. Josh and I haven't been able to find the bigger fish, at all. For the most part, everyone completely strikes out. 

As the water temps dive, the backs of pockets are really going to light up and a top water is all you need. Until the water dips under 80, I wouldn't bother.