Bio

CV

Some real talk 

I never played softball at an elite level.  I never had high profile coaches, nor a single private lesson as a kid.  I grew up in a time and place where the team piled into coach's Dodge Caravan and away he drove with a beer in one hand to whatever sandlot we were playing on that day.  I don't think clinics or private lessons even entered the minds of these coaches or parents, and I'm pretty sure 'softball coach' was not a listing in the Yellow Pages.  I was a standout player, but as far as my family knew, travel ball was not a thing outside of states where palm trees grow.  

I love the game, though.  And today we have the internet.  So as a beginner coach I set out to leverage that resource to educate myself on best practices ... only to discover there is a LOT of nonsense on the internet.   It takes dedication to dig beneath the surface and separate the nonsense from the sense.  Over the last decade I've invested thousands of hours watching videos, reading, reviewing slow-mo, analyzing, chatting and debating with other coaches to really understand what happens in the athletes' movements and what modern best practices are.  A dedicated parent can (and many do) invest the time to do the same.  But at the end of the day, if your daughter is like mine, you'll wind up paying someone else to teach her anyway because she clearly knows more than you do.  🙄  


What do you teach?

The upside to my dubious youth playing experience is that I have researched and thought through the optimal mechanics of movement and purpose. I got deep into human movement science and decided I may as well get my Personal Trainer Certification to reflect that knowledge.  As a result, I supplement all my coaching with flexibility, strength, conditioning, and power training (following NASM's OPT model).  

I had to relearn how to throw overhand as an adult because the bad technique I learned as a kid did not agree with my body as I got older.  So I researched and learned the best practices in throwing backed by modern kinesiology and motion capture. (You can too - look into Austin Wasserman).

As far as hitting goes - I could always smash a ball, but I knew my swing was slow to launch (doesn't matter when you're playing adult slowpitch).  I knew I had to do better teach the kids better so that they can catch up to the fast pitching that's common today.  I set out learning how to swing from the ground up (literally!).   The current state of hitting instruction is much different from throwing or pitching.  There isn't one agreed upon, scientifically supported "best practice".  (If you want to dip your toe in the drama in the hitting world, go look up @Teacherman1986 on Twitter).  There are definitely some must-dos in a quality swing and whatever cues work to get a player to do them, I'll use them.  That said, I tend to teach 'turn the barrel' until the situation calls for something else.

Pitching: a story

Women's Fastpitch was added to the Olympics in 1991 (though it didn't debut until 1996) and with the increasing popularity, a lot of leagues (including the one I played in) made the jump from slowpitch to fastpitch.  I had been a pretty successful pitcher as a kid.  Slowpitch.  I'd figured out dropball spin and loved to land the ball right on the back of the carpet with a fierce arc that was hard for your average 12yo to hit.   So when we switched to fastpitch coach gave me some pitching instruction like, "It's just like slowpitch, only the ball can't have that arc.  So you'll have to throw it harder.  And there's no carpet, you throw it to the catcher.  And you're arm's supposed to go around in this circle, but it doesn't have to."   I had the expected amount of success with that instruction.  Disappointed that hitters could now crush my pitches (when I could manage to throw a strike), I soon retreated to short stop as my primary position and quit playing softball after the '92 season (my focus shifted to music and softball conflicted with the number of bands and orchestras I was playing in). 

So when I started coaching I knew I needed to learn how to pitch "the right way".  So off to that venerable repository of information, YouTube, to find a teacher.  Ah, Jennie Finch!  Probably the most famous pitcher of the modern day.  Surely she knows how to pitch, and lucky for me she has videos on YouTube!  Two years and thousands of wrist snaps later I still can find no consistency in my release point in full motion.  When I talked to other coaches they would say you have to throw 10,000 pitches before it gets consistent.  Well, that's not okay.  Nothing like telling an 8yo that they have to do this repetitive task for years before they'll be good to sap the joy out of softball.  And something else was nagging at me - when I watched slow-mo of pitchers, I wasn't seeing a wrist snap in their full motion.  Nor was I seeing the ball facing downward down the backside of the circle.  Even when watching Jennie pitch, she didn't have the ball facing down, and her arm was bent.  So I dug deeper.  

There beneath the noise of 'Hello Elbow' (as Finch would refer to the motion) I found a different philosophy that aligned with what I was feeling and seeing.  It's sometimes called Internal Rotation (hat tip to discussfastpitch.com), or simply Whip style.  And it's beautiful because you use the natural stretch reflex of your body and internal rotation of your arm to eject the ball forcefully; as opposed to trying to execute an extremely precise muscle contraction in your wrist at exactly the right moment while your arm is moving in a circle as fast as it can.  It just made sense.

It took some time to unlearn the wrist snaps, but the first time you feel that arm lock in just right and the whip shoot the ball off your fingertips, it feels magical and brings a new definition to 'effortless power'.  Certain that I was on the right track I sought out the gurus to elevate that knowledge.  In 2019 I had the opportunity to attend a clinic in Ft. Wayne featuring Rick Pauly.  I got to meet (and say thank you) to several of the coaches that had helped me online.  This group of coaches is still a powerful network and sounding board for ideas and second opinions.  In 2020 when the pandemic hit and Rick Pauly launched his online certification program, I was one of the first in line and obtained an Elite certification soon after.  I've since had the honor to help coach at similar clinics, and continue to learn from this knowledgeable and dedicated group of coaches.


For giggles, here's a picture of 9yo me.  The 80's were a good decade for stirrups.  Yes, that's a wood bat. (I want to reach into this picture and fix that weight shift 😅.)