Crime,and,Punishment,Softball, sports Crime and Punishment in Softball

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Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-priority:99;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;mso-para-margin:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}Over theweekend I heard about something that just made me shake my head. It came fromthe parent of a 12U player. Apparently, after her daughter's team lost theirgame, the coaches decided that what was called for was a little punishment.They lined up all the girls and made the entire team run a sprint for everyerror and every called third strike in the last game. Essentially they metedout punishment to the girls for losing the game. After the next loss they didit again. Maybe I'm just soft but I don't understand what good that couldpossibly do. Research has shown that making mistakes is an essential part ofthe learning process. Child development experts concur — children must beallowed to make mistakes in order to discover how things work and who they are.Yet inspite of all of that, our society is so winning-focused that an otherwisereasonable adult believes that corporal punishment for losing a softballgame is a good idea and perfectly acceptable. The belief is that the sprintswill act as some sort of aversion therapy, making sure the players don't makethe same mistakes again. Actually, it almost guarantees they will. No oneperforms well with a gun to their head. When you're in that situation, youdon't really focus on doing your best. Instead, you do whatever it takes toavoid getting shot, even if it's the wrong thing. Take the hitters and calledthird strikes for example. The punishment is supposed to get them to get thebats off their shoulders and swing. It will, too, because once those kids havetwo strikes on them they're going to swing at anything — a ball over theirheads, a ball in the dirt, a ball pretty much anywhere.Theopposing pitcher could throw the ball at the third base coach (not a bad ideain this case) and the kid will still swing. Why not? As long as she swings theteam doesn't have to run. So instead of teaching her to open up her strike zonea little, or foul off pitches she doesn't like in order to get one she does,the coach has taught her to swing at any pitch. And then she'll wonder whyshe's swinging at ball four with a 3-2 count. The same with errors. No kid goesonto the field thinking "I think I'll drop an easy fly ball today" or"I think I'll boot a ground ball." Those things just happen. Yeah itsucks — I don't like it any more than anyone else — but making the girls runsprints after the game for it doesn't really address the problem. Make themwork on fly balls or ground balls for an hour instead.To me it'sespecially bad at the 10U/12U level because that's the age where they'resupposed to be developing their skills and their love for the game. Punishingthem like they just screwed up in boot camp isn't going to do either. Instead,it's going to send yet another group of kids toward volleyball, soccer,basketball or some other sport. In reality, though, this "running aspunishment" is a bad idea at any age. One of my former students once toldme that after her college team had struggled hitting for a couple of games hercoach made them run foul pole to foul pole, over and over. That made no senseto me whatsoever. If they're struggling hitting, wouldn't you think the bettersolution would be to have them work on hitting? After all, they're not going tocatch the pitch and run it into the field! If you want to punish them say we'regoing to hit until our hands bleed. That's still uncalled for but at least itmakes sense.There are reasons to have playersrun — conditioning, to practice them when they're fatigued, to help them buildtheir endurance for long tournament weekends, and the list goes on. Running aspunishment for mistakes — especially for players who skills are just developing— is not one of them. Instead of punishing your players, try actuallydeveloping their skills — mental as well as physical. You just may find itworks out a whole lot better for everyone in the long run.Anyway, that's the way I see it.Want to use more effective coaching methods?The Softball Coaches Toolkit will help you with…Running The TeamCommunication, Development, MotivationAssessments and EvaluationsPractice Plansand more……so you can help your team reachit's full potential this season!