Softball: Beginning of Season 2016-2017

February 24, 2017

Being a junior in this season, I am stepping into an upperclassmen role on the team. For the first few practices, I have been helping out the freshmen and sophomores who are new to playing softball. It is interesting to see the varied levels of skills in the players. While some players have strong, powerful throws that come naturally, others struggle with that and have better hitting accuracies. Regardless, I am determined to teach them the fundamentals - how to ground a ball properly, run for pop flies, glove placement, batting stance, swinging motion, running the bases, and so much more.

Since our games have just begun, we've made adjustments transitioning from a previous year of the starting lineup being dominated by seniors. Most of our starting lineup have never started or played majority of games. Thus, in our first game it was extremely intense. The box score continuously remained close. Though we ran in the end, there seemed to be many careless errors both defensively. We let balls go through our legs, failed to call for ball and more. In regards to batting, many of us swung at pitches that were clearly balls. We definitely could have done better, but I do recognize that we are still in the transition phase. All we need to continue doing is practicing and working hard.

Another transition from last year to this year is a switch of coaches. Coach Virge officially announced that he would stop coaching by last year, so this year with Coach Tamara who teaches at Queens Vocational High School, things are a bit different. The way practices run are more focused on the more experienced players teaching the new players as well as group work. She also makes us do a number of squats and running drills, pushing our cardio and muscle workouts. This was something we rarely did in previous years, but I am glad we are because it allows us to become physically stronger players that complement our fundamental skills and knowledge.