Scouting a Girls Fastpitch Softball Team, The Simply Way! Then and Now.

[Admin]

Scouting a Girls Fastpitch Softball Team, The Simply Way!

When I was still Coaching my Team(s) back in the late 90's, and before I placed my Girls Softball Coaching career behind me in order to put all my spare time into OFC - Ohio Fastpitch Connections forum and the web site.

Even weeks before I coached my final Fastpitch Softball game, I was still spending 35% of my time at tournaments seating in my lawn chair watching softball teams in my girls age group playing on the diamond. What was I doing? I was scouting the competition.

And I did this thru out my Girls Fastpitch Softball Coaching career. I'm not really sure if I was the odd ball or not? The reason I say that, I very seldom seen other Coaches scouting teams. Maybe they felt it was wasting time?

To me that was odd, I really felt a real obligation to my players and parents as a Coach.

Now back then we didn't have any fancy phone apps or mini laptop loaded with all the coolest stats software. But even if we did I'm thinking I would still use the same methods "equipment/gear/tools" I used back in the 80's, 90's and 00's for scouting. Dang no wonder people think, I'm old school.

Well any way, here the list of gear I needed when scouting.

1 Lawn Chair
1 Sheet of paper
1 Clip Board
5 No #2 Pencil
1 Pencil Sharpener
1 College Softball Coach Shirt
1 Plain Yellow Hoodie

Optional items

1 pack of Marlboro
1 Zippo lighter
1 8 ounce flask of Jack Daniels

Note #1 on Jack Daniels, depending on who your seating with you may need to increase to 16 ounce or you may get by with only a empty red cup.

I highly recommended you throw out the idea of bringing a empty red cup and just be like a Boy Scout and be prepared, bring two flask.

Note #2 on Jack Daniels. Come in handy for paper cuts, bug bites and my favor, keeping the body warm on them cold summer nights.

Now for the funny side of scouting.

Listening to Fans, when your picking a place to set up your scouting operations. Pick a mutual location. I call this the double agent zone. From this location both teams fan base will try and adopt you as a fan.

At all cost don't blow your cover. Just listen and smile.

You will be surprise how much information Dad, Mom and proud Grandparents will share when you pick this mutual location it confuses the loyal fans.

At any point if you feel, your going to be discovered. Take action immediately.

Remove your plain yellow hoodie at once. And reveal your College Softball Coach Shirt.

I highly discourage using this method of deception. If your scouting 8 under or 10 under girl softball teams.

The last time I try using this trick, the diamonds change over from 18 under game to 10 under game without me even notice the change. Bam it took me 8 hours to get away, because one of the parent told everyone that college coaches could talk and meet the girls without breaking NCAA rules for recruiting. That was the last time I used that method of trickier, even when the 10 under were playing at another location 5 miles away.

Now back to scouting! Do Coaches Still put the time and effort into scouting other girl softball teams?

What type of methods or gear, software or apps do the new coaches use.

When I said I used just plain paper and a pencil that was the truth.

So Coaches how do you Scout Teams?

#TeamTSZ

 

[CARDS]

I can’t say that we never checked out other teams during tournaments because we did occasionally inbetween games.
We never took notes or anything just observing how a team played or if there was a player/pitcher that stood out.

Now with the High School team we would review video of the pitchers we were facing that had it avaliable. We would look for tendencies or motions that would sell a pitch. This helped a lot of our hitters especially; since most of the High School team just played in the local rec. league and did not get to face some of the better pitchers in the league during the summer.