Thanks Joe Abraham for this topic. Joe had brought up when watching live stream games a couple interesting points. He brought up the fact that the girls keep improving as softball players and athletes but they lack game situation awareness. Teams we're missing opportunities for the second out because they were waiting to long to firgue out what to do. Why are teams lacking game situation awareness and knowledge in today's games?
Didn’t practice or play games this spring, and often the positions played for travel are different than high school.
In my opinion, the situational reps don’t get taught in a practice like they do on the field during a game. Let’s be honest, girls today don’t play rec ball AND travel ball. There is a gap and I’ve seen it. (6/7) Years ago, girls played rec during the week and travel on weekends. Ask your ‘04s , ’05 parents. Today I see the majority of the travel ball girls “only” playing travel. That’s a lot of game time decisions that can’t be made up during a practice. Things are busier, I get it. I do the same with my daughter, travel ball only. It was always the unspoken rule that if your daughter played travel at one age level that then she had to play up one age level to find competition in rec just to compete. No one wanted to change ball size or distance. Some girls are more advanced in the game than their rec sisters. That’s why we went travel ball, right? We got tired of watching the gap in skill level. The fact is that the situational reps don’t get taught in a practice like they do on the field during a game. God love softball and be safe doing it.
Years back, Mike Candrea said that is how they were able to beat Japan. He said Japan was as fundamentally sound as any team in the world. He said Japan did drills for many more hours than the USA team did. But the difference was knowing the game and how to deal with pressure situations. He said they would put pressure on them with hit and runs, bunt and runs, double steals, etc. and they would sometimes let the pressure get to them and mess up. Joe A has a great point.
