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I coached a team of NEWBE 10U players some of who had never played fastpitch before and we somehow ended up with a (lets say competitive) schedule. The girls got beat...by lets just say... ALOT...
The girls understood where they were on the food chain and adjusted there expectations -
"Hey, we didn't get 10 runned", "Hey, we got to bat the line up", "Hey, we didn't let them score", "Hey, we won the inning" And so on.
These girls have gone on to join other teams that have better chances to win. and they are all still very competitive. Losing did not kill that, it made winning look and feel better.
I know why teams step off and end horrible innings but I hated it. I didn't care how many runs the other team scored (well... yeah I did but you know what I mean) I wanted our girls to get the outs. And the girls felt the same way - they hated it and felt patronized and that was way worse to them than losing. Even in the loss they controlled their side of the outcome it was their mistakes that allowed the other team to score. When the other team steps off or strikes out to end the blood shed you have lost that control and that hurts.
Our girls still had fun they had as much competitive drive as anyone all they lacked was talent.
They wanted to play against the best teams. And at the end of the day we had ice cream just like the winners because like pirate skipper Chuck Tanner said "The greatest feeling in the world is to win a major league game the second best feeling is to lose a major league game".
It's playing the game that matters.
The girls understood where they were on the food chain and adjusted there expectations -
"Hey, we didn't get 10 runned", "Hey, we got to bat the line up", "Hey, we didn't let them score", "Hey, we won the inning" And so on.
These girls have gone on to join other teams that have better chances to win. and they are all still very competitive. Losing did not kill that, it made winning look and feel better.
I know why teams step off and end horrible innings but I hated it. I didn't care how many runs the other team scored (well... yeah I did but you know what I mean) I wanted our girls to get the outs. And the girls felt the same way - they hated it and felt patronized and that was way worse to them than losing. Even in the loss they controlled their side of the outcome it was their mistakes that allowed the other team to score. When the other team steps off or strikes out to end the blood shed you have lost that control and that hurts.
Our girls still had fun they had as much competitive drive as anyone all they lacked was talent.
They wanted to play against the best teams. And at the end of the day we had ice cream just like the winners because like pirate skipper Chuck Tanner said "The greatest feeling in the world is to win a major league game the second best feeling is to lose a major league game".
It's playing the game that matters.
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